What is an evangelical?

What the heck is an evangelical?

I wrote this blog post a couple of years ago about stereotyping evangelicalism, and I readily claimed an evangelical identity for myself. What I did not include in that blog post was any kind of real description of what it means to be a Wesleyan evangelical (although that's really what the substance of the post was about). As a people who trace their roots to the evangelical revival in England in the 18th century, Methodists should be wary of anyone who wants to pigeonhole the identity of evangelicals into a certain political persuasion or ecclesial affiliation.

So I was a little disappointed to read the comments of author Christine Wicker, who was interviewed recently in the United Methodist Reporter about her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation. I don't know exactly how Ms. Wicker would define evangelical, but it is clear in the interview that her working understanding isn't exactly nuanced. The way she uses (and conflates) terms like Religious Right, evangelical/evangelicalism, exclusivist, and fundamentalist suggests that she has a pretty narrow concept of what constitutes an evangelical.

I think Ms. Wicker is playing into the way in which the media has unfairly stereotyped public perceptions of evangelicalism. But in a way, she is also representing a long-standing attitude within mainline Christianity, which has long seen evangelicals as lower-class, unsophisticated, and uncouth.

Frankly, that's an attitude I would like to stop. In this blog post last year, for instance, I talked about what it means to be a Methodist believer. Going back in our history, John Wesley understood the definition of a true Methodist as one who pursues holiness of heart & life. Wesley certainly understood himself as an evangelical. For a true Wesleyan today, you might say that the very definition of an evangelical is someone who is intentionally seeking to respond to God's grace so that he can be transformed (sanctified) by the work of the Holy Spirit - and furthermore, who seeks to share that wonderful gift with others through works of piety and works of mercy.

Consider also that in Peru, all Protestants call themselves evangelicals. In fact, that's the word they use to describe the alternative to "Catholic" - not "Protestant" but rather "Evangelical." (For instance, when I was in Peru in May, I had a conversation with a friend who said, "My family has been evangelical for 5 generations," meaning that they had been Methodist for that long.) Our Peruvian brothers and sisters use the word in its original Reformation sense, which, when you think about it, is really a more positive term than "Protestant."

The key to using a word with such a rich and complex meaning as "evangelical" is to use it carefully, and that's what bothered me about Christine Wicker's comments in her interview. Not only is it not fair to evangelicals to simply equate them with fundamentalists, it does a real disservice to the evangelical tradition of which Methodists are an important part.

I'd be interested to hear your comments about your perception of the word "evangelical" and whether you understand yourself to be one.