Will future historians look back on the present century, plus the past five centuries and identify them as the religious period called “Evangelical”? And if so, will there ever be a Neo-Evangelical period, or an Evangelical Renaissance? I ask because some say we are entering a post-evangelical age.
Does “evangelical” describe a collective impetus and its resultant actions among Christian believers to go and make disciples of all the world? This would qualify as a movement, which ebbs and flows throughout the entire history of Christianity, not limited to Protestantism. In this case “evangelical” would not be limited to any particular period of history.
Or, is “evangelical” an inherent trait of a person born again in Christ? In which case it would be limited to neither an historical period nor a movement. True, not all Christians are called to be evangelical by vocation, yet insofar as we all witness to Christ, we will in some way be evangelical.
The way that we define and categorize things is important, because it reflects our thinking. Why, for example, do we categorize periods of history at all? Perhaps so that we can gain a cursory understanding of them as part of our general knowledge and education, what used to be considered a “liberal arts” education. The problem with this, of course, is that when attempts are made to speak of them in more than a general way, gross oversimplification results.
In Lions and Foxes, Men and Ideas of the Italian Renaissance, Sidney Alexander begins by asking, “Was there a Renaissance?” He points out that “The Renaissance did not invent the flesh, and the joys of this world were not discovered like America in 1492.” (p. 17). Yet at the same time he acknowledges that “there is a period in Italian history...forming a cluster of traits, a physiognomy, which makes it recognizably different from that which went before and that which comes after." (p. 17)
A cluster of traits, of course, is what distinguishes anything from anything else. But it doesn’t seem that we always truly think in this way. Rather, we think in labels and broad categories, which can become abstractions if we’re not careful. In truth, certain traits may be more prevalent among more people at certain times than at other times, which enables us to identify a period of time characterized by this prevalence. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that things appear and disappear completely, with no precedent and no antecedent, never to be heard from again.
The problem with recent use of the term “evangelical,” then, is that it has come to be identified with the wrong traits, due to being used as a label and a category. “Evangelical” doesn’t mean “evangelical” anymore. People make it mean what they want it to mean, to identify people the way they want them to be identified; even to identify themselves the way they want to be identified, whether accurately or not, whether associated with true evangelism or not.
As long as people are people, I’m afraid that this can never change. It’s just “one of those things,” as my step-dad used to say.
I remember a conversation I had once with a Jehovah’s Witness. She said that we must be sure to call God by his proper name, “Yeshua,” or “Jehovah,” that He’s angered if we don’t. I answered that I didn’t think that the name was as important as the identity. Myself, I would much rather that someone know me and have my name wrong than the other way around. Wouldn’t you?
The term “Christian” isn’t without it’s problems either, or rather the problem isn’t with the term but with the way it is understood and used. Which isn’t the fault of the term. So I don’t think there’s any need to reclaim terms, which are derived from certain historical meanings (as language itself is derivative) of things that don’t change, as long as people continue to live them. Let evangelicals (Christians) be truly evangelical, and let those who care about the integrity of terms (i.e., using them to mean what they truly mean and not what others want to make them mean, for their own ends) keep the trait properly named, movements and periods notwithstanding.
