What is an Evangelical? Examining the Politics, History, and Theology of a Contested Label

Abstract

“Evangelical” has become an increasingly contested label in the United States of America following the 2016 election of Donald Trump, causing some to ask the foundational question: what is an evangelical? Among other disagreements, American evangelicals are divided on questions of political engagement; some lean populist, others internationalist. This article explores the theology, history, and politics of American evangelicalism, arguing that using both the shared history and heritage of evangelicals and their common theological professions as a definition, albeit broad, for the term “evangelical” sheds light on their current, differing postures towards political engagement, including towards populism and internationalism.

Keywords:

• evangelicalism
• Christianity
• Protestantism
• populism
• internationalism
• evangelical history
• political theology

Notes

1. This is not to argue, however, that all manifestations of evangelical political action are, in the end, theologically consistent with their core creeds. As will be explored throughout this essay, evangelicalism is unified by “thin” theological confessions that have not always been coherently applied to political theology and action. The current crisis in American evangelicalism is emblematic of this reality.

2. Mouw elaborates on the particular way evangelicals hold these four points of the Bebbington quadrilateral in this way: “I have Protestant friends who would certainly endorse all four points while not claiming the ‘evangelical’ label in the way we were trying to account for it in our Wheaton debates. The response of these Protestant folks would be: ‘Yes, sure – but why just these four?’” (Mouw 2019, 4).

3. Here, Mouw is referring not to substantive thinness, for these four points of the quadrilateral form the bedrock of evangelical faith, but rather doctrinal thinness, a need to be filled out by “thicker” confessional claims.

4. Evangelicalism’s “chief tributaries,” Kidd denotes, were “Continental Pietism, Scots-Irish Presbyterianism, and Anglo-American Puritanism” (Kidd 2007, xiv).

5. On account of the nature of evangelicalism’s beginnings, Kidd argues that Bebbington’s quadrilateral misses a key component of early evangelicalism: attention to the Holy Spirit (Kidd 2007, xiv).

6. In The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby rightly reminds us of the troubled teachings that were interwoven with Whitefield and Edwards preaching and teaching: support for slavery. Whitefield’s support for the institution and practice of slavery began as a moderate stance on slavery that “morphed into outright support” in the 1730s (Tisby 2019, 47–48). Edwards was also a supporter of slavery and “by 1731, Edwards had purchased his first enslaved African, Venus, at an auction in Rhode Island” (Tisby 2019, 50). John Wesley, on the other hand, was not a supporter of slavery; he was an ardent supporter of abolitionism and “found slavery appalling” (Tisby 2019, 76).

7. Whitefield also utilized the new technology of the day, large-scale newspaper and book distribution (the employment of the latest technological innovations continues throughout evangelical history, as in the use of radio in the 1940s; Kidd 2007, 54).

8. There are, of course, two “Great Awakenings,” the first and the second. For more on the relationship between the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening, and the impact and legacy of each, see Noll 1992, 91–109, 165–170, 178.

9. The historical context in the early eighteenth century is necessary to understand the debate between “moderate” and “radical” evangelicals. Kidd explains: “it is important to remember how profoundly stratified eighteenth-century American society was. Landowning white men ruled over their families, social inferiors, servants, and slaves. The elites integrated all of these people into a vast system of dependencies. Authorities tried to suppress irregularities that might challenge their hegemony” (Kidd 2007, xv).

10. Discussing both the rise of evangelicalism and the rise of their social influence, Noll highlights that it is not simply the American revolution that played a role in the rise of evangelical social influence. At the same time, another important change occurred: the market revolution (Noll 1994, 144).

11. Eventually, Noll argues, the two social visions grew nearer to one another, with the “elites becoming more democratic and populists re-creating the institutions of the elites” (Noll 1994, 118).

12. This again refers to the core theologian convictions of evangelicalism. Hunter points out that during this time several other theological beliefs, not shared by all evangelicals, emerged: evangelicals of Calvinist heritage increasingly emphasized their belief in the “absolute sovereignty of God in individual and historical affairs,” evangelicals also emphasized millennialism with new vigor (for many, this included a new emphasis on dispensationalist premillennialism), and there was an emphasis from those in the Wesleyan tradition on holiness (Hunter 1983, 26–27).

13. Josiah Brooks and Phillip Strong are two examples of preachers seeking to bring together modernism and evangelicalism. Brooks was a “master at integrating modern thought and Christianity into an optimistic, though socially and politically conservative, ‘American’ message.” Strong “applied Darwinism to suggest new dimensions of Christian American nationalism” (Marsden 1991, 19). This modification trend was widespread: “many leaders of major Protestant denominations attempted to tone down the offenses to modern sensibilities of a Bible filled with miracles and a gospel that proclaimed human salvation from eternal damnation only through Christ’s atoning works on the cross” (Marsden 1987, 4).

14. For more on late nineteenth and early twentieth century evangelical history, see Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (1980) and Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1991), among others.

15. Liberal Christianity, Marsden emphasizes, was “well entrenched in almost all of the leading theological seminaries” by the 1920s (Marsden 1991, 33). For a helpful survey of the affirmations of liberal Christianity and conservative reaction to these beliefs, see Marsden 1991, 33–43 and Marsden 1987, 4–6.

16. Marsden describes “neo-evangelicals” as “Heirs of this dispensationalist-fundamentalist movement, especially after 1940, reorganized and revitalized the broader and more open branches of fundamentalism. This ‘neo-evangelicalism,’ as it was known for a time, preserved many of the positive emphases of the old nineteenth-century coalition as well as some of the negativism of fundamentalism” (Marsden 1984, xiii). Neo-evangelicalism’s influence was significant in the evangelical world, with educational institutions like Fuller Theological Seminary and Wheaton College, presses like InterVarsity Press, and leaders like Carl Henry and Billy Graham.

17. As Marsden notes, the “separatist verses inclusivist” stance was an important, defining issue between the two. But other issues emerged in this division: (1) outside of the core theological convictions that united the two groups, important theological questions divided them, especially the dispensational premillennialism of the fundamentalists, (2) fundamentalists tended to de-emphasize the role of social ethics, solely focusing on personal ethics, unlike neo-evangelicals, and (3) fundamentalists were associated with anti-intellectualism. Neo-evangelicals formed institutions like Fuller Theological Seminary to counter these trends (Marsden 1991, 71–72).

18. As Swartz reflects on the ongoing influence of the evangelical left in the later decades of the 20th century – and into the 21st century – he names significant evangelical thinkers, with demonstrable influence, including John Perkins, founder of the Christian Community Development Association; Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners; Richard Mouw, evangelicalism’s “premier public intellectual” (Swartz 2012, 258); and Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action. While not the majority voices in American evangelicalism, these voices were nonetheless influential.

19. In his new book, Restless Faith, Richard Mouw reflects on this trend and the importance of the question. He remarks that in twenty-first century North America, “there has been considerable debate about whether ‘evangelical’ is still a useful label. . . . I don’t think the debate is a silly one” (Mouw 2019, 1–2). Nevertheless, while Mouw has “no desire to be associated with the politicized excesses of present day evangelicalism,” he maintains that there are reasons to hold onto the term; “there is much in what many of us have loved in the evangelicalism of the past that we – under whatever label we choose to describe ourselves from here on – should not abandon” (Mouw 2019, 2–3).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica Joustra

Jessica Joustra (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Theologische Universiteit Kampen and a Visiting Scholar in Reformed Ethics at Redeemer University College. She is an editor and translator of the recently released Reformed Ethics by Herman Bavinck.