What is evangelical?

A few things have got me thinking this week about what it means to be 'evangelical'. Last week, in Texas, there was a meeting of 'evangelical' leaders to decide which Republican candidate they could wholeheartedly support for the presidential nomination. Also last week my attention was drawn to a couple of blogs by Krish Kandiah - one, a review of a book on theology and politics by evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem, the other a report on some comments made by Mark Driscoll about the (from his perspective) lack of young, evangelical leaders in the UK.

The term 'evangelical' has always been one with which I feel very comfortable and by which I have identified my own theological position but it has always been subject to some weird and not so wonderful redefinitions.

The twentieth century saw a revival of broadly evangelical thinking and leadership in both the USA and the UK. Much of that leadership, in turn, sought to encourage the growth of evangelical thought and teaching in the developing world. This has brought incredible fruit in Asia, Africa and South America. At the same time evangelicalism saw itself as increasingly different from fundamentalism which seemed to focus too much on end times theology, anti-intellectualism, biblical literalism and a theory of biblical inspiration which owes more to Mohammad and Joseph Smith than to the Bible's understanding of itself.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century there seems to be a new shake up of attitudes in evangelicalism, especially in America, although it has an impact across the English speaking world. The church planting movement has taken off and given us a new model of church which is both exciting and challenging. The culture wars which began in America in the 1990s have not resolved themselves and are being played out in the Republican campaign at the moment. Traditional evangelical beliefs such as substitutionary atonement and the idea of hell as an eternal conscious punishment resulting from human rejection of God have come under fire or been ditched by some who still want to claim the title 'evangelical'.

It could seem that the evangelical community is in danger of breaking up over some of these issues and dissolving into an unedifying spectacle of blame and counter-blame. I suspect that now is the time for evangelicals to once again focus on what is important about our faith and to respond to John Stott's call for unity in his 1999 book, Evangelical Truth. I want to suggest a few guiding principles which might help us here.

1. Your commitment to evangelical faith does not imply within it a commitment to any one political party or grouping of the left or the right.

2. The touchstones of evangelical faith are not found in your responses to ethical or moral dilemmas, which may legitimately differ, but in your commitment to the historic good news of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, crucified Saviour and risen and returning Lord. To be evangelical is to believe in a God who reveals himself, a Saviour who redeems a sin-sick world and a Spirit who regenerates those who place their faith in Christ.

3. As an evangelical you will not reject out of hand other types of learning (especially in the field of science)just because they might restrict certain economic activities to which you are culturally or politically committed.

4. Your disagreements with each other should be carried out in a spirit of humility because none of us has apostolic authority and all of us need to listen to other people. These disagreements have, in recent months, had a tendency to take place on blogs like this one.They have also led, at times, either to people's views being condemned before they are even officially published or to provocative marketing producing unnecessary and unhelpful debate.In his book John Stott claims that the 'supreme quality which the evangelical faith engenders (or should do) is humility'. If that is true some of us (including me) have some repentance to do.

Our culture desperately needs a clear and united statement of evangelical truth. It may be worded differently from such statements in previous generations but it will contain the same historic truth which evangelicals believe goes all the way back to the apostles. Our culture needs the gospel and, as their name implies,it should be evangelicals who are most committed to bearing witness to it. And to God alone(not my church or my parachurch organisation) be glory.