Evangelicalism as Protest
In The Missionary Movement in Christian History, Andrew Walls comments on the origin and nature of the evangelical movement in the eighteenth century:
Historic evangelicalism is a religion of protest against a Christian society that is not Christian enough. . . . The evangelical bugbears were less professed infidelity than professed Christianity without the ‘distinguishing doctrines of the gospel’ (81).
Walls points to Charles Wesley’s hymn, “The Men Who Slight Thy Faithful Word,” in support of this assertion:
O wouldst thou, Lord, reveal the sins,
And turn their joy to grief:
The world, the CHRISTIAN would convince
of damning unbelief.
The hymn leaves little doubt about how Wesley viewed those who professed faith but gave little evidence of it with their lives. Thus, Walls notes, “The hallmark of evangelical religion is real Christianity over against its substitutes” (82).
The rest of this chapter—and the book as a whole—have much that it is worth discussing, but this section raised the concern for me that, perhaps, for many people and churches who would identify as evangelical, this element of protest has all but disappeared.
My suggestion for why there is a lessening concern over “professed Christianity without the ‘distinguishing doctrines of grace’” is that evangelical activism has overtaken all other aspects of evangelical identity. In short, evangelicals have become more concerned with doing rather than believing.
Such a claim is built upon what has come to be known as the evangelical quadrilateral: the four identifying marks of evangelicalism. David Bebbington in his Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s identifies four main characteristics of evangelical identity in this time:
Biblicsim—a commitment to Scripture as the final source in matters of a faith and practice.
Crucicentrism—a focus on the atoning work of Christ on the cross.
Conversionism—a belief that individuals need to be converted to faith in Christ through personal belief.
Activism—a commitment to working out the gospel in all of life. This is often worked out in social action and/or evangelism efforts.
Helpfully, Thomas Kidd adds an emphasis on the Holy Spirit as a key marker of evangelicalism historically. These four (or five) traits are what has set evangelicalism apart from other Protestant Christians.
My suggestion is that evangelical activism has swallowed up the other three (or four) identity markers, so that today, the question of evangelical identity is based upon what one does (particularly in the are of social action) rather than upon what one believes. Activism is important, and the history of evangelical activism has much to commend it. However, the danger arises when we begin to describe our Christian faith first and foremost by what we do rather than what we believe.
