The warrior mentality that has emerged in the last fifty to seventy-five years of evangelicalism is not new in Church history. It was bred, for example, in actual warriors during the Crusades, to devastating effects. It has been used metaphorically to describe Machen and his warrior children or in the popularization of the warrior as the model for Christian manhood among Baptists on the heels of the rise of dispensationalism with Scofield and Ryrie. In Scofield’s end times scenario, Christ raptures a marginalized church valiantly holding off secular opponents. The gates of hell are biting at the church’s heals, with liberal wings falling left and right. Only those who valiantly fight to the end will be found holding on to the fundamentals of the faith.
I would like to argue that the warrior mentality is not the Biblical paradigm for Christian manhood, or womanhood for that matter.