Evangelicalism

Pop Quiz: Guess what metropolitan area or city has the most evangelicals according to Barna?

For some unknown reason I wanted to look at what constituted evangelicalism and came across Bebbington's work. It's weird as the search words my subconscious conjured for Google led me straight to him. Intrigued, I dug a little more, the familiarity ended up being from exposure when Moeller referenced him 6 years ago while I was ranting about Evangelicals' anti-intellectualism. It stopped my ranting and grabbed my attention then too, a new shiny toy concept. Anyways, Bebbington identifies four marks of conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism within Evangelicalism.

To clarify, let me state how I understand these terms. As neutral as possible, biblicism is a view of the Bible as the Word of God, a view of inerrancy, and a hermeneutic of literalism and illumination by the Holy Spirit (proof-texting, empty clichés, christocentric, and letterism). Conversionism is beating the dead horse view that humans need to have a personalized, transformative encounter w/ God culminating in this experiential, individualized relationship. It seems to range the spectrum from a formulaic "sinners" prayer, à la Graham to this "profound" quasi-mystical attunement w/ disgruntles (noticeably expectations not being met). As for activism, I actually prefer the term missional instead, but activism is evangelism, social work, and cultural engagement with an emphasis on confession of Jesus. Mind you, these are my words not his. Crucicentrism is an atoning power of the cross fixation. Some of what I read is that this is especially in the context of a Christocentric read of the Bible.

And this makes sense at one level. I think of Evangelical churches and I think of alter-calls at the end of services rather than the Eucharist. (Like to joke that Baptist don't actually have "church" except four times a year, they have chapel.). Sometimes their associative mental image is with JWs and Mormons. Revivals and tracts. There's conversations about Christians at least "being a witness" every time you meet someone and more typically manipulative strategies for "winning" friends and strangers to Christ (e.g. flirt to convert, okay bad one. A better one though is the "be their friend so that".). Forcing the Bible to speak to "all aspects of life" is common, and there's a lot of publicity about their refusal to cede on any point they interpret as contrary to the Word of God. Ironically, the term "missional" finds currency in critiques of the Evangelical church, many of which are overstated but some highlight the problematic nature of such a universal marker. It's problematic to characterize the Evangelical church by "activism" strictly as you have many exceptions like seeker-sensitive churches or loosely where the term loses any distinguishing capacity and so flexible as to easily fit even an atheistic hermit in the desert. I really feel at a loss here not being able to reference Bebbington's work for his understanding. Bebbington's definition stems from in-depth historical analysis; whereas I guess I just always thought of it as this offshoot of fundamentalism, whom more and more quit caring about their "sins", a trajectory it's still on. From what I've seen now though... NOPE. Way more complex and diverse, with a far richer history and more sophistication than merely different than mainline and black churches. Of course it has exploded wide open now with evangelicalism as a global phenomenon.

I'll comment later on other issues, but Bebbington was the only common definition with a lot of variations. The Barna Group has a similar 9-point criteria for identifying Evangelicals. One of these, a continuous personal commitment to Jesus, is a self-perceived existential condition. The other 7 though are reflective of a theological distinctiveness, plus an ambiguous one that I interpret as a qualitative experiential marker.

1. Heavenly afterlife because of confession and accepting of Jesus
2. Faith has a high priority.
3. Proselytization
4. Satan's existence
5. Eternal salvation through grace precluding works
6. Sinlessness of Jesus
7. Scriptural inerrancy
8. God's omnipotence, omniscience, and perfection as Creator and Lord

It should be noted that their criteria for identifying born-again Christians as opposed to a full-on evangelical is the existential condition and the first theological marker. Listen, we're all thinking it, so I'm just gonna come out and say it. Barna is a bunch of sectarian classist. Huh? You were thinking something different? Oops, guess it's just me. Alright, perhaps that's a good way to think of the congregation, but to start sifting through its members. I mean folks who've participated in Evangelical communities their whole life aren't "real" Evangelicals. Please. There needs to be a degree of disconnect in the categorization at the congregational level and its descriptive application at the level of persons. That's where it fails. Plus personally, I think the notion of 100% identification is absurd, realizing some of you may disagree.

A third approach is the World Evangelical Alliance's". This one requires a finer interpretative brush than I care to pull out, so if you want the full she-bang I suggest you read it yourself. All I'll say is that it starts off with this generic definition of "evangelical" and then unpacks that in a way that is more recognizably Evangelical. It's not very helpful, and I think the ecumenical tone is the most significant clue as to why they went that route. It does have going for it though before I poo-poo everything. It weaves through incidental and defining characteristics and beliefs in such a way that unlike Dr. Academic's and Mr. Ideologue's defs would resonate with more folks who sit in the pews and might personally articulate themselves. At least that's my guess. *shrug* The dilemma there is a susceptibility to self-awareness birthed from limited exposure of the Church. The danger is abuse for excluding other while the benefit is they're often times better equipped to recognize and acknowledge other Evangelicals. Unfortunately, this disassociation can especially extend to such superficial sentiments as the others aren't demonstrating the "walk" or due to feeling anxiety fear or are labelled "nominal".

Also examined urbandictionary.com. I picked "Evangelical movement" rather than "evangelical" cause the "evangelical" entries actually kinda made sense, which was not what I was looking for.

A group of fat, lazy, unintelligent, uninformed extreme right-wing conservatives overly concerned with pointless social issues and ignorantly blissful of the truly important matters at hand that could actually affect our lives.

-Class, explain to me the class structure of ancient rome.

-uhhhhh. . . Jesus?

-well, close enough.

This reflects my basic view.

Relevance

It'd be really cool to right now be make that Rush sound of paper ruffling in front of a microphone, no? Anyways, I think it's a cool sound effect.

Quiz Answer: If you guessed "Lost" Angeles, you're correct! In fact, they have more than New York, Chicago, and Boston combined. I personally am not ashamed to admit I didn't see that coming. You? Esther might of known, but I'm gonna make an educated guess and figure most of you didn't. The point being Evangelicals defy stereotyping.

As Barna argues there's a difference between media's portrayal of Evangelicals and their own subcultural reality and self-perception. As for media misrepresentation, they can take a ticket and get in line for all I care. Admittedly, it does influence profoundly outsider and self-perceptions, but that doesn't abnegate our responsibility for our own understanding. Still it'd help if they stopped using code. Call a conservative a conservative if that's what your fronting and stop underhandedly referring to Evangelicals as conservatives. More significant is the difference between self-perception and where they're actually at. Closing this gap increases understanding and channels the frustrations and areas of complacency voiced and quietly ruminated by those in the movement and its critics. IOWs it facilitates constructive responses to issues with Evangelicalism.

BTW - to give you an idea of how it shifts the landscape. Using Barna's definition only 8% of the population is Evangelical, with these having no denominational specificity (so they can be Coptics or Catholic nuns). Wow, that's unexpected as their criteria wasn't anything I didn't think most Evangelicals believed anyways. Pew with a lot of dancing puts it at 26.3%, barely above Catholics at 23.9%. Most media surveys rank it much higher based on purely self-identification. The issue of the term's ambiguity, rather than its fluitity, is that people then are more individually interpretative from isolated internalized experiences and viewpoints, media portrayals, and sloppy reasons.

So, what do you think an Evangelical is?

Some folks wanna exclude the Pentecostals, or at least Oneness Pentecostals. It seems everyone has an opinion, but the majority of charismatics and cessationist Evangelicals think they're under the same roof. Apparently the PCA is too, which surprised me. I don't know why since Schaeffer was and actively part of what would become the PCA. Soft idealization? Don't know why seriously. Interestingly, the PCA is the only denom affiliated with both the NAE and the NCC. The AM is only in the NAE, though they're in the Anglican Communion and thus by extension(?) in the NCC. (I'll get to the significance in a bit.

Part of the problem is I don't know enough. All four were crafted using criteria that functionally focused upon their implicit purpose. Any purpose I've got is a muddled, convoluted mess half of which is buried. There's no abductive element to my reasoning; they're just "not satisfactory", and I can't elucidate why. It does seem best to suggest a model which uses multiple definitions to target recognized groups we're certain of. So any culturally in an Evangelical church and a definition for those non-associated but clearly Evangelical minus those clearly not Evangelical in a church. This is different than the Barna methodology, which screens people through a theological filter. What I'm talking about is say excluding an Atheist or Catholic or Episcopalian who goes merely due to their spouse. Meanwhile criteria for an Evangelical church is weighed heavily by associative relations like the NAE and historical developments and less so purely for theological conformity. Of course, this isn't a strong differentiation, as often those historical developments are driven by doctrinal issues and acknowledgement by associative relations are underlied with theological similarity.

Importantly though, one shouldn't conflate Churches with members, as they not reflective in scale. This is a chief failure of Barna and Bebbington's criteria. They too strongly predefine the Evangelical and end up only being able to be challenged by those looking precisely as they expected. Rather judge the churches and allow the congregations to work it out. On the other hand, we should tighten our consideration of membership qualifiers to compensate for inflated rolls, and allow even tighter definitions for more nuanced and accurate labels.

Anyways, that's kinda some of my thoughts from the last week, take what you will. I think I've gone as far as possible with couch-potato research. Then next step is to pick up some more substantive sources than news articles and websites or do some research or get some feedback/opinions from other people, preferably those who actually know or are Evangelicals. Or I could get lucky and discover a breakthrough I've overlooked that has all the answers.

So, what your take on the whole Evangelical phenomenon? Comments on definition? Challenges facing the movement? Unfair caricature and portrayals? Anger, frustration, confusion? Anything I got wrong (factual corrections especially welcomed, trying to get a better sense of all this and as I'm not Evangelical)? Thoughts on movies, the World Cup? Which by the way, did anyone noticed they shortened the duration of those camera shots during the final? Huh‽ Must of done some homework and got their act together.

A descent read for disenchanted evangelicals.