Last month the Public Religion Research Institute reported that its latest
polling shows white U.S. Protestants who identify as "evangelical" are now
outnumbered by whites who do not do so. That upended the usual thinking on
numbers, and analysts raised doubts. The discussion led Terry Shoemaker of
Arizona State University, writing for theconversaation.com, to again mull
the perennial question of what "evangelical" means.
In the American context, this term essentially covers the conservative wing
of Protestantism, a variegated constellation of denominations, independent
congregations, "parachurch" ministries, media outlets, and individual
personalities that is organizationally scattered but religiously coherent.
There are three ways of defining and counting U.S. evangelicals -- by
belief, by church affiliation and by self-identification. Shoemaker's
analysis (which is open to some nitpicking) started from the belief aspect
and a four-point definition by historian David Bebbington in his 1989 work
"Evangelicalism in Modern Britain." In summary, these points are:
(1) a high view of the Bible as Christians' ultimate authority,
(2) emphasis on Jesus Christ's work of salvation on the cross,
(3) the necessity of conscious personal faith commitments and changed lives
(often called the "born again" experience) and
(4) activism in person-to-person evangelism, missions and moral reform.
Problem is, those four points overlap with the definition of "Protestant"
or even "Christian."