At different times over the last several months, this blogger among many others has wondered aloud about evangelicalism and its distinctive characteristics. It’s an issue which I really need to get my head around in order to write a thesis that makes sense. I’m doing a little bit of reading around the subject at the moment and thought I’d post about some of the ideas and issues I come across. Today’s instalment concerns the definition of terms.According to the editors of the scholarly volume Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles and Beyond, 1700-1990, ‘evangelical’ is ‘the best word available to describe a fairly discrete network of Protestant Christian movements arising during the eighteenth century in Great Britain and its colonies.’ This historical sense of the word is complemented, though, ‘by a parallel use of the term designating a consistent pattern of convictions and attitudes.’ Following David Bebbington’s famous formulation, they identify these convictions and attitudes as:
- biblicism (a reliance on the Bible as the ultimate religious authority)
- conversionism, (a stress on the New Birth)
- activism (an energetic individualistic approach to religious duties and social involvement)
- crucicentricism (a focus on Christ’s redeeming work as the heart of essential Christianity)
While the editors do not claim that these are the only legitimate uses of the term ‘evangelical’, they suggests that ‘the ‘evangelicals’ marked out by these two overlapping designations form an historically coherent subject.’
I find this two-pronged historical / attitudinal definition quite useful when it comes to characterising evangelical religion, but it can leave the boundaries between evangelicalism and other forms of Protestantism rather unclear - as they probably actually are.
References
Mark Noll, David Bebbington and George Rawlyk (eds), ‘Introduction’ in Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles and Beyond, 1700-1990, Oxford University Press, New York, 1994, introduction
Bebbington: Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, Unwin Hyman, London, 1989, chapter one
[pic by ML]
4 comments:
You might like D.G. Hart's book Deconstructing Evangelicalism. (There is a review somewhere in my blog's archives.) Since it is not their usual fare, Koorong had it on the clearance table for $5!
Thanks for that Aaron - i do plan to read some more but i need to be pretty pointed with my reading as I'm running out of time for reading interesting-but-only-vaguely-related things! So I will have a look at your review - I really appreciate the tip.
This was a big deal in our Church History 4 course here at MTC. Our lecturers pointed out an inductive vs deductive divide over how to define evangelicalism. I got the impression that they were leaning towards an inductive approach (ie look at all the characteristics of those carrying the label and work it out from there), but left it up to us to decide, which was quite a diplomatic move seeing that certain heavies within the Sydney Diocese would prefer Evangelicalism to be defined deductively (ie come up with a separate definition and then measure others against it to see whether they fit the bill).
That's interesting, Marty. I do wonder if the eds of the book mentioned are trying to have their cake and eat it too - they seem to want to define evangelicalism in terms of its historical origins and development, but also in terms of those four particular (unchanging?) characteristics.
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