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Instead, Joy

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I greeted the primary contributions with a certain amount of impatience and frustration—accompanied with shame, since I know how deeply experienced the contributors are (compared to myself) in evaluating the position of Evangelicalism. But the cause of my feelings may actually be encouraging to these thinkers. I don’t want them to be oppressed with categories, qualifications, and cautious optimism, but rather to realize that even to an outsider like me, they can seem indispensable in saving the world.

Evangelicalism as Platonism: A Response to Enns

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Peter Enns is surely right when he says that “defining ‘Evangelicalism’ in America is like trying to hit a moving target.”  His initial observation has been echoed by others (e.g., Bacote and Wilson), and the very shape of the conversation thus far underscores the point.  Proposals that lean on Bebbington’s quadrilateral (see Yong: “Biblicism, crucicentrism, activism, and conversionism”), while not without merit in light of Evangelicalism’s origin in the 20th century, seem strained by present sociological realities (as noted by Smidt, Franke, and Wilson).  Thus, Enns wonders, “whether Evangelicalism as it has been understood can genuinely enter into a broader dialogue and accept its role as one voice among many while also retaining its traditional Evangelical identity.”  As Enns no doubt knows, the likelihood of success in this undertaking depends, in part, on the nature of Evangelicalism’s traditionally understood identity – one that is presently, to some extent, in “crisis”.

By way of response to some of the challenges Enns’s remarks raise, I’d like to propose a way of thinking about Evangelical identity that captures the spirit of its actual history, explains its present sociological tensions, and provides a blueprint (admittedly unsatisfying) for moving forward with a “genuinely broader dialogue.” 

Invitations to Reflect on Location and Engage Difference

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I have appreciated reading my colleagues’ insightful responses to the topic of evangelicalism and tradition. One theme emerging in the conversation is that of social and theological location. This theme addresses the sixth forum question of whether evangelicalism is best understood as a particular movement with the larger history of the church or as something more central. As Vincent Bacote notes, “many contemporary evangelicals essentially eliminate what they regard as tradition.” This allows evangelicals to view their movement as the movement of God in Christian history. But as Peter Enns suggests, evangelicalism may be a “relatively recent, culturally conditioned, expression of Christianity.” It is what Smidt refers to as a religious movement (versus a religious tradition or categorical group).

 

Separating Frames of Evangelicalism

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The different criteria presented by my colleagues themselves represent frames for considering the broader scope of evangelicalism. The frames not only demonstrate the different ways we can consider evangelicalism but also provide some hints as to where changes may be coming.

The first frame I see is present in Peter Enns’ description of evangelicalism as being situated in the wake of the modernist/fundamentalist controversies of the early 20th century. He suggests that evangelicals represented a third way between the extremes. (Back in the 70s, Richard Quebedeaux said that evangelicals were “polite fundamentalists” which struck closer to home that I wished.) As James Davison Hunter suggested in American Evangelicals (1984), evangelicals were dealing with “the quandary of modernity”. How much to engage and how much to maintain distance? Inherent in that quandary is maintaining one’s position relative to the other groups. It raises the possibility that evangelicals wind up defined as “not being the other guys”. But as the other groups move, so too must evangelicalism. Alternatively, there is a vested interest in keeping cultural antagonisms alive that plays identity roles within the evangelical subculture (which is why persecution stories are so important). I’m thinking along the lines that Corwin Schmidt uses when he considers evangelicalism as a categorical group. 

Why the Label?

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During the past two months I have spoken to a rather diverse assortment of evangelical audiences: seminary and college students, marketplace folks, conservatives in mainline denominations, global Christian leaders, and megachurch staff members. I have been surprised by the fact that in each case in the Q&A time someone asked me about what I take the “evangelical” label to mean.
Needless to say, I have been asked that question often before, but never with the frequency of my recent experiences.

Glimpses of Another Land

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Like many in my postwar generation of American evangelicals, I grew up in churches (mostly Baptist in my case) where the word “evangelical” was rarely heard. (References to “evangelism,” on the other hand, were ubiquitous.) Not until I was 12 years old—when I discovered Christianity Today magazine—did I begin to get a glimmer that there was something called “evangelicalism.” We had been evangelicals all along, but I hadn’t known. Even today, most American evangelicals don’t define themselves, in the first instance, as evangelicals, while others who appear to fit the definitions proposed by historians, sociologists, and theologians explicitly reject the label, often bristling at it.

 

Evangelicalism, Ecumenical Diversity, and the Unity of the Church

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Before addressing the relationship between evangelicalism and the broader Christian tradition, let me offer a bit of background regarding my own relationship to the evangelical tradition. Throughout the course of my post-secondary educational career including undergraduate, seminary, and doctoral studies, as well as eighteen years as a faculty member of an evangelical seminary, I have been nurtured and formed by evangelical communities and convictions. While I continue to identify with and participate in the life of the mainline Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in which I was baptized, raised, and confirmed, evangelical instincts and intuitions have deeply influenced my sense of what it means to be a Christian to the point that even where I have come to dissent from some of the hegemonic aspects of the North American evangelical tradition, I do so for reasons that seem to me to be very evangelical.

Alternative Approaches to Defining Evangelicals

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In order to engage in this conversation, it is necessary that discussants be clear about whom or to what they are referring when they employ the words “evangelicalism” and “evangelicals.”  Of course, the starting premise of this conversation is that evangelicalism as a religious expression has been, and continues to be, evident within American history and that evangelicals do exist.  Still, there are those who may choose to dispute even this basic contention.  For example, one scholar (Hart 2004, 16-17) has gone so far as to contend that any attempt to study evangelical Christians is simply doomed to failure in that the religious category “evangelicals” is basically a figment of one’s imagination—being “a constructed ideal without any real substance” that “needs to be relinquished as a religious identity because it does not exist.”   This conversation, of course, takes the presence of evangelicalism and evangelicals within American society as empirical realities and not some “constructed ideal without…substance.”

Hoping for the Best

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“Evangelical”, like the word “postmodern”, can mean both everything and nothing.  Depending upon the company one keeps, “Evangelical” can be code for something as simple as “Bible believing Christian” or as specific and pejorative as “anti-intellectual Republican fundamentalist” or a number of other labels.  The multiplicity of associations provides many with sufficient reason for choosing a label less susceptible to misunderstanding and unhelpful baggage. 

            Not me. While as a theology professor I would not call myself a typical anything, I am unapologetic about owning the label “Evangelical.”

Evangelicalism – and the Renewal of Christianity

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            The question of What is evangelicalism? rages on. For me, David Bebbington’s by now classic “quadrilateral” definition – in which the defining features of Evangelicalism include its biblicism, crucicentrism, activism, and conversionism – remains an adequate starting point. However, so many other variables come into play, which lead to disputes, even among those who can agree on these four elements, about what else is requisite to an evangelical identity. I want to suggest what might be called a pentecostal or renewalist spin on these Bebbingtonian characteristics. (I use “pentecostal,” “charismatic,” and “renewalist” synonymously in what follows and in the rest of this blog series.) Such a twist, as will be clear, does not negate these central markers but is indicative of their evolving character.