In his book, “Who is an Evangelical?”, Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd argues that the term “evangelical” has been co-opted over the past 70 years by political insiders, focusing the term narrowly on white conservatives.
Kidd argues the media have followed suit, now using the term to describe a very specific demographic. But, as he argues, the term "evangelical” is meant to be far broader than this. For one, evangelicalism is a multicultural movement, so no single subgroup should be allowed to lay claim to the title:
Evangelicalism was multiethnic from the beginning. This is one of the reasons that the refrain of “evangelical” support for Donald Trump is problematic. Hispanic, African American, and other evangelical people of color are just as evangelical as white evangelicals are. Sometimes nonwhite evangelicals seem more consistent in their beliefs and actions than white evangelicals. My intention is that whites do not appear in this book, implicitly or explicitly, as the “normal” evangelicals. Especially in a global perspective, as evangelicals and Pentecostals have forged centers of evangelical strength in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, white English speakers are just one evangelical cohort among many. But they’re a cohort with disproportionate power and resources. (Kidd, Thomas S.. Who Is an Evangelical? (p. 4).)
If that’s true, then how exactly does Kidd define an evangelical? I’m always a sucker for the Ockham’s razor approach to these kinds of things. If you can give me a simple definition (rather than, say, a quadrilateral), I’m naturally pretty compelled by that. I think Kidd does:
What does it mean to be evangelical? The simple answer is that evangelical Christianity is the religion of the born again. I will explain more about the term born again in the chapters to come. For now, I’ll say that being born again is the conversion experience that defines what it means to be an evangelical. The great English Methodist John Wesley wrote that conversion is “a thorough change of heart and life from sin to holiness; a turning.” This turning, to evangelicals, is enabled by God’s power.
If evangelicals are the “religion of the born again” - and I think that does, really, cover the whole movement - what would this mean for us? Well, first, let’s listen to Kidd’s more in-depth definition:
Here’s a more detailed definition: Evangelicals are born-again Protestants who cherish the Bible as the Word of God and who emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This definition hinges upon three aspects of what it means to be an evangelical: being born again, the primacy of the Bible, and the divine presence of God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. As we shall see, evangelicals of the mid-1700s saw themselves as different from other Protestants because of their born-again experience and the way that they “walked” with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the divine Trinity. More recent evangelicals (especially non-Pentecostals) have tended to speak about their “personal relationship with Jesus,” terminology that became common among Protestants in the 1880s. In both cases, God’s discernible presence is key. As anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann puts it, the “feature that most deeply characterizes [evangelicals] is that the God they seek is more personally intimate, and more intimately experienced, than the God most Americans grew up with.” This intimacy with God has marked evangelicals since the 1700s. (4-5)
The significance of this is big, because it reinforces Kidd’s earlier point: Evangelicalism is a global, historic movement. It is not the thing the media, and our moral imaginations, and political agendas, have made it out to be. This global definition would mean, for instance, that we don’t exclude Pentecostals from the evangelical movement based on different worship practices, political leanings and ethnic makeup:
Defining evangelicalism in this tripartite way—conversion, Bible, and divine presence—means that I also include Pentecostals as evangelicals. This is a disputed issue. Pentecostals and evangelicals have substantial theological disagreements, and one could justify separating them historically. Evangelicals and Pentecostals both affirm the authority of the Bible, the need to be born again, and the believer’s vital connection to Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
The idea of a “Global Evangelicalism” has captured my imagination for some time now. Indeed, I think it’s the only sort of Evangelicalism with an ice cube’s chance in hell of surviving a century from now.
And I think that’s a good thing.
What would it look like to lean into the global nature of Evangelicalism?
Your thoughts.