Evangelicalism | Spirit of Cecilia

Megan Basham’s new book, Shepherds For Sale, has made a big splash in evangelical Christian circles with its accusations of prominent leaders “selling out” their orthodox Christian principles. I’m a lifelong United Methodist, and in my denomination that battle was lost decades ago. (As an aside, the only reason I still attend my UMC is because I have many dear friends there.) However, I have read and appreciated evangelical authors such as Timothy Keller (The Reason for God), Russell Moore (Onward), and Eric Metaxas (Miracles). Basham has compiled a convincing case that on a variety of hot button issues, quite a few well-respected pastors – “Big Eva” – have attempted to use their influence to convince evangelical congregations and organizations to lobby for progressive legislation that they normally would oppose.

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Evangelicalism has played an important role in American society for hundreds of years, and today “evangelicals” remain an influential voting bloc. The term “evangelical” is thrown around a lot in historical scholarship and political rhetoric, but its meaning is less clear than most people imagine. Twenty-first century evangelicalism shares some tenets with evangelicalism of years past, and it has changed in other ways. If we are going to understand evangelicalism’s impact on society and politics, we need to try to understand what exactly it is and where it came from.

I’m not going to get into specific leaders or institutions known for their influence on contemporary evangelicalism. That would require delving into the countless parachurch organizations, leaders, churches, radio stations, colleges, seminaries, etc. Evangelicals are interconnected yet fundamentally decentralized. Thus, it would be very difficult to make sense of that aspect of the movement (if it can even be called a movement) in a blog post. Rather, I’ll speak generally about fundamental beliefs and concepts that broadly describe evangelicals.

D. G. Hart’s Deconstructing Evangelicalism and Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind are good places to start if you are interested in this topic and want to know more about contemporary evangelicalism. John Fea recently wrote a book called Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. This book may shed light upon current trends in evangelicalism, but I haven’t read it, so I can’t say for sure.