The Evangelical Tendency to Avoid Doctrinal Disputes

Piper:

The increasing abandonment of truth and moral absolutes in our culture, as militant diversity threatens all firm conviction, has dramatically influenced the evangelical mindset. The political spin doctors who specialize in deflecting attention away from truth onto feelings and relationships and styles have their counterpart in the evangelical tendency to avoid doctrinal disputes by casting issues in terms of demeanor and method rather than truth. Serious disagreements are coverered over, while vague language and pragmatic concerns preserve hollow unity at the expense of theological substance and biblical clarity and power.

—John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), 24.