Evangelical Identity

“Are Spinks and East correct? Will we see the imminent demise (or near-demise) of ‘traditional Protestantism’ (that is, confessional Protestantism – the forms of Protestantism that conform to the sixteenth and seventeenth-century confessions)? I think that the answer is almost certainly no.” - Mere Orthodoxy

“The first group of people to claim evangelical as a noun was the Evangelical Voluntary Church Association in England in the 1830s…. In the US, 100 years later, the evangelist Billy Graham started using the word as a term for people who supported his ministry.” - C.Today

“Lindsell represents the evangelicals that saw inerrancy as a test for evangelical authenticity…. Henry saw inerrancy as a test for evangelical consistency rather than authenticity. Ramm … affirmed a broad concept of inerrancy but did not see it as either the test of authenticity or consistency.

“Fourteen percent of Muslims say that they are evangelical - it’s the same percentage as Roman Catholics. Even 12% of those identifying as nothing in particulars and Hindus say that they are evangelicals!” - Ryan Burge

“Bebbington has created the ‘Bebbington quadrilateral,’ four Christian beliefs that shape evangelical identity wherever it appears; all Christians who believe these things are allegedly ‘evangelical.’ They are: biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, and activism” - Roger Olson

“For cultural evangelicals, they reject one leg of the stool—the behavioral piece. For them, evangelicalism is primarily about tribal belonging (and perhaps some vague belief in the teachings of the Bible).” - Ryan Burge

“The story of Acts 29’s trajectory will feel familiar to many of us outside of the network as well. Indeed it may serve as a small-scale model for much of the evangelical fracturing that began around 2015 and has continued through to the present.” - Mere Orthodoxy

“are these new evangelicals or not evangelicals?… one would be hard pressed to identify which section of David Bebbington’s Evangelicalism Quadrilateral (conversionism, biblicism, activism, crucicentrism) has room for the Proud Non-Churchgoers.” - WORLD

“…contending for evangelical faithfulness in a time of confusion and compromise. To that end, I want to commend the following commitments of what I call classical evangelicalism.” - Nathan Finn

“the term evangelical has become especially unattractive to folks who either retired or are getting very close to it…. among those born in the late 1980s, the share who self-identify as evangelical has actually risen very slightly since 2008. ” - Ryan Burge