{"id":11058,"date":"2017-01-18T21:13:26","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T05:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=11058"},"modified":"2017-01-18T21:13:26","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T05:13:26","slug":"pillars-puritans-philosophers-bebbingtons-history-of-evangelicalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/pillars-puritans-philosophers-bebbingtons-history-of-evangelicalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Pillars, Puritans & Philosophers: Bebbington’s History of Evangelicalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The way the story goes, the modern mission movement began with a refusal to listen to a command: \u201cYoung man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.\u201d Undaunted, William Carey (1761-1834)\u2014 shoemaker turned Baptist preacher and reader of adventure books\u2014 emerged as the Father of the Modern Mission movement. His sermon on Isaiah 54 (\u201cexpect great things from God; attempt great things for God\u201d) prompted the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society, and he went on to serve as a missionary in India for the remainder of his life.<\/p>\n

D.W. Bebbington, in his 1989 classic, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/em>, introduces what has become the standard definition of Evangelicalism, known as \u201cBebbington\u2019s quadrilateral\u201d[1]<\/a>: conversionism<\/em>, activism<\/em>, biblicism<\/em>, and crucicentrism<\/em>.[2]<\/a> Few question these four \u201cpillars\u201d of Evangelicalism, and the definition is widely used to identify evangelicalism. Bebbington suggests that three of those pillars\u2014conversionism, biblicism,<\/em> and crucicentrism<\/em> can be understood to have emerged from the earlier Dissenters of the State Church, the Puritans.[3]<\/a> What marked Evangelicals as new<\/em> and distinct from the Dissenters and High Church was their emphasis on activism. It is this activism<\/em> of living their faith that prompted men (and women) such as William Carey to commit their lives to spreading the gospel to the four corners of the earth, and sparked the Modern Mission Movement and the rise of parachurch organizations seeking to reach the lost with the Good News of Jesus\u2019 work on the cross.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Bebbington argues that, while not disconnected from the earlier Reformation of Luther and Calvin, this new Evangelical movement was more influenced by empiricist philosophy and fit firmly in the emergence of the Enlightenment.[5]<\/a> His argument suggests that part of Evangelicalism\u2019s disconnect with Puritanism was centered on the doctrine of assurance; that is, confirmation (or assurance) that a person has been \u201csaved.\u201d While Puritans believed that \u201cassurance is rare, late, and the fruit of struggle,\u201d Evangelicals \u201cbelieved it to be general, normally given at conversion, and the result of simple acceptance of the gift of God.\u201d[6]<\/a> This doctrine, Bebbington argues, was identified in scripture by Evangelical leaders such as Jonathon Edwards and Charles Wesley, but was ultimately confirmed by a confidence in the powers of human knowledge, as expounded by John Locke.[7]<\/a> It was this confidence that led to the belief that \u201chuman beings could be the appointed agents of bringing the gospel to unevangelised nations;\u201d in fact, that \u201cmission was now held to be essential<\/em> to Christianity.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

While it might be possible to leave this post at this point, I do not yet feel as if it answers the question of this text\u2019s usefulness to our context of Christian leaders in a post-modern globalized world. Thankfully, Bebbington continues to suggest that Evangelicalism adapted itself to (and is influenced by) its environment.[9]<\/a> Romanticism and Modernism\u2014both philosophical movements in Western civilization\u2014influenced and shaped the Evangelicalism of their days. While the essence<\/em> of what it meant to be \u201cEvangelical\u201d remained (Bebbington\u2019s quadrilateral), the form and practice of it shifted in order to continually be relevant in a particular time and place.<\/p>\n

This is precisely what the gospel and the Church are meant to do. Paul Hiebert, noted missiologist, introduced the term critical contextualization<\/em>, where \u201cthe old is neither rejected or accepted uncritically. It is explicitly examined with regard to its meanings and functions in the society, and then evaluated in the light of biblical norms.\u201d[10]<\/a> While he initially coined the term for mission endeavors, we recognize its validity in \u201csending contexts\u201d such as Britain and the US, as well: \u201cIn each culture Christians face new questions for which they must find biblical answers.\u201d[11]<\/a> This is just as important for Evangelicals of Britain (and the US) today, as it was for William Carey voyaging to eighteenth-century India. And Bebbington rightly understands that, while the empirical-based birth of Evangelicalism was situated in a particular time and place, the practice and beliefs of the faith needed to be continually critiqued and modified in light of the changing context. As Hiebert puts it, critical contextualization \u201csees contextualization as an ongoing process <\/em>in which the church must constantly<\/em> engage itself, a process that can lead us to a better understanding of what the Lordship of Christ and the kingdom of God on earth are about.\u201d[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

Bebbington concluded his masterpiece in the 1980s. Much has changed in Britain, in the US, and in the churches of those lands from that time to this. We, as Christian leaders, must understand where we\u2019ve come from, navigate our current cultural climate, and continually re-contextualize our faith and the gospel for our present age.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Timothy Larson, \u201cThe reception given Evangelicalism in Modern Britain<\/em> since its publication in 1989,\u201d in The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities<\/em>, ed. Michael A.G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (Nashville: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 25.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/em> (London: Routledge, 1989), 3.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 35.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 40-41.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid. 50.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid. 43.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid. 47-48<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid. 41 (italics mine)<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid., 272. This, of course, is true of all philosophies and religions, and even streams of Christianity.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Hiebert, Paul G. “Critical contextualization.”\u00a0Missiology<\/em>\u00a012, no. 3 (July 1984): 290.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Hiebert, Paul G. “Critical contextualization.”\u00a0International Bulletin Of Missionary Research<\/em>\u00a011, no. 3 (July 1987): 108.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Ibid., 111.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The way the story goes, the modern mission movement began with a refusal to listen to a command: \u201cYoung man, sit down. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.\u201d Undaunted, William Carey (1761-1834)\u2014 shoemaker turned Baptist preacher and reader of adventure books\u2014 emerged as the Father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-11058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bebbington","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}