New *OFFICIAL* Church Website About Polygamy

[_richardMdBorn]

A British historian, David Bebbington, defines an "Evangelical Christian" as a person exhibiting four beliefs and behaviors:

* Conversionism: the belief that lives of all humans need to be changed by way of a "born again" decision to repent of their sins and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.


* Activism: the expression of the gospel in various ways, including missionary outreach and social reform.

*Biblicism: a particular regard for the Bible as the Word of God and the ultimate authority for religious belief and morality.

*Crucicentrism: a stress on the substitutionary atonement by Christ on the cross. 13,14

http://www.religioustolerance.org/evan_defn.htm

I've met Bebbington who is a fine historian.

[_KimberlyAnn]

Those are pentecostals. They generally are thought to have started with the Azusa Street Revival. You could trace evangelicals back to the reformation or to the 18th C folks like Whitfield and Wesley.

Yes, I do think the term "Evangelical" is widely misunderstood.

Probably unfortunately, "evangelical" has shifted from Wesley "The world is my parish" evangelical to tongue-talking arm flailing Pentecostal evangelical, at least in popular culture where I live.

KA

[_Thama]

As I said, it means everything, and nothing at all.

I'm a Lutheran "evangelical," which, historically, deals with the nature of Protestant Christianity's proclamation that the "Church" is entered into via conscious belief in the evangelion, vis-a-vis the prior Roman Catholic belief that Christianity is merely a cultural Sitz em Leben. Or, that's my decidedly Protestant take on the matter.

I don't care a whit whether you view me as an "EV," or not. At a certain angle, I suppose I could be termed a "fundamentalist" (again, there's a lively terminological history here that would need to be addressed) but I certainly have no Pentecostal leanings. I'm actually a very High Calvinist--i.e., a Seven-Point Calvinist--which, essentially, makes me hated by typical EV's and typical atheists.

That's my "EV" doctrine. Look far and wide, but I doubt you'll find any self-respecting "Fundamentalists" or "Pentecostals" who hold to my particular beliefs.

But, yes, I'm an "EV" under the broadest rubric. More restrictive rubrics are, at this point, in America, not even possible, I'd think.

I have no interest in denying that you are a legitimate Evangelical. The main thing I've learned through this conversation, though, has been that there is a very large difference between the colloquial meaning of "Evangelical" and the historical or theological definition thereof.