Evangelicalism Today
A Symposium: Six Evangelicals Assess Their Movement
In this forum, a diverse group of Evangelicals discuss the state of Evangelicalism today and other matters. (We are planning to run similar forums on the Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline churches in the next year.) The answers begin with those of Russell Moore, as a member of our editorial board, followed by the others in alphabetical order.
How do you define “Evangelical” in a way that distinguishes Evangelicals from other believing Christians? And has this definition changed over the last several years?
Russell Moore: Several years ago, I found a book for those who “grew up born again.” Like similar books for “cradle Catholics” and others, this book listed cultural artifacts of growing up in an Evangelical home.
The list is long, and I could expand it even more: the “Our Daily Bread” container of Bible verse flash cards on the table, the sparkly picture over one’s bed of the angel ushering two children across a bridge, the fact that one knows how to respond to the sentence “God is good” with the words “all the time” and to fill in the blanks of the offertory prayer, “Dear Lord, bless the _____ and the _____” (it’s “gift” and “giver” for those of you whose roots are in Geneva, Rome, or Constantinople rather than Wheaton or Nashville).
In many ways, that kind of cultural identity has replaced in some quarters the definition of Evangelical Christianity, at its best: the merger of Reformation confessionalism and revivalist conversionism. Evangelicalism is Protestant, and thoroughly so: The sola statements of the Reformation represent how Evangelicals understand what it means to be centered upon Christ. Evangelicalism is also inexplicable apart from a sense of Great Commission urgency to seek and save that which is lost.
The definition has indeed changed over the past half-century. What would have been considered non-negotiable for Evangelical identity fifty years ago (the truthfulness of Scripture, the impossibility of salvation apart from faith in Christ) is now often considered “Fundamentalist.”
I think the term “Evangelical” is less and less of value. I rarely use it of myself, except in the broadest of terms to describe myself to someone in another tradition. On Sunday morning, I do not go to an “Evangelical” church, but to Ninth and O Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church with which I am in holy covenant and through which I cooperate with like-minded churches across the country to fulfill the Great Commission.
The people to whom I am held accountable share with me a common confession of faith—one that includes Great Tradition affirmations such as the deity of Christ and the virgin birth and Reformation distinctives such as justification through faith alone by grace alone in Christ alone. The sermon is central, and concludes with a call for unbelievers to identify publicly with Christ and his church. If that’s “Evangelical,” so be it.
Denny Burk: Evangelicals believe and proclaim the evangel (i.e., the gospel) of Jesus Christ crucified and raised for sinners. At first blush, it would seem that this kind of commitment to the gospel could describe almost every “believing Christian,” but several notable features distinguish Evangelical Christians from the liberal mainlines on the one hand and Roman Catholics on the other.
Evangelicals trace all of their beliefs to the inspired Scriptures, which they believe to be the sole authority for faith and practice. American Evangelicals have stressed the inerrancy of Scripture as a necessary condition of its authority (see the 1978 Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy).
Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
28.3—May/June 2015
Whittaker Chambers's Lonely War Against Godless Collectivism by Hunter Baker
31.6—November/December 2018
on Futility & the Open Door to Deliverance by Patrick Henry Reardon
30.6—Nov/Dec 2017
on Benedict XVI on the Fairest of the Sons of Men by Michael Martin De Sapio
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