A friend of mine asked me recently what I thought about the term evangelical. Is it still a useful term for us today? Does the older generation have a different idea of evangelicl than younger generations? Does evangelical create barriors when we talk to people? Here are a few thoughts.
There has been a fair amount of work recently on defining evangelicals. David Bebbington has done the most accepted work with a four fold definition. An evangelical is distinguished by one who emphasizes conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism: focuses on conversions, good works in the world, the Bible, and salvation through the work on the cross. This is an excellent start, but it does seem to be lacking. Timothy Larsen has presented his own definition which helps situation evangelicals in history. An evangelical is
1. an orthodox Protestant
2. who stands in the tradition of the global Christian networks arising from the eighteenth-century revival movements associated with John Wesley and George Whitefield;
3. who has a preeminent place for the Bible in her or his Christian life as the divinely inspired, final authority in matters of faith and practice;
4. who stresses reconcilation with God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross;
5. and who stresses the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of an individual to bring about conversion and an ongoing life of fellowship with God and service to God and others, including the duty of all believers to participate in the task of proclaiming the gospel to all people. (Timothy Larsen, "Defining and Locating Evangelicalism" in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology)
The latest issue of Books and Culture has a review of a book which seeks to do some revisionary work on early evangelicals which looks rather interesting. Another definition of evangelicals comes from ETS (Evangelical Theological Society) which places their focus almost entirely on inerrancy, although that is beginning to change. But there is also a big-tent evangelicalism as represented by IBR (Institute for Biblical Research), which does not necessarily hold to inerrancy. To make life even more complex, evangelical in German just means Protestant. And finally, there is popular level perceptions of evangelicals, whether it be those people who are homophobic or Republicans or people who just love Jesus.
What do we do with the term evangelical? Personally, I do not mind the term. I call myself an evangelical, and I am happy in the evangelical world. I think that the term is helpful in identifying who I am and what others who hold to the term stand for. There are certainly fuzzy areas in using the term, but I think overall it is still helpful and one that we should be able to use for many years in the future. But then, it isn't a term that is essential either. I don't think we have to call ourself evangelicals. If someone doesn't like the word, then we don't use the word. I think that the problem is either with stances taken by evangelicals or bad attitudes taken by those called evangelics. If the problem is the former, then using a different word isn't going to make much difference. If the latter, then using a different word might help a little bit, but I'm not sure it would really take away the problem: they would figure out quickly that we are very similar to evangelicals even though we don't use the word. No matter how we define ourselves, we will have problems like these, whether we use evangelical or Christian or believer or even spiritual.
But then, I am rather stuck in an evangelical world and don't get out much. Do those of you who spend more time with non-evangelicals have any thoughts?