The Evangelical movement.

EVANGELICALISM i.væn'ʤɛl.ə.kəl.ɪz.əm noun. Having to do with the evangel (i.e. the gospel) or Christianity.

2. [capitalized] One who holds to the Protestant tradition of individual conversion to Christianity (i.e. being born again) through faith. Plus Jesus’s atonement, the bible’s authority, and active evangelism.

3. [capitalized] The mainstream Protestant subculture in the United States.

4. [capitalized] A conservative political movement in the United States which coopts white Evangelicals.

[Evangelical i.væn'ʤɛl.ə.kəl adjective.]

There are multiple definitions of evangelical, as you can see in the definition up top. And most of the time when you hear people talk about Evangelicals, they mean the second definition: “The mainstream Protestant subculture in the United States.”

Yes there are similar “Evangelicals” in other countries. There’s a mainstream Protestant subculture in the United Kingdom, in Nigeria, in South Korea, in Canada, in Brazil, and so forth. In some of these countries they likewise refer to their Protestant mainstream as “Evangelicals.” And no, they don’t mean the other definitions: “Having to do with the gospel,” nor “Individual conversion of Christianity,” nor “Conservative political movement.” Their Evangelicals might not even be those things.

I’ll write elsewhere about mainstream Evangelicalism, but today I’m zeroing in on what I mean by “Evangelical”: The Protestant movement which emphasizes individual conversion.

In other words we aren’t simply born Christian, as you’ll see in countries which practice Christian nationalism or baptize babies. In those countries they presume you’re Christian because everyone in that country is supposed to be Christian; that’s the culture. It’s like Texas—it’s exactly how Texans look at you funny, and doubt your patriotism, when you tell ’em you’re not Christian: Why aren’t you Christian? Texans are Christian! (And don’t let the rampant footbalotry tell you otherwise.)

Evangelicalism arose in that very environment, in Europe, in Christian-nationalist countries where everyone was presumed Christian. The early Evangelicals insisted no, we aren’t Christian by default. Every individual has to choose for ourselves whether to follow Jesus. If we never make that choice, yet call ourselves Christian, we’re really not; we’re hypocrites. The king might call himself Christian, and everyone in the state would refer to him as “your most Christian majesty,” but if he never chose for himself to follow Jesus—and his attitudes and actions, his fruit, visibly demonstrate whether he has or not—he’s a liar who’s only using Christianity as a tool to keep his subjects in line; he doesn’t give a rip about Jesus. He’s an antichrist—although the early Evangelicals would never bluntly say so, ’cause you’d get executed for treason.

In the United States we recognize we’re not Christians by default. (Well, we have some Bible Belt states in denial about that.) Hence the Evangelical movement is kinda our default movement: We recognize every individual has to choose for ourselves—and have the right to choose for ourselves—whether to follow Jesus. We recognize (well, again, some of us; our partisans deliberately overlook this) our leaders might call themselves Christian, but if they lack fruit they’re lying hypocrite antichrists. And since the people, not the leaders, are sovereign, it’s not treason to call ’em out.

Why people presume they’re born Christian.

Thing is… most people are born into their religion. I was.

I was born Roman Catholic. My grandparents were Catholic, which meant Mom was Catholic, which meant I was Catholic. Wasn’t up to me. Nor Dad, who’s atheist, but didn’t care at the time: My grandparents and mother weren’t religious, so he presumed I wouldn’t be either. Man alive was he wrong about that. But anyway.

So, before I was even able to raise my head on my own, the grandparents took me to church and had me baptized. (Catholic custom is your name has to come from a saint, and since none of my names do, my baptismal name came from my grandfather. I didn’t get a choice about that either.) As far as my irreligious grandparents were concerned, that was the whole of my duty to the church; I was baptized, so now I was saved and going to heaven. No it’s not what Catholicism officially teaches, but it’s what they believed, and all they cared about.

And a lot of officially-Christian countries believe much the same thing. Same as officially-Muslim countries, Hindu countries, Buddhist countries, and so forth. You don’t get a say in what your religion is. Your family and country determine it for you. Try to switch religions, and you’re a traitor to the family and the homeland. In medieval Europe you’d be prosecuted and executed for apostasy; in Muslim countries you still will. In India the state won’t prosecute you for apostasy, but the locals absolutely will.

In medieval Europe the kings presumed they were Christian. The world’s suckiest Christians, but they were taught God forgives all, ’cause grace. And to pay lip service to Jesus, the kings would build really nice church buildings, and require everyone to go to them. Too often they’d get overzealous and outlaw every other religion: Pagans and heretics were prosecuted. Subjects had to participate in church functions. Taxes paid for church.

Their kingdoms, they figured, were outposts of God’s kingdom. Their subjects were born into this kingdom—born Christian same as an American is born American.

True, Christians-by-birth make lousy Christians. Same as their kings. But there’s grace, remember? So it didn’t really matter if the general public neither knew nor followed God; it didn’t matter that their “Christian majesty” did nothing for the needy and poor, and waged war on all his neighbors. They lived in God’s kingdom, right?

Ironically the Evangelical movement was started by Jean Calvin, the bishop of Geneva in the late 1500s. I say “ironically” because Calvinists are big fans of determinism, the belief God’s in such control of the cosmos, our Christianity really isn’t our decision: God predetermined we’d be Christian, so we are. We only think we chose him with our own free will, but he’s been pulling all the strings behind the scenes. There are tons of moral problems with determinism; this is one of them. But enough about determinism.

Calvin began to teach limited atonement—the idea Jesus didn’t die for the sins of the whole world, scripture notwithstanding. 1Jn 2.2 He only died for the elect, and not everybody is elect: Not every “Christian” in a Christian country is a real Christian. Some of ’em only think they’re saved, but Jesus actually didn’t die for them, and really they’re going to hell.

So… how do you know you’re a real Christian? Well, the Spirit’s fruit, obviously. God-experiences are another good sign God saved you, otherwise he wouldn’t bother to interact with you. Plenty of Christians point to the sinner’s prayer—which isn’t proof if you don’t mean it, but they’re still pretty any good sinner’s prayer is a confession of faith, and counts for something.

But regardless of how, Calvin taught it’s an individual thing between us and God. We individually choose to follow Jesus. (Calvin, being determinist, wouldn’t be happy with saying we choose Christ; more like God chose us. But still.) Our leaders and rulers and parents can’t just declare the entire nation Christian; God hasn’t granted them that power. We’re Christian because we, individually, came to Christ. On our own, by our own free will, with our full consent and knowledge, without our parents and culture forcing it upon us. We chose to confess him as Lord; we’re responsible for being in this religion. True, we might’ve been born to a Christian parent who dragged us to church all the time, like me. But when the time came, we took ownership of it. Our Christianity was our decision.

As Calvinism spread, the early Evangelicals rightly recognized our Christianity truly can’t be up to the state. If it were, we’d get—exactly as we see all over Christian history—a state full of hypocrites. A state where everyone in the “Christian nation” played Christian so as to stay out of trouble with the state. Where their spiritual fruit was either non-existent or more hypocrisy. Even in a state with religious freedom like the United States, we still have tons of hypocrites among our public leaders, sucking up to Christians so they can win our votes, and hoping our partisanship overrules any legitimate concerns our consciences might have. Unfortunately it often does.

Spreading the kingdom.

Since not everyone is automatically Christian, we have to evangelize—we have to share Jesus with our pagan neighbors, and encourage the hypocrites among us to drop the hypocrisy and repent. Yep, this is why we’re called Evangelicals: Because we’re also lowercase-E evangelicals—we proclaim the gospel.

There are two ways Christians try to get people around us to follow Jesus. Unfortunately the most popular method has not been very Evangelical: It’s enforced national piety. It’s falling back on old medieval Christian-nationalist behavior. To this day people still think we oughta give it a shot: Pass a bunch of Christian-supremacist laws, shun and discourage and drive out anyone and anything which isn’t religious enough, and people will naturally fall into Christianity. And if they don’t, badger them.

But enforced national piety doesn’t work. Again, we just wind up with hypocrites. We get a nation of people who fake their Christianity in public, and are pagan in private. Visit the Bible Belt, the part of the U.S. where everybody conforms to the standards of “bible-believing Christians,” and you’ll see it in action: Their church attendance sucks, and their church involvement sucks even harder. They don’t put in their time, don’t financially support their churches, and don’t follow Jesus beyond Sunday morning unless it’s convenient for them to do so.

Evangelism is way harder than enforced national piety. Evangelism requires us to become good Christian examples, so now we need to legitimately follow Jesus; we can’t get away with faking it. Not that many don’t try, but God keeps exposing our hypocrisy in embarrassing public ways. It’s like he hates hypocrisy or something!

Plus when enforced national piety rules the day, it’s not easy to evangelize. In fact evangelism tends to get you prosecuted—the powers-that-be fear you’re leading people away from the religion they’ve mandated. In the 1630s Roger Williams, the guy who later founded Providence Plantation (now Rhode Island), tried it in the Seperatist-dominated colony of Plymouth. Of course they banished him; legalists hate competition. Evangelism is easiest to practice in a land which permits a degree of religious freedom—where people can either join your group, or ignore you. Not banish or kill you. But for most of human history, there were no such lands.

The first group to really emphasize evangelism was the Methodists, founded in England in the 1730s by John and Charles Wesley. They helped spur the Great Awakening, an Evangelical revival which took off in North America in the 1730s and ’40s. The Wesleys—plus Puritan revivalists Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, and others—began to proclaim Jesus to the American colonists, warning them their ancestors’ Christianity can’t save them. Americans individually, personally had to choose Jesus. He can’t be everybody’s generic Lord and Master, but their own personal Jesus; someone to hear their prayers, someone who cares. You know the song.

The Great Awakening helped spread Williams’s idea of separation of church and state: Enforced national piety saves no one, and Christians have no business whatsoever using government to make this “a Christian nation.” Sad to say many of today’s Baptists, who consider Williams one of their forefathers, choose the opposite direction: They want the government to enforce piety. They fight any separation of church and state. It’s such a tempting shortcut.

From North America, Evangelicalism spread back to Europe, then the rest of the world. The old medieval tactic of converting the king, then using the king to forcibly convert his kingdom, was out. Christian missionaries called individuals to a relationship with Christ, regardless of what their culture taught or government mandated. Sometimes this produced persecution and underground churches. But it also produced national revivals, as pagan countries seriously embraced Christ. And it makes no difference what their governments believe, for Christ Jesus didn’t come into the world to save corporations, but humans.