The emphasis on unity in truth is increasingly cast in dialectical form, so that plural differences can be viewed as contributory to intellectual congruity. John Paul is not saying that other religions are redemptive. Yet he writes of redemption's cosmic character. Though he considers fear of hell well-founded, he hesitates over the certainty of eternal damnation. Among evangelicals the response to pluralistic ecumenism has largely been reactionary.
Spokesmen voice little agony of soul over the Christian church's divided condition.
This indifference explains partly why they shun exploration of deeper unity and, worse yet, why they accommodate more and more divisions. Yet, to their credit, evangelical denominations rally with interdenominational fervor in sponsoring biblical evangelicalism and missions, the priority that liberal ecumenism most dwarfs. Mainline modernism deteriorated into a political ideology. At the same time conservatives, supposedly the guardians of biblical theology, pursued church growth through murky evangelical pluralism. Their annual conventions featured individual leaders more than a cognitively definitive movement impacting the culture, and their funding appeals sometimes had more fervor than their cultural confrontation.