What does it mean to be evangelical?
A term that applies to between fifteen and forty million Americans should be rather obvious. Yet few words are so commonly used while being so poorly defined. To many people the word evangelical evokes images of the “Religious Right”, of people who read the Left Behind novels, go to megachurches, and vote for Republicans. While to other people—mainly Christians who ultra-conservative theologically— the label is used as a derogatory term for believers who take an insufficiently stringent view of scripture and accept other forms of “liberal” belief.
While the term has a limited range of application, referring to specific traits, churches, convictions, and practices within Christianity, its denotation is so plastic that it makes it almost impossible to succinctly define. It originates from the Greek word evangelion, meaning “the good news,” or, more commonly, the “gospel.” In the New Testament, the word is used in reference to the “good news” of the victory of God’s salvation. In American circles, though, the terms is expanded to generally apply in three different senses:
The first meaning of evangelical is in reference to all Christians who affirm a few key doctrines and practical emphases:
– conversion, or “the belief that lives need to be changed”;
– the Bible, or the “belief that all spiritual truth is to be found in its pages”;
– activism, or the dedication of all believers, including laypeople, to lives of service for God, especially as manifest in evangelism (spreading the good news) and mission (taking the gospel to other societies);
– crucicentrism, or the conviction that Christ’s death was the crucial matter in providing reconciliation between a holy God and sinful humans. (2)
The second sense in which the term is used is as the generic name for a group of movements and religious traditions. Within this context evangelical includes such disparate groups as Pentecostals, Baptists, Dutch Calvinists, Catholic charismatics, and non-denominational “mega-church” members.
The third sense of the term is as the self-ascribed label for a coalition that arose during the Second World War a reaction against the perceived anti-intellectual separatist, belligerent nature of the fundamentalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Originally dubbed “neo-evangelicalism”, this group included such leaders as Billy Graham and Carl F.H. Henry, such institutions as the Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College, and such publications as Christianity Today.
But how would the bloggers here at Evangel define the term? What is is that we all have in common that allows us to share the label?
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October 18th, 2009 | 9:54 pm | #1
[...] response to Joe’s opening volley regarding what is an evangelical, I would add [...]
October 18th, 2009 | 11:04 pm | #2
[...] was “evangelical.” Certainly there were good things meant by the term that I could affirm (such as Joe listed below), and there were many great men and women who could be described by it. But in my theological high [...]
October 18th, 2009 | 11:22 pm | #3
I’m obviously going to be the hard-hearted one here, Joe, so sorry about that.
I guess my root question would be, “why do we want to call ourselves ‘evangelicals’ rather than ‘christians’?” What’s the actual benefit?
October 18th, 2009 | 11:33 pm | #4
I would say it’s the same reason we have distinct names for our churches. We could just call them all “Christian church of (whatever city),” but there are important differences among Christians that impact our practical ecclesiology. I think the distinctives Joe listed above make the evangelical label worthwhile.
October 19th, 2009 | 2:52 am | #5
Roger beat me to what I was going to say. Essentially Christian is the noun and evangelical is the modifier. Someday all Christians may come to realize that the gospel is at the heart of Christianity, but until then we’ll still need people willing to publicly identify and put the emphasis on the “evangel” part.
October 19th, 2009 | 10:10 am | #6
I hope both of you know me well enough to guess that I knew what sort of answer you’d give before I asked such an obvious question. thanks for playing along. :-)
Let me say this about your common reply:
[1] If those are in fact the distinctives, I’m curious why we would call someone who doesn’t believe those things “Christian”. I would quibble over the priority of those 4 issues, but for example someone who rejects the authority of the Bible cannot be a Christian — it’s an application of John 5 to see that faith with the wrong object is not faith in the sense we mean when we talk about “faith in Christ”.
[2] In [1], it seems to me that saying someone is “evangelical” is therefore not much of a distinction at all. It’s redundant at best, and obscurative at worst. Here’s what I mean by that: let’s assume that we can say someone is an “evangelical Christian” and someone else is a “post-modern Christian”, and by the latter we mean someone rejects the authority of Scripture to define the particulars of the faith, and finds crucicentrism somehow intellectually untennable.
By saying there is another kind of “Christian” besides the “evangelical”, we are succumbing to a barely-sociological view of the faith — and this, frankly, erodes our ability to declare the Gospel credibly. We face the problem that there becomes ‘another Gospel’ besides the ‘evangelical’ Gospel, and the criticisms of guys like Bill Maher in his movie Religulous are vindicated.
October 19th, 2009 | 10:11 am | #7
[...] is the inaugural topic for discussion at the new “evangelical” blog (appropriately named Evangel) over at [...]
October 19th, 2009 | 11:14 am | #8
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think that if our purpose is to communicate then we may have to include modifiers that—to us—appear to be redundant.
But while its important to fight for the traditional meaning of terms, it can easily lead to a self-defeating, “Win the label, win the argument” approach. Just because we are using a term that in a way that we consider correct does not mean that everyone else understands the term in that way.
Richard Mouw once wrote something to the effect that when we all get to heaven a lot of people will be surprised to find that they were Calvinists. What he meant was that much of Calvinism is simply biblical doctrine. But if we trying to force people to call themselves Calvinists it would likely be counterproductive.
October 19th, 2009 | 12:05 pm | #9
Because I am being nice to Jim Belcher for the first 90 days of his book release, I’m going to spend a lot of that time ignoring references to Richard Mouw which overlook his overtures toward Mormonism as a credible denomination of “Christianity”.
But in that, Joe, I’d be willing to call all full-throated Arminians (not semi-pelagians or full-on pelagians) “Christian” in the same sense that I am a “Christian” by faith in Jesus Christ. I have no interest in deamnding that we define “Christian” as “7-point, a-mil, high-church Calvinists” — and I don’t think that anyone should.
My point in driving down the path of whether “Evangelical” is a meaningful distinction or not is to point out that I think you mean something more than you’re willing to say by the category “evangelical”, and we’d all better served to say that than we are allowing for “evangelical Christians” and “post-modern Christians” and “new kind of Christians” and so on.
Are you a person who affirms 1 Cor 15:1-4 in the sense that Paul meant as he wrote it to the Corinthians? Then I count you are a brother in Christ — even if you baptize your babies or have a chart which predicts the time and the day of the return of Christ.
The rest is, if you will forgive me for saying it, posturing that attempts to include that which ought not to be included, and also to exclude others but make them feel better about it.
October 19th, 2009 | 2:52 pm | #10
“I’m obviously going to be the hard-hearted one here, Joe, so sorry about that.”
To be otherwise, would be out of character, Frank.
October 19th, 2009 | 3:02 pm | #11
Nice to see you, too, Dr. Beckwith. Welcome to the party.
October 19th, 2009 | 7:05 pm | #12
[...] Joe Carter started this discussion by asking, “How would the bloggers here at Evangel define the term? What is is that we all have in common that allows us to share the label?” Timothy George provides a helpful short and concise summary: At its heart [evangelicalism] is a theological core shaped by the Trinitarian and Christological consensus of the early church, the formal and material principles of the Reformation, the missionary movement that grew out of the Great Awakening and the new movements of the Spirit that indicate “surprising works of God” are still happening today (”Foreword,” in The Advent of Evangelicalism). [...]
October 19th, 2009 | 7:14 pm | #13
[...] called the Evangel. It’s a group blog and several current bloggers are part of the discussion. Joe Carter started the opening discussion by defining an evangelical and asking, “How would the bloggers [...]
October 19th, 2009 | 9:00 pm | #14
[...] Joe Carter – What is an Evangelical? [...]
October 20th, 2009 | 9:01 am | #15
No mention of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book, “What is an Evangelical”? Seems it would be relevant here, eh?
October 20th, 2009 | 9:06 am | #16
Also, what is the footnote (2) supposed to refer to? Where do those quotations under the first meaning come from?
October 21st, 2009 | 1:58 am | #17
Had we taken the trouble to investigate the FULL STORY on “the good news” of divine origin (1 Tim. 1:10-11), there would be so much less division and confusion today! At the heart of the issue (now evaded) should be the question whether or not the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, in itself, is the climax of Scripturally valid, reliable and verifiable trend in the history of God’s self-revelation to man, for firsthand and personal knowledge of the divine, thus making up the good news!
Here is the crucifixion-based verification. “The Word was the source of life, and this life brought light to mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out” (John 1: 4-5). At stake is nothing less than firsthand and personal knowledge of the liberating truth (Ibid, 8: 31-32) with no room for any religion, whatsoever, including Christianity (Ibid, 4: 21-26)!
On a personal level, it is working for me since 35 years!
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