What is an Evangelical, anyway?

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Inigo Montoya

Sometimes I think legalism or judgementalism is part of the process of the Christian walk . Hopefully just the beginning part and you get over it . But I have met some of the most judgemental Christians who are recent converts , something about finding out that your a new creature in Christ and a new way of life may cause a person to start looking at others through their own eyes forgetting that they were just as much of deserving of the consequences of sin as those who have not received the Gift of Salvation .

Plus having Christ in our lives should be something we are humble about , not something that makes us think we are more tolerant or better.
Without Christ, good grief . Finding the Lord in my 30s, I had the experience of quite the ill spent youth . Instead of partying and such , I found myself volunteering and trying to make things better for others after i was introduced to the Lord. Saw things differently. . When motivated to atempt through civic means , I met much more harshness and judgement then I ever had before when I was quite so much more self centered and a partying fool . Based on stereotypes .
Maybe its why Christians still to this day the view that government and the politics involved not for Christians to particpate in.

I try not to wage judgement , but I do fall victim to that sin . I however do often find myself defending the president among some Evangelicals who from their perspectives, and mine who do not see how someone could support some of the policies that appear so Un Bibical. How could some who knows the gift of life and family be so apparently dis engaged on the policy level for it. Its just his culture is my understanding .

Just as you see some mainline believers looking at the hypocracy of those with a more Evangelical belief appearing to put their own idealogy and perceptions and judge those from a complete different cultural lens .

If you took the church , those who see traditon and methods of celebrating Christ throuh ritualistic tradition , Catholics, or the liberal believer who sees the importance of good works in government above say modern day Evangelicals who were hung up on experiencing the gifts of the Spirit , separation and salvation, we actually may have a good mix if we got together .

Politics has not seemed to help . But hopefully we will work it through and cease the religious spirit that i promotes. It is really wrong in my opinion to suggest ones perceptions cause anyone to be a better Christian .

We should all show our light where we have been planted . Encourgage each other . The church is moving ahead in the world , and the United States Christians need to get it together.

Ha ,

Pat Robertson I think should retire .
Hope his wife does not divorce him for being old.

But the church in China is finding new believers in the faith everyday by the thousands . Actually kind of extraordinary . My own personal opinion is when Christ said he overcame the world he meant it . Even Pat Roberston can't flub it up. But putting people in a box always limits us I think.
We should just appreciate the Lord and share the joy. We think too much in this country is my point I guess. Or maybe with Pat and such, at times we quit thinking all together.

Jesus told us that we can be better than our human selves and a whole bunch of us seem to be saying, "No we can't." In another thread, I suggested the term "In-your-face-icals" for the good folks who flaunt their "christianism" as a way of saying how much better they are than us. We can all use a good dose of humility.

Completely off topic: welcome, Cathleen, I like your writing.

Trying once again to complete my reply to agnosticnomore:

Of course, I am definitely not a Billy Graham/Pat Robertson/Jerry Falwell "evangelist." Neither am I an evangelist of the Roman-heritage Talmudic Pauline churches. Fully mindful of the description of today's newly-realized "western" muslims, which says (among other things) that "They will come together to join Jesus, son of Mary," I recognize agnosticnomore's mention of John 10:25, which (today) reads:

25 Jesus answered them: "I told you, and yet you do not believe. The works that I am doing in the name of my Father, these bear witness of me."

We muslims (or at least some of us) are doing the works that "evangelize" and effectively deliver The Good News of The Kingdom. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the widows and orphans, the destitute, and the outcast, and raise fallen humanity to life in God ~ ourselves, by our own hands and whatever means He gives us, by our own works.

I am persuaded that at least some of Sojo's Evangelicals are doing the works themselves, and not "delegating" that ministry to others (e.g., "the government" of today's Caesars). Reading the Qur'an during this recent month of Ramadan (the annual month of dawn-to-sunset fasting), I found what I had not noticed in forty years of reading and translating it: muslims, like the faithful of Jesus, are also told to "Give good news to the faithful."

So a prayer I wrote down forty years ago has been answered ~ and had been answered, I just hadn't noticed that until last month. And now I've been here at Sojo for a year, asking God to give me an understanding of "Evangelical" as you use the word to identify yourselves ~ and by your article, Cathleen Falsani, He has answered that prayer.

"Evangelicals" are those who do the works.

Cathleen your definition is a good start, but I think that that is what it is, a start, a beginning. I personally had difficultly finding myself in any one of the three categories of the "Wheaton College Study" mentioned.

I was raised in an southern urban Methodist church of the 50s and 60s. We were evangelical, but not excessively/obsessively so. My mother was Southern Baptist and My father northern Presbyterian. They thought the Methodist Church would be a good compromise. And I suppose it was. I can remember the evangelical language and actions of church members, but also my revulsion at the extremes of such behavior and that I had a safe retreat from such, even within my own congregation.

I have spent most of my spiritual/religious life both drawn to that something basic, fundamental, uplifting and loving centered deep within my evangelical upbringing and yet repulsed and horrified by that facet of the same evangelical experience which I found to be condemning, hateful, mean spirited, exclusive and elitist. It is a journey that has led me to the Moravian Church (or perhaps more accurately to a Moravianism, tinged with the Lutheran experience as effected by the Lutheran minister Count Nikolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf who saved the small pietist sect, the Unitas Fratrum, from almost certain extinction and set them on a path of evangelism that is just today bearing extraordinary growth and stories of faith around the globe). But this is another story.

My story and struggle is, I believe, a common one; a the battle for my allegiance between the lure of a rational and intellectual faith that I can embrace without losing my heart and soul and a faith of the heart, linked to the supernatural/meta-physical realm, which I can accept without surrendering my mind and intellect. I have arrived at a place that is has provided me with a deepening sense of peace in the presence of my creator. Uncertainty holds less fear for me, as I am less fearful of not knowing that which I can never know, at least in this reality. Questioning is no longer a sign of a lack of faith, or even salvation. It is, for me now, an encouraging sign that my faith journey continues. I am freer of the angst that I must be the author of my salvation and more faith filled that a loving God, creator of all (I can know), saves me (or not), and thus allows me be a part of his divine plan for the ushering in of the Kingdom of Heaven. I continue to embrace all that I think and believe to be the best (and most Godly) of my evangelical past.

Part of my coming to again embrace aspects of my evangelical past is my deepening understanding that 20th and 21st century evangelicalism is itself an evolving phenomena and is far removed from the evangelical movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, which I must add, I find closer to the Lord's plan for the redemption/salvation of his creation. I find much to admire about the earlier evangelicalism, which founded and nourished on the idea of the perfectibility of man and society, envisioned itself as a force for the bettering of civilization and society until we reached the point that Christ would come again. It is fair to say that the evangelicalism of the earlier ages made significant contributions to the ending of the slave trade, ending slavery (in the west), women's rights, labor rights, pacifism, etc. So, from my evangelical past, I have come to embrace what I believe to be loving and holy and divinely ordained, and in my new Church which calls for unity in essentials, freedom in non-essentials and love in all things, I journey forth as best I can, enveloped in the grace of a loving God.

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Thanks, I had not heard that directly before.
I just read an analysis of different religions and am fascinated by how so many of them have the nugget of truth that we refer to as the golden rule.

Thanks for the definitions and distinctions.

Amen. Cathleen Falsani wrote:

Pollsters and scholars estimate that evangelicals comprise roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population. A minority to be sure, but hardly an obscure one.

Very interesting ~ and probably a vast underestimate, since "pollsters and scholars" count Christians "popularly understood" to be "Evangelicals" (that is, as the term was defined by the words and actions of televangelists), and are unlikely to include "liberal evangelicals" with their historical opposites.

Even more interesting, to me at least, is that I, a muslim, find myself to be a "born-again fundamentalist evangelical," taking the words at their original, unconnotated, plain meaning.

("born-again") The life I've been living for the last half-century is most certainly not the life I was living before embracing Islam.

("fundamentalist") Forty years ago, when I was thirty, I was known among Arab muslims as "the ultra-orthodox shaykh," and as "fundamentalist" to the core. What I articulate (and try to live) is the original faith described in God's Words in the Qur'an "This day have I completed My Favor on you and have written on you al-Islam," without the false accretions and priestly and political "interpretations" of the next fourteen hundred years of the worldly engagement ~ of the political and material focus of those who virtually abandoned the religious liberty of Islam in favor of coercive dominion over the muslims and, to a much lesser degree, others. For many people of any faith, their faith is a part of their lives ~ for me, my life is a part of my faith. That, I think, is a more apt description of "fundamentalist."

("evangelical") Raised in America's predominantly Christian culture, I am one of those the Qur'an mentions when saying (approximately) "When you want to know about the faith of the People of The Book [i.e., Jews and Christians], ask of those who read it." After thirty years of full-time study of the Qur'an, muslim writings, and the Hebrew/Aramaic and Greek Scriptures, and practice, I found myself "announcing The Good News" as it is comprehensively set forth in clear, unambiguous, detailed, unmistakable, and universally recognizable terms in the Biblical Scriptures that we can read today.

[To be continued ...]

The Disqus software simply refuses to add my 1941-character continuation of this comment. I have not in eleven years seen any forum software so defective and inconsistent. I'll try again, but I've been trying to get this software to accept this comment for the last hour ~ at least eleven attempts, I lost count ~ and it simply will not work the way it's supposed to work.

Wonderful website, and interesting comments. I am not a Christian (or religious, or believing, of any kind), and I have had only a few encounters (as few as two, if I'm remembering right...) with people who let me know that they were evangelical.

My small understanding is that the "evangelical" portion of Evangelical Christianity describes the drive to spread the word. It does not (as far as I know) describe any particular doctrine, other than that.

Christians who are not evangelical are (presumably) content to practice their faith and leave others alone, to seek and stumble and fail and succeed in whatever way their culture and personality leads them.

Is that more or less how it works?