Evangelicalism

Evangelicalism.
1. The term ‘Evangelical’ has been applied since the Reformation to the Protestant Churches generally because of their claim to base their teaching preeminently on the Gospel.

2. In Germany and Switzerland ‘Evangelical’ was long used of the Lutheran group of Protestant Churches as contrasted with the Calvinist (‘Reformed’) Churches.

3. In the C of E the term is currently applied to the school which lays special stress on personal conversion and salvation by faith in the atoning death of Christ. The group originated in the 18th cent. and had points of contact with the Methodist movement. C. Simeon made Evangelicalism a force at Cambridge and indirectly at other universities and prepared clergy and laity for work in the parishes and overseas. Dislike of their religious earnestness led to opposition, but the piety and humanity of the Evangelicals gradually won them a large following.

From c.1830 Anglican Evangelicalism narrowed and there were divisions, especially over belief in the return of Christ before the millennium. There was, however, general acceptance of belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible and resistance to the findings of science and biblical criticism. With the stress on personal consecration and world evangelism, social and political reform disappeared from the Evangelical programme.

In the 20th cent. there was a deep division between Liberal Evangelicals, who accepted the findings of biblical criticism, and Conservative Evangelicals who stood firm on the verbal inspiration of Scripture. The latter group experienced a revival in the latter half of the century. The first National Evangelical Anglican Conference at Keele in 1967 broke the isolation of a century. Since then Conservative Evangelicals have taken a full part in the General Synod and other councils of the C of E, often working with Anglo-Catholics to oppose liberalism. There has been new concern for politics and social justice and a more positive attitude to the enjoyment of culture.