Theology Thursday: Positively evangelical

Well, he wasn’t mistaken. I was recently at an Anglican gathering encompassing representatives from all streams of the Church of England, except, perhaps, the most Catholic. As we went around the circle introducing ourselves, everyone there described him or herself as evangelical. It was usually qualified – ‘largely’ evangelical, or even ‘a little bit’ evangelical – but it was clearly a very common label.

These were people whom, I’m fairly sure, would not subscribe to all the Reformation solas. Many of them did not believe in substitutionary penal atonement, or in the absolute authority – much less infallibility - of Scripture. They were certainly not complementarian. As far as I know, the churches they attended were not characterised by expository preaching or anything like a traditional evangelical ethos. So why would they use the word?

Eventually I was able to discern that by ‘evangelical’ they meant something like ‘I have some familiarity with, and appreciation of, the Bible’. To them, ‘evangelical’ meant, in a vague way, ‘Bible-related’. I suppose I should be grateful that we as evangelicals are associated in people’s minds with the Bible – there are certainly worse things. However it suggested to me that we have lost our grasp on the word ‘evangelical’.

Words change – that’s the nature of language. Within Christianity it has long been the case that as new ideas emerge, old labels seem inevitably to become broadened. New qualifiers, or even whole new terms, are then needed to describe the ones who still believe what Christ and his apostles taught. Once upon a time, to be called ‘Christian’ was enough to describe such a person. ‘Evangelical’ was a much later invention. What are we now?

We are still evangelical, even if now an additional ‘conservative’ is needed. We are still the Bible people, and Mark Thompson’s article reminds us how we can keep making that clear. It is still important – now, as in 1997, as it ever was – to preach expositorily, confident in the power and authority of the Word of God. (Mark has several other suggestions as well.) The pressures Mark identified in 1997 are still here, and his advice is still sound – and even if we lose the word ‘evangelical’, we haven’t, and must not, lose the gospel truth to which it refers.

Thompson, Mark D, Being Clearly and Positively Evangelical, Churchman 111/2 (1997): 159–70.