Evangelicalism is a motley crew that is pretty difficult to nail down. Some who claim the word I love, others who claim the word make me cringe. There are a plethora of stereotypes… some funny, some crazy, some I like, some are horrifying. Just check out flickr. I entered the word “evangelicalism” and look at the photos that turned up on the first page:

So what in the world is an evangelical? Here’s a definition from Operation world:

Evangelicals:* all who emphasize and adhere to all four of the following:

1. 1. The Lord Jesus Christ as the sole source of salvation through faith in Him as validated by His crucifixion and resurrection.
   2. personal faith and conversion with regeneration by the Holy Spirit.
   3. Recognition of the inspired Word of God as the ultimate basis and authority for faith and Christian living.
   4. Commitment to biblical witness, evangelism and mission that brings others to faith in Christ.

Evangelicals are largely Protestant, Independent or Anglican, but some are Catholic or Orthodox. It is one of the Transbloc movements in this book.

This definition is very close but not identical to the definition introduced in David Bebbington’s Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730′s to the 1980′s as the Bebbington Quadrilateral, which offered crucicentrism, conversionism, biblicism and activism as the four qualities of evangelicalism.

The definition of evangelicals and the statistics relating ot them are so fundamental to the contents of this book that it is important for the reader to understand the implications. It enables a measurement of the size and spectacular numerical growth of evangelical Christians over the past few decades.

Evangelicals are enumerated in Operation World as:

1. 1. All affiliated Christians (church members, their children, other participants of the faith community) of denominations that are definitively evangelical in theology as explained above.
   2. The proportion of the affiliated Christians in other denominations (that are not wholly evangelical in theology) who would hold evangelical views, whether WEstern in origin or otherwise.

This is a theological and not an experiential definition. It does not mean that all evangelicals as defined above are actually born-again. In many nations 10-40% of evangelicals so defined may have had a valid conversion and regularly attend church services. However, it does show how many people align themselves with churches where the gospel is being proclaimed as such.

(From Appendix 6, p. 958 in Operation World)

Your welcome

*(this is clarification #1 from Operation World‘s section on Québec, cited inmy last post)