An Evangelical by Any Other Name

I recently told my students that if they could manage to come up with a definition of “Evangelicalism” that everybody could agree on, they could make a lot of money. It is one of those terms that everyone uses but few have a handle on what it really means. Unlike its related but equally ephemeral cousin, “fundamentalism,” evangelicalism still retains an occasional positive connotation. Sadly, the once proud term fundamentalist has been largely reduced to a second and third person invective. “You” or “they” might be fundamentalist, but “we” or “I” hardly ever are. In much the say way, these definitions of evangelicalism say more about the speakers than they do about actual evangelicals. Pundits use it to describe Koran burners and televangelists, politicians use it to analyze a special interest group, and others ponder whether “Ee-vangelical” means something different than “Eh-vangelical.”

In the past it was fairly straightforward to the point that it was often quipped that an evangelical is simply someone who likes Billy Graham. Today it has become increasingly complex as no definition seems complete without an attendant hyphen, leaving us with “evangelical-feminist,” “the evangelical-left,” and even “evangelical-Catholic.” If Al Mohler and Jim Wallis, Joel Osteen and Tim Keller can all be evangelical despite mutually exclusive ideas, what on earth does it mean in the first place? We may soon find ourselves with a definition so diluted of content that we borrow from Francis Schaeffer’s “true truth” and say that an evangelical-evangelical is someone who actually believes in evangelicalism.

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. We find now that we can turn to a paragon of subtly for a solution to our problem. Responding to the recent hullabaloo over religious liberty laws in Indiana, Steve “Stone Cold” Austin forwarded his two cents in a commentary heavy with the dew of profanity. Although you may enjoy a more full exposition of his thought here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/24/steve-austin-gay-marriage_n_5205212.html his terminology is somewhat more . . . colorful . . . than would be appropriate in this venue. We can paraphrase him to say that he objects to the idea that Christians think they have spoken to God and that Christians believe that the worst of criminals can go to heaven. Whether meaning to do so or not, the erstwhile wrestles pins on Christians two complaints which go to the heart of evangelical identity: revelation and redemption.

Evangelicals hold to a radical view of revelation. This is not, as Mr. Austin characterizes it, a matter of Christians going up and speaking to God, but, rather, that he has come down and spoken to us. Were Austin’s description accurate, this would be objectionable, as it would leave us dependent on the recollections of the few who made the trip to heaven rather than on the sure report of the self-revealing God who came down to us. But this is not so. The evangelical identity is built upon the idea that we have in the Bible God’s message to humanity and not merely the theological musings of people long gone. The evangelical identity is built on the principle that, as it is his message to us, we are not in the position of deciding which parts to believe or to obey, as though theological study were a middle school Bible study where we ask, “What does this mean to you?” It is to the pattern set by him that we are to conform our preferences and not the other way around. The word of God to humanity is not subject to the whims of a postmodern literary theory any more than it was limited by the preconceptions of a Medieval Magisterium.

Evangelicals also hold to a radical view of redemption. Mr. Austin objects that a murderer and molester should not be able to go to heaven after the life he has led. Implicit in Mr. Stone Cold’s complaint is the idea that heaven should be for those who deserve it, for those who have lived a life on earth worthy of a reward in heaven. It also implies that those of us who are not murderers and rapists can have the confidence that we belong to this latter group. We can know that our own merits will pave our road into the New Jerusalem. The cross of Christ becomes only an example to follow and not a necessity of life. It is the radical claim of evangelicalism that a sinner such as Mr. Austin described can indeed be saved. This view of redemption defining evangelicalism is that the sins of the best of us are so great that it required the death of God to save us, and, yet, the work of Christ is so overwhelming that it overcomes the vilest soul imaginable. There is no saint so pure or sinner so foul that the work of Christ is not the sole and sure hope of each.

Evangelicals are those who hope in the evangel of God. The message of God has come down to humanity, and the presence of God has come down to Earth. Evangelicals are those who base their lives on the hope that God has spoken and that God has acted. This good news of God both transcends and transforms our cultural moment and personal predilections. Our old traditions and new innovations cannot stand in between the word God speaks of himself and the people he saves for himself. We are able to speak into the controversies of life, not because we have access to God but because he has accessed the world through his word. We are able to hope for a changed world where all is made new, not because we have kept off contemporary society’s naughty list but because Christ died for the ungodly.

Presumably Mr. “Cold” did not intend on getting to the crux of the issue so pointedly as he did. Nonetheless, we find in his analysis an important reminder of the reality of God’s word and the centrality of the cross. We may, and undoubtedly will, continue to quibble over just what or who constitutes an evangelical. But, if we lose either of these points, that God’s word is not subject to our transitory impressions and that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is the solitary and unmediated path to God, we can throw around any definitions we want to. If we lose the evangel of God, our evangelicalism becomes a meaningless anyhow.