What is an evangelical, and am I one?

In the first Tidings in this four-piece series, I sketched what Luther and many Lutherans mean when they call themselves "evangelicals." In this piece we're going to jump four centuries forward to explore what modern "evangelicals" may mean when they claim this label and sketch the history of their development into the present.

Modern self-identified evangelicals are actually a highly diverse group and difficult to categorize. Historians often point to four traits or inclinations shared by many evangelicals but by no means all. These “Pattern of convictions and attitudes” were identified by the historian David Bebbington. They are,

Bible or Biblicism – reliance on the Bible as the ultimate religious authority (“bible-believer”) [“the Bible is the inspired word of God” or “the Bible is God’s word, and is to be taken literally, word for word”]
Cross or Crucicentism – a focus on Christ’s redeeming work on the cross, (normally) the only way to salvation [“through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God provided a way for the forgiveness of my sins” ]
Conversion or Conversionism – emphasis on the “new birth” and its life-transforming implications (often, but not always, “born again”) [“I have committed my life to Christ and consider myself to be a converted Christian”]
Activism – a concern for sharing the faith (concern for evangelizing, saving souls for Christ, etc.) [“it is important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians”]

We can roughly trace this set of convictions back to European pietists in the 17th century. Again, this was a diverse group in England and on the continent that, with the rapid rise of literacy among the common people, showed great zeal for private Bible study and for personal holiness. They were inclined toward a religion of the "heart" rather than the "head," that is, toward an experiential religion.

We find similar concerns in the two Great Awakenings of American history, the first in the late eighteenth century and the second in the decades following the American Revolution. Evangelical Protestants thereafter dominated American culture and politics in the 19th century, but divided among themselves on a variety of issues, most importantly slavery and, later in the 19th century, Darwinian evolution and German biblical criticism.

On the matter of slavery, evangelically inclined churches divided into northern and southern denominations. On evolution and biblical criticism, a group called "fundamentalists" calved off from the more "liberal" or "modernist" evangelically inclined denominations. The fundamentalists shared various beliefs in addition to the four "evangelical inclinations" listed above, two of which are important for this series:

Insistence that every word of the Bible was "inerrant," that is, absolutely and literally word for word true, and
That civilization was in decline and heading towards Armageddon and the turn of Christ to restore his kingdom.

After its apparent defeat in the Scopes "monkey" trial, fundamentalism nonetheless continued to spread in American society but was not much in the national news. That changed when Billy Graham, originally a fundamentalist, began his revivals after World War II and became an important public figure. He broke with the fundamentalists and called himself "evangelical." The term "evangelical" came in the next several decades to be applied to a variety of still quite conservative Protestant institutions associated with Graham and his supporters.

Another strand of "evangelicalism" arose out of Pentecostalism and various charismatic movements beginning in the early 20th century. These movements put special emphasis on the Holy Spirit and advocated various spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues.

Many African-American religious movements shared the concerns of white evangelicals and Pentecostals, but they tended not to call themselves "evangelical" and generally remained separate from white evangelicals, not the least because of racial discrimination and segregation.

Beginning in the 1970s more militant and conservative evangelicals began re-asserting themselves. They took over the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelically-inclined denomination, and some took to national politics forming the so-called "Christian Right." As a political movement, these activists and their organizations such as Falwell's Moral Majority or Robertson's Christian Coalition or Dobson's Focus on the Family combined the theme of civilizational decline with exhortations to take back "our Christian nation" and return to "traditional values" in opposition to feminism, abortion, homosexuality and, later, same-sex marriage. From the 1990s onward, self-identified evangelicals were a large and reliable source of support for Republican politicians and policies.

Summary

Evangelicals in America vary greatly among themselves, but for convenience they may be said to share four distinctive impulses or convictions summarized by cross, bible, conversion, and activism. Some also share deep concern for what they see as the decline of "Christian America" and the need to "take back their country" as part of God's plan for the world. Not all evangelicals share these four or five convictions, and some who share all four or five do not call themselves "evangelical." So be wary of generalizations, including these!

This crib-notes history is meant to serve as background to what follows in subsequent Tidings pieces. Not much to discuss, but questions for clarification are fully in order!

In the concluding two Tidings piece we'll examine briefly two to the four (or five) characteristically "evangelical" impulses--biblicism and civilizational decline.