What Is An Evangelical?

Rethinking a long-standing scholarly story

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

(A seven-minute read.)

For the past few months, I’ve been intending to write a piece that discusses evangelicalism, hoping to speak of its positive qualities and declaring that I myself am an evangelical in the broadest sense of the term (whether or not the evangelical gatekeepers would want to claim a Seventh-day Adventist among their fold is another subject altogether).

I wanted to share this because, seemingly as of late, “evangelical” has become more of a political category, with people from various non-Christian persuasions identifying as evangelicals. Thus, there are Hindus and Muslims and Jews who call themselves “evangelical.”

Thus as a way of reminding evangelicals of their theological agenda, I wanted to point to the so-called “Bebbington Quadrilateral,”—which, for the last three decades or so, has been the primary explanation, at least in the academic world, of what evangelicalism is—and say that evangelicalism can be redeemed if it returns to its roots.

In brief, the four characteristics of an evangelical, according to British historian David Bebbington, is someone who believes in the authority of the Bible, the importance of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, the need for personal conversion, and a commitment to Bible-based and Christ-honoring social activism.

And I can get on board with all that.

As it turns out, however, it’s a good thing I delayed writing the piece.

That’s because, just this past month, an article was published—written by historian Matthew Avery Sutton—that has completely challenged and upended the scholarly consensus about evangelicalism, which enjoyed uncontested influence in the academic world for the last four decades or so.

Essentially, Sutton argues that, beginning in the 1980s, a handful of evangelical historians—chiefly Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden—constructed a very positive definition of evangelicalism, based chiefly on theological grounds (aided, at times, by Bebbington’s Quadrilateral), and then projected it back into US history, identifying only “good guys” as evangelicals.

Operating from prestigious positions at some of America’s most influential universities, these historians were able to convince scholars—many of whom, with little knowledge of the religious world, were willing to outsource their understanding of it to historians who did—of this view of evangelicalism, thus setting the parameters for the study of evangelicalism for decades.

Their motivations were fairly transparent and perhaps even praiseworthy: expressing a deep concern for how the “Religious Right” had cozied up too much with conservative—and perhaps even racist politics—these evangelical historians wanted to redeem evangelicalism by divorcing it from the “Religious Right” and setting it on a more gospel-centered and socially-conscious foundation.

But Sutton isn’t buying it and is calling foul!

He argues that it’s historically inaccurate to identify anyone prior to the twentieth century as “evangelical” because there was no one who self-consciously belonged to evangelicalism as a category, much less whole swaths of Protestant Christians who formed any sort of “evangelical” alliance to promote the gospel and positive social change.

Thus, for example, it’s disingenuous, he maintains, for these “consensus” historians (as he calls them) to appeal to abolitionism in the nineteenth century as some sort of “evangelical” cause as a way to promote a more socially-conscious evangelicalism today.

There were no “evangelicals” in the nineteenth century—and therefore no “evangelical” abolitionists (and if one were to grant that there were “evangelical” abolitionists, then one would have to concede that there were also “evangelical” enslavers, which the “consensus” historians seem reluctant to do).

There were certainly Baptists or Presbyterians or Congregationalists who took up the abolitionist cause, but they weren’t self-consciously “evangelical.”

Instead, Sutton argues that “modern evangelicalism” has a very specific historic starting point—and that starting point was very self-consciously politically conservative from its very inception.

Beginning in the 1940s, partly as a way to distance themselves from the challenging features of fundamentalism, a group of white Protestant men took a largely-dormant word (“evangelical”) and deliberately and consciously tried to infuse it with a very specific religious and—more significantly for Sutton—political vision of America.

This vision was heavily pro-capitalist (and anti-communist), patriarchal, and strongly nationalistic (thus Billy Graham, the great hope of this newly-formed evangelical coalition, declared in 1955 that America “was founded upon a supernaturalistic concept—a belief in God and a belief in the book we call the Bible. . . . Our forefathers meant that this country was to be established as a Christian nation”).

Summing up his thesis, Sutton puts it in plain language:

Here it is: I argue that post-World War II evangelicalism is best defined as a white, patriarchal, nationalist religious movement made up of Christians who seek power to transform American culture through conservative-leaning politics and free-market economics. Contemporary evangelicalism is the direct descendent of early twentieth-century fundamentalism, North and South. Both movements are distinct from Antebellum [pre-Civil War] forms of Christianity. There is no multi-century evangelical throughline.

Thus, Sutton challenges the “consensus” view of evangelicalism for the purpose of historical accuracy, as well as—more significantly—to argue that modern evangelicalism has “conservative-leaning politics” built into its DNA.

And though he doesn’t explicitly articulate it, my sense is that he’s essentially saying that, in many ways, evangelicalism can’t be redeemed—or, at least not without an honest acknowledgement of, reckoning with, and repentance for its racist, nationalistic, and patriarchal foundations.

And any person who considers themselves to be “evangelical” today, and yet disavows this conservative orientation, is that way despite their evangelicalism, not because of it.

So what?

So what does all this mean—and why should anyone, especially those not sitting in ivory academic towers, care?

Well, first of all, I’m not quite sure what draws—or repels—anyone to or from my newsletter, but, among all the various hats I wear, being a historian of American Christianity is one of them. Thus, for me, I think it’s a very relevant and interesting discussion from a strictly-historical perspective.

And I think Sutton’s revisionist history, while I’d probably quibble with a few things, has a lot of merit to it.

Though I’m not as well-versed in twentieth-century history, since it’s not my area of expertise, I do think his insistence that we stop referring to people as “evangelicals” prior to the twentieth century makes sense.

For example, while there were certainly groups of Protestants that banded together for various causes (like the distribution of Bibles or promoting temperance or abolition or “Sabbath” legislation) in the nineteenth century, they didn’t refer to themselves as a whole as “evangelicals.”

The word “evangelical” was commonly used, of course, but it was often used as an adjective, describing an approach to one’s Christian pursuits, rather than a label to describe a group of Protestants.

So, for the sake of historical accuracy alone, I do think it’s probably better to avoid referring to anyone prior to the twentieth century as an “evangelical.” And continuing to do so seemingly reveals more about us than how those people would have understood themselves.

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly and practically, many of us “do history,” if we’re honest, in the service of contemporary concerns. And in this case, these evangelical historians somewhat transparently admitted that they wanted to read evangelicalism back into history in an attempt to challenge contemporary evangelical practice by insisting that it contradicted the historical foundations of evangelicalism.

In other words, they wanted to push evangelicals into a more socially-conscious stance by pointing to its alleged socially-conscious historical roots.

That’s all well and good—except when that “history” is more the product of wishful thinking than reality.

Simply put, change doesn’t come by misrepresenting history but by accurately reckoning with it.

In this case, leaving aside the question of the wisdom or pitfalls of its particular political values, if one wants to move modern evangelicalism away from its current political trajectory, that can only be done by acknowledging—and, from a theological perspective, repenting of—its historical foundations, rather than claiming its foundation developed differently.

To be clear, it’s not my interest to analyze whether the conservative political values of modern evangelicalism are good, bad, or indifferent, though I’m sure you have some sense for where I would land—and, either way, I especially wouldn’t want to claim “membership” in a religious group that was formed seemingly with mostly a political agenda in mind (whether that agenda is “conservative” or “liberal”).

So while I like the four values that Bebbington claimed were characteristic of evangelicals, and heartily express my agreement with them, I’d probably refrain from claiming to be an “evangelical,” since evangelicalism has essentially always been, at its core, chiefly a political category.

So what is an evangelical?

Seemingly this: a person with broadly Protestant commitments, yet whose chief concern is the attempt to ground his or her nation in a conservative political vision, claiming that the nation’s success or failure is determined by the degree to which it remains faithful to the evangelical interpretation of the Bible.

Whether you think that’s good or bad, or want to be a part of such a movement, is up to you!

As for me and my house . . .

---

Shawn is a pastor in Portland, Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.