In the United States, evangelicalism is a movement among Protestant Christians who believe in the necessity of being born again, emphasize the importance of evangelism, and affirm traditional Protestant teachings on the authority as well as the historicity of the Bible. Comprising nearly a quarter of the U.S. population, evangelicals are a diverse group drawn from a variety of backgrounds, including nondenominational churches, Pentecostal, Baptist, Reformed, Methodist, Mennonite, Plymouth Brethren, and Quaker.
Evangelicalism has played an important role in shaping American religion and culture. The First Great Awakening of the 18th century marked the rise of evangelical religion in colonial America. As the revival spread throughout the Thirteen Colonies, evangelicalism united Americans around a common faith. The Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century led to what historian Martin Marty calls the "Evangelical Empire", a period in which evangelicals dominated U.S. cultural institutions, including schools and universities. Evangelicals of this era in the northern United States were strong advocates of reform. They were involved in the temperance movement and supported the abolition of slavery, in addition to working toward education and criminal justice reform. In the southern United States, evangelicals split from their northern counterparts on the issue of slavery, establishing new denominations that opposed abolition and defended the practice of racial slavery upon which the South's expanding cash-crops-for-export agricultural economy was built. During the Civil War, each side confidently preached in support of its own cause using Bible verses and Evangelical arguments, which exposed a deep theological conflict that had been brewing for decades and would continue long after the South's surrender.
By the end of the 19th century, the old evangelical consensus that had united much of American Protestantism no longer existed. Protestant churches became divided over ground-breaking new intellectual and theological ideas, such as Darwinian evolution and historical criticism of the Bible. Those who embraced these ideas became known as modernists, while those who rejected them became known as fundamentalists. Fundamentalists defended a doctrine of biblical inerrancy and adopted a dispensationalist theological system for interpreting the Bible. As a result of the fundamentalist–modernist controversy of the 1920s and 1930s, fundamentalists lost control of the Mainline Protestant churches and separated themselves from non-fundamentalist churches and cultural institutions.
After World War II, a new generation of conservative Protestants rejected the separatist stance of fundamentalism and began calling themselves evangelicals. Popular evangelist Billy Graham was at the forefront of reviving use of the term. During this time period, several evangelical institutions were established, including the National Association of Evangelicals, the magazine Christianity Today, and educational institutions such as Fuller Theological Seminary. As a reaction to the 1960s counterculture and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, many white evangelicals became politically active and involved in the Christian right, which became an important voting bloc in the Republican Party.
Definition Many scholars have adopted historian David Bebbington's definition of evangelicalism. According to Bebbington, evangelicalism has four major characteristics. These are conversionism (an emphasis on the new birth), biblicism (an emphasis on the Bible as the supreme religious authority), activism (an emphasis on individual engagement in spreading the gospel), and crucicentrism (an emphasis on Christ's sacrifice on the cross and bodily resurrection from the dead as the heart of true Christian religion). However, this definition has been criticized for being so broad as to include all Christians..
Historian Molly Worthen writes "history—rather than theology or politics—is the most useful tool for pinning down today's evangelicals." She finds that evangelicals share common origins in the religious revivals and moral crusades of the 18th and 19th centuries. She writes, "Evangelical catchphrases like 'Bible-believing' and 'born again' are modern translations of the Reformers' slogan sola scriptura and Pietists' emphasis on internal spiritual transformation."
Evangelicals are often defined in opposition to mainline Protestants. According to sociologist Brian Steensland and colleagues, "evangelical denominations have typically sought more separation from the broader culture, emphasized missionary activity and individual conversion, and taught strict adherence to particular religious doctrines." Mainline Protestants are described as having "an accommodating stance toward modernity, a proactive view on issues of social and economic justice, and pluralism in their tolerance of varied individual beliefs."
Historian George Marsden writes that during the 1950s and 1960s the simplest definition of an evangelical was "anyone who likes Billy Graham". During that period, most people who self-identified with the evangelical movement were affiliated with organizations that had some connection to Graham. It can also be defined narrowly as a movement centered around organizations such as the National Association of Evangelicals and Youth for Christ.
News media often conflate evangelicalism with "conservative Protestantism" or the Christian right. However, not every conservative Protestant identifies as evangelical, nor are all evangelicals political conservatives.
Conflicting definitions can create ambiguity when the term "evangelical" is applied to Lutherans in the United States. The German term more accurately corresponds to the broad English term ProtestantPeter Terrell, Harper Collins German Unabridged Dictionary, 4th ed., (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1999), 273 sub loco. while the narrower German term , more accurately describes Evangelicalism in the American sense. The largest Lutheran denomination in the United States, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) describes itself as "evangelical" in the broader sense only, and is classified as mainline protestant. The term "Evangelical Lutheran" is often used as shorthand to refer to members of the ELCA in a similar way the terms "Southern Baptist" and "United Methodist" are used to refer to members of those respective traditions. Lutherans subscribing to the narrower definition of evangelical are better described as Confessional Lutherans or Pietistic Lutherans.
Types
Scholars have found it useful to distinguish among different types of evangelicals. One scheme by sociologist James Davison Hunter identifies four major types: the Baptist tradition, the Holiness and Pentecostal tradition, the Anabaptist tradition, and the Confessional tradition (evangelical Anglicans, pietistic Lutherans, and evangelicals within the Reformed churches).
Ethicist Max Stackhouse and historians Donald W. Dayton and Timothy P. Weber divide evangelicalism into three main historical groupings. The first, called "Puritan" or classical evangelicalism, seeks to preserve the doctrinal heritage of the 16th century Protestant Reformation, especially the Reformed tradition. Classical evangelicals emphasize absolute divine sovereignty, forensic justification, and "literalistic" inerrancy. The second, pietistic evangelicalism, originates from the 18th-century pietist movements in Europe and the Great Awakenings in America. Pietistic evangelicals embrace revivalism and a more experiential faith, emphasizing conversion, sanctification, regeneration, and healing. The third, fundamentalist evangelicalism, results from the Fundamentalist–Modernist split of the early 20th century. Fundamentalists emphasize certain "fundamental" beliefs against modernist criticism and often use an apocalyptic, premillennialist interpretation of the Bible. These three categories are more fluid than Hunter's, so an individual could identify with only one, any two, or all three.
John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, used polling data to separate evangelicals into three broad camps, which he labels as traditionalist, centrist and modernist:
Traditionalist evangelicals, characterized by high affinity for certain Protestant beliefs, (especially penal substitutionary atonement, justification by faith, the authority of scripture, and the priesthood of all believers) which, when fused with the highly political milieu of Western culture (especially American culture), has resulted in the political disposition that has been labeled the Christian right, with public figures like Jerry Falwell and the television evangelist Pat Robertson among its most visible spokesmen. Centrist evangelicals, described as socially conservative and mostly avoiding politics, who still support much of traditional Christian theology. Modernist evangelicals, a small minority in the movement, who have lower levels of church attendance and "have much more diversity in their beliefs".
History 18th century The roots of American evangelicalism lie in the merger of three older Protestant traditions: New England Puritanism, Continental Pietism and Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism. Within their Congregational churches, Puritans promoted experimental or experiential religion, arguing that saving faith required an inward transformation. This led Puritans to demand evidence of a conversion experience (in the form of a conversion narrative) before a convert was admitted to full church membership. In the 1670s and 1680s, Puritan clergy began to promote religious revival in response to a perceived decline in religiosity. The Ulster Scots who immigrated to the American colonies in the early 18th century brought with them their own revival tradition, specifically the practice of communion seasons. Pietism was a movement within the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Europe that emphasized a "religion of the heart": the ideal that faith was not simply acceptance of propositional truth but was an emotional "commitment of one's whole being to God" in which one's life became dedicated to self-sacrificial ministry. Pietists promoted the formation of cell groups for Bible study, prayer, and accountability.
These three traditions were brought together with the First Great Awakening, a series of revivals in Britain and its American Colonies during the 1730s and 1740s. The Awakening began within the Congregational churches of New England. In 1734, Jonathan Edwards' preaching on justification by faith instigated a revival in Northampton, Massachusetts. Earlier Puritan revivals had been brief, local affairs, but the Northampton revival was part of a larger wave of revival that affected the Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches in the middle colonies as well. There the Reformed minister Theodore Frelinghuysen and Presbyterian minister Gilbert Tennent led revivals.
The English evangelist George Whitefield was responsible for spreading the revivals through all the colonies. An Anglican priest, Whitefield had studied at Oxford University prior to ordination, and there he befriended John Wesley and his brother Charles, the founders of a pietistic movement within the Church of England called Methodism. Whitefield's dramatic preaching style and ability to simplify doctrine made him a popular preacher in England, and in 1739 he arrived in America preaching up and down the Atlantic coastline. Thousands flocked to open-air meetings to hear him preach, and he became a celebrity throughout the colonies.