The American Evangelical Story

A History of the Movement

Sweeney, Douglas A.

• Editorial: Baker Academic
• Año: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781585583829
• Categoría: Teologia e religione
• Categoría: Storia del cristianesimo

The American Evangelical Story surveys the role American evangelicalism has had in the shaping of global evangelical history. Author Douglas Sweeney begins with a brief outline of the key features that define evangelicals and then explores the roots of the movement in English Pietism and the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century. He goes on to consider the importance of missions in the development of evangelicalism and the continuing emphasis placed on evangelism. Sweeney next examines the different subgroups of American evangelicals and the current challenges faced by the movement, concluding with reflections on the future of evangelicalism. Combining a narrative style with historical detail and insight, this accessible, illustrated book will appeal to readers interested in the history of the movement, as well as students of church history.

1

Evangelical

What’s in a Word?

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18–20

Evangelicals are gospel people. On this nearly all agree. We are people of the Great Commission found in the Scripture text above. Indeed, the English word evangelical comes from the Greek word euangelion—meaning “gospel” or, more literally, “good news” or “glad tidings” (as in, “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” [Luke 2:10]). As Timothy George defined us in Christianity Today, “Evangelicals are a worldwide family of Bible-believing Christians committed to sharing with everyone everywhere the transforming good news of new life in Jesus Christ, an utterly free gift that comes through faith alone in the crucified and risen Savior.”[1]

But beyond this basic definition, precious little consensus exists among those who have tried to describe the evangelical movement. What’s more, there are plenty of Christians, past and present, here and abroad, who have described themselves in this way without claiming the “evangelical” label. So what does it mean, exactly, to be an evangelical Christian? What is unique about the evangelical movement?

Various evangelical leaders have sought to give answers to these questions, though the questions themselves are now so contested that no single answer will satisfy all. Among theologians, the best-known answer comes from Alister McGrath. In his book titled Evangelicalism and the Future of Christianity, McGrath suggests that “evangelicalism is grounded on a cluster of six controlling convictions, each of which is regarded as being true, of vital importance and grounded in Scripture. . . . These six fundamental convictions can be set out as follows:

1. The supreme authority of Scripture as a source of knowledge of God and a guide to Christian living.
2. The majesty of Jesus Christ, both as incarnate God and Lord and as the Savior of sinful humanity.
3. The lordship of the Holy Spirit.
4. The need for personal conversion.
5. The priority of evangelism for both individual Christians and the church as a whole.
6. The importance of the Christian community for spiritual nourishment, fellowship and growth.”[2]

Among historians, David Bebbington’s definition is best known, though it features four rather than six evangelical characteristics. In his widely used book titled Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, Bebbington writes that “there are . . . four qualities that have been the special marks of Evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and what may be called crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Together they form a quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism.”[3]

Both of these scholars admit that there is more to evangelicals than one can express in such definitions, but neither is very keen on defining the movement any further. As a result, the leading commentators on evangelicalism today seldom move beyond the kind of definition provided by Timothy George. Indeed, some critics complain that these definitions are lacking in definition, causing confusion and even resentment among nonspecialists. Such critics point out that most Christians have tended to define their faith in these ways, whether or not they have thought of themselves as evangelicals. Others contend more strongly that self-professing evangelicals have actually commandeered this label, ignoring its use by groups that predate their movement by centuries. (This argument usually comes from confessional Lutherans, though it could be—and has been—made just as strongly by other gospel-centered groups, some of which were using the label before the evangelical movement existed.)

Such claims leave most of the rest of us scratching our weary heads, wondering if evangelicalism means anything more than conservative Christianity—no matter what make or model—whether it distinguishes its adherents from anything more than Christian liberalism. Has this movement grown so successful over the course of the previous century that its leaders no longer see it as being at odds with the rest of the church? Is evangelicalism just a synonym for what is now mainstream Christian faith? In short, has the evangelical movement lost its saltiness?

Part of the challenge that anyone faces in trying to define the movement more narrowly has to do with the great wealth of evangelical diversity. Any movement as immense as that of global evangelicalism will include many who share little else in common. Men and women on every continent count themselves as evangelicals, from the very rich to the very poor, from the well educated to the uneducated, both capitalists and socialists, democrats, monarchians, and everything in between.

Not only do evangelicals come in different shapes and sizes, but they also participate in hundreds of different denominations—some of which were founded in opposition to some of the others! The vast majority are Protestant, but even among the Protestants there are Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist evangelicals. There are Anglicans, Methodists, Holiness people, and Pentecostals. There are Calvinists and Arminians.[4] Some evangelicals go to churches that are overseen by bishops, others by presbyteries, while most prove fiercely independent. Some adhere to historic confessions drafted in Augsburg and Westminster. Still others oppose the use of confessions altogether.

There has never been—and there never will be—an evangelical denomination, despite the references one hears to the evangelical church. We have no evangelical constitution, no formal guidelines for faith and practice. Though there are plenty of famous leaders and institutions around which we rally (Billy Graham, Christianity Today, the World Evangelical Alliance, etc.), none of these has final authority in shaping the evangelical movement. We have no card-carrying membership, not even an official membership list. Distinguishing “insiders” from “outsiders” can prove to be tricky business. The faith and practice of many self-described evangelicals are deemed marginal or even entirely unacceptable to the majority of evangelicals. At the same time, many exist who fit the bill remarkably well but whose participation in the movement is only marginal. (For reasons that will be discussed later, many African American Christians fall into this latter category.)

In short, when viewed from the perspective of our multiplicity, we evangelicals hold hardly anything in common. We are a people more remarkable for our differences than our union. This has led some to depict evangelicals largely in terms of diversity, explaining the movement by means of taxonomies of various evangelical species. The taxonomies of Robert Webber are perhaps the best known, for he has mapped out no fewer than sixteen evangelical species—in the United States alone! Webber lists fundamentalist, dispensational, and conservative evangelicals; Anabaptist, Wesleyan, and charismatic evangelicals; black, progressive, and even radical evangelicals.[5] His list goes on, but his point is already well taken. Evangelicals are extremely diverse. Our constituency is comprised of innumerable subgroups, each with its own major emphases, institutions, and even leaders. Any attempt to describe the movement must come to terms with this reality.

Consequently, even the best of present-day evangelical scholars tend to oscillate between weak-willed efforts to define the movement clearly (as seen above), more creative attempts to depict it not propositionally but metaphorically, and frustratingly fuzzy assurances that we share a general “family resemblance” (i.e., I can’t define evangelicals, but I know one when I see one).

The late historian Timothy Smith spent much of his long and prolific career coloring in what he liked to call the “evangelical mosaic,” a metaphor Smith used to honor the individuality of his subjects while denoting the beauty of the movement when viewed as a whole. Late in his life, Smith turned his attention to a different metaphor, applying his colors to a more dynamic “evangelical kaleidoscope.” Whereas a mosaic is a single, static, and permanent piece of art, a kaleidoscope allows for many colorful combinations, it is much more accessible than a mosaic, and it also depicts the dynamism of the evangelical movement.[6]

Another historian, Randall Balmer, prefers to refer to evangelicalism as a “patchwork quilt,” a metaphor better suited to signify “folk art rather than fine art” (Balmer describes evangelicalism as “America’s folk religion,” by which he means that it is the faith of America’s common people) and to exemplify what in Balmer’s view is “the absence of an overall pattern” to the movement. In his book and PBS series, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, Balmer depicts the movement by means of a series of brief, folksy vignettes that, taken together, impress viewers with their rich variety more than their unity. Balmer has stitched them all together, but it is difficult to tell whether his patches share anything other than this in common.[7]

A growing number of other pundits has chosen to cease with definitions, claiming that evangelicals defy a neat and tidy categorization. In a landmark study tellingly titled The Variety of American Evangelicalism, Donald Dayton and Robert Johnston have led the way. Johnston responds to the “definitional impasse” concerning American evangelicalism with the suggestion that evangelicals resemble a large, extended family and should be described in only a general manner in terms of their “family resemblance” rather than pigeonholed with excessive, propositional precision.[8]

Dayton is the most radical of all the evangelical commentators. He has called for a “moratorium” on the label “evangelical,” which he rejects as “theologically incoherent, sociologically confusing, and ecumenically harmful.”[9] It is theologically incoherent, in Dayton’s estimation, because evangelical theologians are always at war with one another and have never united around a common doctrinal platform. It is sociologically confusing because it obscures more than it reveals about most of the groups who are so labeled. It is ecumenically harmful because the leading definers of the movement represent what Dayton calls a myopic, rather elitist, even bourgeois “Presbyterian” model of evangelical history.

This latter point is the one to which Dayton has devoted the bulk of his time. It is also the one that requires the most unpacking. In Dayton’s view, the very scholars who spill the most ink on evangelicalism are responsible for misleading us as to its nature and significance. Indeed, they have focused mainly in their writings on the movement’s intellectual leaders, usually privileged white men with Calvinistic worldviews and cultural pretensions that put them at odds with the vast majority of their followers (i.e., men such as Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, and Carl F. H. Henry). According to Dayton, however, most real or everyday evangelical Christians hardly ever fit this description. White men are in the minority, few evangelicals are intellectuals, and evangelical beliefs seldom conform to a standard Calvinistic worldview. In fact, a simple head count of evangelicals, both here and around the world, reveals that most of us hail from lower-class, “Pentecostal” religious traditions (a blanket term Dayton uses in opposition to “Presbyterian” and that refers broadly to Arminian, Wesleyan, Holiness, and/or Pentecostal Christians, people who rarely resonate with the words of Calvinist intellectuals).

This is not the place to flesh out the rest of Dayton’s argument. Suffice it to say that he is so taken by the extent of evangelical diversity (especially at the grass roots) and so concerned to avoid co-optation by Calvinist elites that he has called evangelicals to stop employing “evangelical” as a label, and he resists attempts to define this outmoded term.

Even Dayton’s arch-nemesis, the well-known historian George Marsden, has been affected by this critique—despite his own evangelical Calvinism. Marsden is arguably the most proficient scholar of evangelicalism today. He has spent his life explaining the movement and trying to give it some definition. At times, however, and especially as Dayton’s views have gained support, even Marsden has thrown in the towel and said—perhaps with tongue in cheek—that an evangelical is simply someone who admires Billy Graham!

All of this skepticism and infighting leaves hard-driving Calvinists such as Michael Horton and D. G. Hart complaining, in Horton’s words, that “quarrels over the evangelical trademark are probably a profound waste of time and precious energy,” or in Hart’s, that “evangelicalism needs to be relinquished as a religious identity because it does not exist.”[10] Horton and Hart, like many other erstwhile evangelical leaders, appear more interested today in reinforcing their fellow Calvinists than in working on cooperative ventures with other so-called evangelicals. And who can blame them, given the endless and usually fruitless disputations over evangelical identity? If we evangelicals have so much trouble even deciding who we are, then how will we ever work together as evangelicals? If we encourage one another to wallow contented in our diversity, won’t large-scale evangelical ventures prove even more futile in years to come?

Such frustration is understandable and hardly unique these days. But is this really where we are left as we enter the church’s third millennium? Of course, if I thought so I would not be writing this book on the movement’s nature and history. More importantly, I would not devote so much time to evangelical ministries.

I believe there is still such a thing as a definite and definable evangelical movement today. In fact, in my view, it is the most vital Christian movement on the scene. I will be the first to confess that we evangelicals are rich in all sorts of diversity. What’s more, in this multicultural age, we are learning (by God’s grace) to celebrate our diversity. But I do not think we are left with only endless differences. In fact, we evangelicals together hold much that is precious across our cultural boundaries. We share a legacy brimming over with common principles and practices. We have always made good on this rich legacy in a wide variety of ways, but we have made good on a common legacy nonetheless.

Let me conclude this chapter by taking a shot at my own definition, one that I think summarizes the best of our common evangelical legacy and sets the stage for the story that follows: Evangelicals comprise a movement that is rooted in classical Christian orthodoxy, shaped by a largely Protestant understanding of the gospel, and distinguished from other ...