In the weeks leading up to Christmas, churches of every stripe were getting ready for the big day. The sanctuary was decorated, special services were added, pageants were rehearsed, the choir filled in nicely, and preachers sought to say something meaningful on a night that is called holy.<\/p>\n
And one of the questions that hung in the air was, \u201cwill they come?\u201d Will they come as they did last year? Will they come as they do every year? Christmas Eve is a time for the \u201cperennials\u201d to show up. Those who are sometimes derisively referred to as \u201cCEO\u2019s\u201d (Christmas, Easter Only). Those who grew up in the church or who live in the town or who are just looking for some \u201choliday spirit\u201d. In any case, they are always with us, whether active or absent. You can count on them showing up again and again.<\/p>\n
This is the basic way that most people think about what we call \u201cEvangelical Christianity\u201d. That it is a \u201chardy perennial\u201d, something that has been present and accounted for in every age of Christian history and that, in some form, crops up again and again. Kenneth J. Stewart points out that, \u201cthe evangelical Christianity we associate with the century of the Wesley brothers, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards but also – for that matter with the next century of George Muller, D.L. Moody and J.C. Ryle, and the century just past – the Billy Graham era, stood in an unbroken succession of vital Christianity extending backwards to at least the Reformation of the sixteenth century and perhaps beyond.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n In this sense, the \u201cgospel successionism\u201d (or the continuous handing on) of \u201cEvangelical Christianity\u201d would indicate a deep continuity with everything that came before it. And yet, in his classic study of the subject, \u201cEvangelicalism in Modern Britain\u201d, David Bebbington lays out a different argument.<\/p>\n He claims that \u201calthough \u2018evangelical\u2019, with a lower-case initial, is occasionally used to mean, \u2018of the gospel\u2019, the term \u2018Evangelical\u2019, with a capital letter, is applied to any aspect of the movement beginning in the 1730\u2019s. There was much continuity with earlier Protestant traditions, but\u2026. Evangelicalism was a new phenomenon of the eighteenth century.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n To define this term \u201cEvangelical\u201d, which is more specific than the broader \u201cevangelical\u201d (of the gospel), Bebbington offers what has come to be known as \u201cthe Bebbington Quadrilateral.\u201d He writes \u201cThere are four qualities that have been the special marks of Evangelical religion: conversionism<\/em>, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism<\/em>, the expression of the gospel in effort; Biblicism<\/em>, a particular regard for the Bible; and what may be called crucicentrism<\/em>, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Together they form a quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n One of the contributions that Bebbington is making with this presentation is his insight that the \u201cEvangelical\u201d church in Britain is not simply a continuation of the development of Protestantism. It is, instead, something new (not old), something different from what came before (not a continuation of the same), and something that arises in response to a particular set of social challenges (not just to the ever-present, perennial ones).<\/p>\n In fact, as Charlie Phillips argues, Bebbington\u2019s work is an \u201cimportant part of a fresh advance of scholarship that described evangelicalism not in opposition to but as an extension of the Enlightenment\u2026 evangelicalism is, despite its self-perception, a radically modern form of Christianity.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n This is a statement that would scandalize and confuse many contemporary \u201cEvangelical\u201d Christians, both in Britain and in the United States. This is because 21st<\/sup> century Evangelical Christians often view themselves the same way that 19th<\/sup> or 20th<\/sup> century Evangelical Christians did. As simply being heirs to the \u201coriginal\u201d or \u201cbiblical\u201d expression of Christianity. He writes, \u201cit was supposed at that time, by friend and foe alike, that conservatives stood for traditional, received views.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n And in a way, this how every religious tradition wants to see itself. As operating faithfully within the original framework as it was intended, or at least, renewing the covenant. Saint Paul writes to the church in Corinth, \u201cFor I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you\u2026\u201d[6]<\/a> Paul\u2019s claim is that there is authentic power in the way that he is leading, teaching, and living his faith, because it is derived closely from the words, teaching and practices of Jesus himself.<\/p>\n One of David Bebbington\u2019s most controversial arguments is that, \u201cthe Evangelical Revival represents a sharp discontinuity in the Protestant tradition.\u201d[7]<\/a> Over against the idea that the so called \u201cquadrilateral\u201d of core beliefs represent the true distillation of the Christian faith, Bebbington pushes the reader to see that this is a movement that emerges from a particular time with a specific set of needs.<\/p>\n I cannot help but overlay this reading of the history from 19th<\/sup> century Britain onto our own time and circumstances. In many ways, the contours of religious disagreement, especially between so called \u201cMainline Christians\u201d and \u201cEvangelical Christians\u201d are much the same as they were in previous centuries. This reading from Bebbington is encouraging because it helps us not to become myopic, or to think that our particular moment is the only one that has faced these challenges.<\/p>\n It is also helpful in the ongoing debates of our age (at least among my tribe) because it gives a recall toward humility. Every religious tradition wants to claim a certain level of continuity with the past, especially with the \u201cgreat tradition\u201d on which we stand. And yet, no one gets it fully right. No one owns the Gospel. No one can draw lines in ink, where they deserve to only be written in pencil.<\/p>\n I will continue to be a \u201csmall-e\u201d evangelical, and to strive for greater understanding, shared ministry and mutual forbearance with my capital E, Evangelical sisters and brothers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Kenneth J. Stewart, \u201cDid evangelicalism predate the 18th century? An examination of David Bebbington’s thesis,\u201d\u00a0The Evangelical Quarterly<\/em>\u00a070, no. 2 (April 2005): 135,\u00a0http:\/\/web.b.ebscohost.com.georgefox.idm.oclc.org\/ehost\/pdfviewer\/pdfviewer?vid=16&sid=e9198243-016b-4e07-9598-33b270f54bf9%40sessionmgr101<\/a>\u00a0(accessed January 11, 2018).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> D.W. Bebbington,\u00a0Evangelicalism In Modern Britain: A history from the 1730’s to the 1980’s<\/em>\u00a0(London: Routledge, 2002), 1.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> D.W. Bebbington,\u00a0Evangelicalism In Modern Britain: A history from the 1730’s to the 1980’s<\/em>\u00a0(London: Routledge, 2002), 3.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Charlie Phillips, \u201cRoundtable: Re-Examining David Bebbington’s ‘Quadrilateral Thesis’,\u201d\u00a0Fides et historia<\/em>47, no. 1 (Winter\/Spring 2015): 44,\u00a0http:\/\/web.b.ebscohost.com.georgefox.idm.oclc.org\/ehost\/pdfviewer\/pdfviewer?vid=18&sid=e9198243-016b-4e07-9598-33b270f54bf9%40sessionmgr101<\/a>\u00a0(accessed January 11, 2018).<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> D.W. Bebbington,\u00a0Evangelicalism In Modern Britain: A history from the 1730’s to the 1980’s<\/em>\u00a0(London: Routledge, 2002), 183.<\/p>\n