Evangelicalism

I

Introduction

Evangelicalism, a movement in modern Anglo-American Protestantism (and in nations influenced by Great Britain and North America) that emphasizes personal commitment to Christ and the authority of the Bible. It is represented in most Protestant denominations.

Evangelicals believe that each individual has a need for spiritual rebirth and personal commitment to Jesus Christ as saviour (commonly, although not necessarily, through a specific conversion experience). They emphasize strict orthodoxy on cardinal doctrines, morals, and especially on the authority of the Bible. Many Evangelicals follow a traditional, precritical interpretation of the Bible and insist on its inerrancy (freedom from error in history as well as in faith and morals).

The term Evangelicalism has been a source of controversy, and the precise relationship or distinction between Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism has been disputed. Liberal Protestants often oppose the use of Evangelical to refer only to the strict traditionalists.

In the general sense, evangelical (from the New Testament Greek euangelion,”good news”) means simply pertaining to the Gospel. The word identified the early leaders of the Reformation, who emphasized the biblical message and rejected the official interpretation of dogma by the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, Evangelical often simply means Protestant in continental Europe and in the names of Churches elsewhere. In Germany, it once identified Lutherans in contrast to the Reformed (Calvinist) Churches. Nevertheless, the large union body, the Evangelical Church in Germany, today encompasses most Protestants, whether Lutheran or Calvinist, liberal or conservative. The term has also been applied to the Low Church wing of Anglicanism, which stresses biblical preaching, as opposed to sacramentalism and belief in the authority of Church tradition.

II

Antecedents

Forebears of 20th-century Evangelicalism include pre-Reformation dissenters such as the French merchant Peter Waldo, early leader of the Waldenses; the 14th-century English theologian John Wycliffe; and John Huss (Jan Hus), leader of the 14th-century Hussites. The 16th-century Reformers, the 17th-century English and American Puritans, and the early Baptists and other Nonconformists were more immediate forerunners of Evangelicalism. Historical landmarks of the movement include the arrival (1666) of Philipp Jakob Spener at a parish in Frankfurt, where he became the leader of Pietism in German Lutheranism, and the 1738 conversion experience of John Wesley, the leader of Methodism within the Church of England. Both Pietism and Methodism taught the necessity of personal saving faith rather than routine membership in the national Church, and they had a profound impact on personal devotional life, evangelism, Church reform, and—in Wesley's case—broad social reform. English Evangelicalism reached a high point with Wesley and the lay member of Parliament William Wilberforce. Wilberforce and his associates contributed greatly to education for the poor, the founding of the Church Missionary Society (1798) and the British and Foreign Bible Society (1803), the institution of the British ban on slave trading (1807), and the abolition of slavery (1833) in British territories.

III

Evangelicalism in the United States

Wesley's colleague and sometime disputant George Whitefield linked this English Evangelicalism with revivalism in the American colonies. The Great Awakening developed about 1725, deepened with the preaching and writing of the Congregational minister Jonathan Edwards, and reached a peak after 1740 with Whitefield's preaching tours. A Second Awakening is often identified in the early 19th-century United States, and other revivals followed. The Evangelical label began to be applied to interdenominational efforts at outreach and the establishment of foreign missions.

IV

Modern Evangelicalism

The emergence of theological Modernism during the 19th century, particularly historical criticism of the Bible, produced a movement of reaction within many denominations. In 1920 a Baptist journal coined the designation Fundamentalist for the defenders of orthodoxy.

The term Fundamentalism gradually came to designate only the most uncompromising and militant wing of the movement, however, and more moderate Protestant conservatives began to adopt the older designation of Evangelical. They created the National Association of Evangelicals in the United States (1942) and the World Evangelical Fellowship (1951), the latter reviving an international body formed under Great Britain's Evangelical Alliance (founded 1846). The constituencies of these bodies are largely outside the World and National Councils of Churches, but large numbers of Evangelicals exist within the mainstream ecumenical denominations. Current Evangelicalism bridges two elements that were, for the most part, antithetical in the 19th century, the doctrinaire conservatives and the revivalists. According to a recent estimate, there are about 157 million Evangelicals throughout the world, including about 59 million in the United States.