(R. Scott Clark – The Heidelblog) Sometimes people who come from the non-confessional evangelical world look at confessional churches as though they are hide-bound traditionalists. Doubtless, that is sometimes true. The words “we have never done it that way” have been heard from time to time in Reformed churches. In recent years, however, I have noticed a remarkably rapid shift in segments of the non-confessional church world. Two large Bible churches with which I am familiar have, in different ways, undergone impressive doctrinal shifts….
One of them, which would once have been regarded as rock-ribbed, as they say, in its fundamentalism (e.g., Dispensational, premillennial eschatology) has made optional belief in the traditional doctrine of hell (i.e., eternal conscious torment), and belief in the substitutionary atonement. This does not seem to be an isolated instance, but part of a larger pattern.
The Shift In The C&MA
One outstanding example of such a shift is the recent decision by the Christian and Missionary Alliance to begin ordaining females to pastoral ministry.