The 50 Shades of Evangelicalism

I didn’t know that I was an evangelical until I was 22, though I grew up in a tight-knit charismatic Christian community that any outsider, today, would call evangelical. But, back then, through the 1980s and 90s we were “Born Again” or “Charismatic.” We evangelized, but never referred to ourselves as evangelical.

Perhaps this is because it has always been difficult to know what one means by “evangelical.” Is it a theological construct, as some argue, or a social categorization? David Bebbington, a British historian who studied the movement, famously defined evangelicalism as marked by belief in conversionism, Biblicism, activism, and crucicentrism. But, even there, wedged amongst theological propositions, the presence of activism suggests that evangelicalism is in fact a social movement.

Certainly this conception of evangelicalism as a social movement is what the mainstream media meant when they began to use the word to describe George W. Bush’s most ardent supporters leading up to the 2004 presidential elections. This is when I learned that, despite my individual political leanings, my religious affiliation consigned me to the evangelical voting bloc; it was assumed that a person with my religious beliefs would necessarily vote republican.
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