Who (or What) is an Evangelical? - Part 5

During the late 19th Century, as modern science, which Christianity had developed, moved from understanding the world God created to rejecting the supernatural (and miracles), liberal theology followed with at first a general embarrassment, and then a later rejection of the supernatural (miraculous) aspects of the Gospels.  They undertook an effort to find the "historical Jesus," a Jesus who taught morals, but divorced from any supernatural stories.  Eventually they found they could not completely separate the moral teachings of Jesus contained in the gospels from the supernatural.

But then, around the start of the 20th Century, as existential philosophy took hold, an existential theology

Father of Existentialism

(neo-orthodox) followed.  In existential philosophy, though life is acknowledged to have no objective meaning, man can find meaning in a subjective, existential experience in which he finds authentication (becomes an authentic human being).  In the theology which followed, it didn't matter whether God actually existed, or whether the gospel accounts were historically true.  What mattered was whether the gospel stories (historically true or not) brought about a personal, subjective, existential experience in which you became an authentic human being (through religious language - regardless of whether that language said anything of real truth or real history).

Many Christians reacted against both types of liberal theology.  Since they emphasized "the fundamentals of the faith," those who favored liberal theology labelled them "the fundamentalists" as a term of derision.  As with many movements, some took up this term as a badge of honor, and called themselves "Fundamentalists."  However, many who took up this description rejected intellectual pursuits (believing it only led to false beliefs), focused on separation from the world (believing it only led to compromise or sin), and tended to focus on a set of rules (not found in the Bible) in order to try to guarantee a separation from the world.  In addition, they tended to reject any tradition in the church (believing church traditions had led the church astray), as well as tended to suspect an emphasis on the social aspect of Christianity, often calling it the "social gospel."

Billy Graham

While many Christians who did not feel comfortable with liberal theology (the old type or neo-orthodoxy), they also did not feel comfortable with what was increasingly called Fundamentalism.  They believed in intellectual pursuits, believed in engagement with the world, rejected rules not found in the Bible, and found a richness in the traditions of the church while seeking to spread the gospel in new ways, and emphasizing the significance of the social aspects of the gospel.  As they searched for a term to describe themselves, they settled on the term "evangelical" which had a rich history and tradition in Christianity, especially because it tended to cut across church and denominational lines.  Billy Graham became probably the most famous Evangelical, though many others led the movement including Harold Okenga, who helped found Fuller Theological Seminary as well as the National Association of Evangelicals.  They formed a flagship magazine, Christianity Today, with a noted theologian, Carl F.H. Henry, as its first editor.  The movement grew and cut across denominational lines as well as non-denominational lines, including Catholicism (more about this in a later part).

In a future part, I will try to outline commonly held features and characteristics of Evangelicals.

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