While in Oxford we heard Dr. Martyn Percy give a lecture that included calling into question the use of the word discipleship. This word, he pointed out, is not in the Bible, and furthermore, he stated the definition of a disciple was not, as many in today\u2019s church believe, synonymous with a follower, but that a disciple was a highly technical term denoting someone who was a teacher\u2014a called-out, next level type of leader who was close with a Rabbi and who would go on to propagate his message.<\/p>\n
Most followers, Percy said, would be (and still are) nominal Christians who would never reach the status of a disciple, and we shouldn\u2019t think that our ministry efforts would change that.<\/p>\n
At least, that\u2019s how I heard it. And after the lecture I considered multiple scriptural rebuttals to what I thought I was hearing, and I argued\u2013in my head\u2014for things like the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:5); the call for all of God\u2019s people to be equipped for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:12); a leader\u2019s goal to present everyone in the church mature in Christ (Colossians 1:28); the beauty of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit\u2019s gifts in each believer (1 Corinthians 12), and the universal call to a Christian\u2019s sanctification (1 Corinthians 6:11), among other things.<\/p>\n
However, none of that countered the idea that the church may have technically misunderstood the word disciple and inaccurately extrapolated the term discipleship from it.<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m still wrestling with this revelation (and look forward to reading, and possibly dissenting, with Percy\u2019s exegesis on this) that\u2019s not the point of this blog. The point is that words matter. I may be able to argue for a need for maturity or sanctification, or ministry activity from Christians, but it remains important to determine if I\u2019m wrong about the definition of a disciple or misinformed about how I use the word discipleship.<\/p>\n
Evangelical is a word that has seen a rapid redefinition in the US over the last few years. When I was growing up, I didn\u2019t want to tell people I was a Pentecostal, knowing that could bring up inaccurate images of snake-handling, swinging chandeliers, and rolling on the carpet… but I COULD tell people I identified as Evangelical, and they would generally \u201cget it\u201d. Many would correctly assume as an Evangelical I believed the Bible, believed in personal conversion, and wanted others to invite Jesus to give them new and eternal life, too (they didn’t NEED to know I spoke in tongues).<\/p>\n
Ironically, I’m now more apt to tell people I am Pentecostal than Evangelical. Pentecostal currently has less baggage; in the US, Evangelical has largely come to be identified with a far-right political position instead of a theological conviction.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve often wondered and agonized over how it came to be this way.<\/p>\n
What I realized from this week\u2019s reading is that the word Evangelical isn\u2019t as pure as I imagined. Like \u201cdiscipleship\u201d I had a fuzzy concept that \u201cEvangelical\u201d, while not literally a word from the Bible, was fully biblical in its genesis. Furthermore, I assumed there had been a strong evangelical presence throughout the church since New Testament times.<\/p>\n
However, D.W. Bebbington in his book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> maps out how Evangelicalism became a force in both the church and the world 1700 years after Christ. And importantly, he defines what Evangelicalism is: Conversionism (being \u2018born again\u2019); Activism (works that proceed from a true conversion); Biblicism (a high view of Scripture); Crucicentrism (the central importance of Christ\u2019s work on the cross).[2]<\/a> While it\u2019s possible to find elements of Evangelicalism from the New Testament period onward (ex: Augustine), Evangelicalism as a movement, defined by this quadrilateral, did not exist in the church until much, much later.<\/p>\n That was quite a revelation, and a challenge: If I am going to use a word, much less identify with it, I should more fully grasp what it means.<\/p>\n What stopped me in my tracks, however, was the third chapter of Dr. Jason Clark\u2019s dissertation, Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship; <\/em>in that chapter Clark (convincingly) started to unpack the idea that Evangelicalism was both a result of and a contributor to the growth of capitalism. If I am comprehending it right, in Clark\u2019s view elements found in Evangelicalism both cultivated market forces and were accelerated by the success of those same forces. A result of this symbiotic relationship has been that the evangelical church has taken \u201ca form captive to the logic of market imaginations.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n There do seem to be positive implications regarding how Evangelicals counteract some of capitalism\u2019s toxicity. For instance, Clark states, \u201cThe relationship of Evangelicalism to capitalism was indeed a \u2018mixed bag\u2019, as all forms of ecclesiology always are, being both captive to the worst of market forces, and yet at the same time, being able to transmit themselves through the market, effecting enormous change in resistance to those forces.\u201d[4]<\/a> But although there is healthy correction to capitalism that is generated from Evangelicalism, because they were birthed together and remain inexorably connected, it shouldn\u2019t be surprising that the Evangelical movement has become so closely identified with consumerism, conservatism, and conspicuous consumption.<\/p>\n In simpler terms, I have discovered that my great angst about what I saw as the bastardization of the word Evangelical may be misplaced. It seems possible that how \u201cEvangelical\u201d is currently understood is simply a logical progression of its inception and trajectory.<\/p>\n This week was a doctoral-level lesson on the importance of understanding the words I use, the words I identify with, and the words with which I identify others.<\/p>\n In other words, words\u2014and their definitions\u2014matter!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730\u2019s to the 1980\u2019s (London: Routledge, 1989).<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, <\/em>3.<\/p>\n