Is it time for us to stop using the word ‘evangelical’ as our primary self-label?
We have long been used to the media being thoroughly muddled about those who count as ‘evangelicals’ and those who don’t. Odd American televangelists (even the use of that word is a bit of a give away, isn’t it?) and people we would regard as full-on heretics are labelled in the popular media as one of us— as ‘evangelicals’. More recently (over the past six months or so), I have noticed more and more people from a very wide spectrum calling themselves ‘evangelicals’: when asked, charismatics, pentecostals, fundamentalists and others (some from the fringe of their movements rather than centre) identify themselves as ‘evangelicals’.
Does this mean that ‘evangelical’ has now gone the way of ‘Christian’ in becoming another word used so widely and so vaguely that we can’t use it without qualification?
The point is that words don’t stand still. The meaning of a word, as Wittgenstein famously pointed out, is its use in the language. As the use changes, the meaning changes. That’s why, for instance, ‘anthropos’ can no longer be translated ‘man’ because the use of ‘man’ among English speakers has changed from ‘mankind’ to ‘the masculine half of mankind’. It’s useless to rail against such changes or try to resist them; they are a fact of life.
So my question is: has this now happened to ‘evangelical’? Interestingly, the Macquarie Dictionary now defines ‘evangelical’ as meaning “related to those Christian bodies which emphasise the teachings and authority of the Scriptures, in opposition to that of the church itself or of reason”. But Scripture-endorsing, Briefing-reading ‘evangelicals’ are not opposed to either reason or the church.
It seems to me that we can’t go on blithely using ‘evangelical’ in its 16th-century sense1 without being grossly misunderstood. So what do we do?
Do we add adjectives? Dick Lucas once suggested we call ourselves ‘classical evangelicals’, but would that mean anything to most people? And surely ‘Reformed evangelical’ would be just as puzzling to the wider world. Or do we abandon ‘evangelical’ and consciously use another label? If so, what? Could we, perhaps, revive ‘Protestant’ and make it distinctively our own? Over to you: suggestions please.
- “Since the Reformation adopted as the designation of certain theological parties, who have claimed that the doctrines on which they lay especial stress constitute ‘The Gospel’” (OED). ↩
