Growing up as a Southern Baptist in the United States, church history was virtually absent from my Christian experience.\u00a0 Unlike Catholics, Anglicans, and even Methodists, Baptist churches concentrate their education almost exclusively on Bible Study\u2014with the application being focused on evangelism and the Christian life.\u00a0 \u00a0The only \u201cheroes of the faith\u201d (outside of the Bible)\u00a0that I had ever heard\u00a0of were evangelists like D.L. Moody, Billy Sunday, or Billy Graham.\u00a0 Not once were the names Polycarp, Thomas Aquinas, or St. Francis of Assisi mentioned by my pastor.\u00a0 Neither were Martin Luther\u00a0or John Calvin.\u00a0 The only evangelicals I ever remember my pastor mentioning in his sermons were John Newton and the Wesley brothers (because of their hymn writing) and C.H. Spurgeon (who, of course, was a Baptist).<\/p>\n
When I took my first Church History class at Southwestern Seminary, I was excited to learn of the rich history of Christianity.\u00a0 Even so, my classes showed me bits and pieces of the big picture of the History of the Church in our world.\u00a0 I remember reading A History of Christian Missions<\/strong><\/em> by Stephen Neill a few years back.\u00a0 This work highlights a lot of church history in Africa, Asia, and South America.\u00a0 It covered a lot of history\u00a0that I never learned during my Master\u2019s studies.<\/p>\n I have had a similar experience reading Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/em><\/strong> by\u00a0David Bebbington.\u00a0 It opened my eyes to the vibrant history of my Evangelical forefathers, including their triumphs, conflicts, and disappointments.<\/p>\n As you might guess, the term \u201cevangelical\u201d was not used at my home church.\u00a0 Southern Baptists stress autonomy and a dogged dependence on scripture.\u00a0 In this book, I was reminded that\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are the four qualities that have been the special marks of Evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and what may be called crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Together they form a quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism. <\/em>(Kindle page 2).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even though this book is complex and detailed, after reading it I can summarize it in this way:<\/p>\n The history of Evangelicalism in Britain, in the context of the above definition, is a struggle to determine which of those \u201cquadrilateral of priorities\u201d are the most important, and which are the least.<\/strong><\/p>\n Our history is made up of controversies and choices made by church leaders over topics like infant baptism, personal holiness, the authority of the Bible, the urgency of foreign missions, predestination, assurance of salvation, the role of the church in politics, evangelism methods, philanthropy, the end times, and supernatural spiritual gifts.<\/p>\n Even with all of the past conflict on display, this book gave me a sense of hope.\u00a0 I found a new respect for my Methodist brothers, Anglicans, evangelical Calvinists, the Puritans, and early revivalists like George Whitefield.\u00a0 \u00a0Overall, the story of Evangelicals is the story of God\u2019s people who love Jesus and want others to love Him, too.\u00a0 This is something that I can get behind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Neill, Stephen. A history of Christian missions<\/i>. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1964.<\/p>\n Bebbington, David. Evangelicalism in modern Britain: a history from the 1730s to the 1980s<\/i>. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growing up as a Southern Baptist in the United States, church history was virtually absent from my Christian experience.\u00a0 Unlike Catholics, Anglicans, and even Methodists, Baptist churches concentrate their education almost exclusively on Bible Study\u2014with the application being focused on evangelism and the Christian life.\u00a0 \u00a0The only \u201cheroes of the faith\u201d (outside of the Bible)\u00a0that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":11082,"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":[784,747,785,366],"class_list":["post-11079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-baptist","tag-cocanougher","tag-evangelical","tag-evangelicalism","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11079","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\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}