One of our Biblical and Theological Studies faculty, Dr. Ken Stewart, has recently co-edited The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities, with Dr. Michael Haykin of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The book is an anthology of essays by a distinguished group of scholars continuing the important discussion which was particularly energized by David Bebbington’s 1989 book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s.

Bebbington’s principal aim was to present the rise and meaning of evangelicalism within its contemporary and wider historical and cultural context, and his central thesis is “that evangelical religion is the result of transatlantic revival in the 1730s, and that it took a cooperative attitude toward the Enlightenment rather than a contradictory one.” This main idea, simple in such brief presentation here, bears breadths and depths of significance as Bebbington unpacks the key characteristics of evangelicalism as he sees it: conversionism (emphasis on conversion), activism (emphasis on active witness), biblicism (emphasis on the authority of the Scriptures), and crucicentrism (emphasis on the centrality of the cross). Bebbington’s “quadrilateral” definition of evangelicalism in these terms has become the accepted view of virtually all subsequent descriptions, so much so that it is regularly referenced without citation. Click to continue »