TY  - BOOK
AU  - Gushee,David P.
AU  - Sharp,Isaac B.
TI  - Evangelical Ethics: A Reader
SN  - 9781611645996
AV  - BJ1275 -- .E93 2015eb 
U1  - 241/.0404 
PY  - 2015///
CY  - La Vergne
PB  - Westminster John Knox Press
KW  - Christian ethics
KW  - Evangelicalism
KW  - Electronic books
N1  - Front cover -- Evangelical Ethics -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- General Editors' Introduction -- Introduction -- Bibliography -- List of Contributors -- Index of Ancient Sources -- Index of Names and Subjects -- Back cover
N2  - Introduction    WHO ARE THE EVANGELICALS?    Evangelicalism is notoriously difficult to define. Everything within the postmodern academy suffers from contestation ad nauseam, but evangelicalism has proven time and again a particularly thorny concept. Even if we choose to focus exclusively on evangelicalism within the United States, and almost entirely restrict the conversation to the post-World War II period, as we will do here, there is much to contest.    Due to the multiplicities of meaning associated with the descriptor and the attempts, time and again, to offer a concise definition for a group that defies easy categorization, some scholars have suggested that we jettison the term evangelical altogether.1 Feeling that the broader cultural association of the term with a particularly narrow political agenda--an anti-gay and anti-abortion agenda-- has left the label unredeemable, some within the evangelical community itself are today choosing to self-disassociate with evangelicalism and are using terms like "post-evangelical" or even "ex-evangelical."2 In this sense a particular social-political theological ethic within a sector of evangelicalism is undercutting evangelicalism itself. But that gets ahead of our story.    If no one can agree on anything else about evangelicalism there is, at least, a consensus among those who know it best that evangelicalism is a slippery term. Some scholars approach the study of evangelicalism through a sociological lens and then disagree about who counts as an evangelical. Others define the movement in terms of religious history and then disagree about when and from whence it came. Still others view evangelicalism in terms of theological beliefs: a lens most often chosen by those "on the inside" and frequently deployed in times of hottest disagreement in order to decide who is still in and, more importantly; who is now out. Evangelicals, in part due to a distinctive historical journey we are about to describe, do an awful lot of arguing about who counts as an evangelical and who does not.    In another attempt at enumerating evangelical theological characteristics, evangelical historian George Marsden includes the five following "essential evangelical beliefs": 1. Harkening ever back to the Protestant Reformation, evangelicals maintain the "final authority of the Bible"; 2. the belief that Scripture records the real historical narrative of "God''s saving work"; 3. redemption through the salvific work of Jesus Christ and yielding eternal life; 4. "the importance of evangelism and missions"; 5. the necessity "of a spiritually transformed life."4    Union Seminary professor Gary Dorrien, contra Donald Dayton''s suggestion that the term evangelical has lost its usefulness, instead agrees with Marsden and further quips about his "favorite definition of an evangelical, which is ''anyone who likes Billy Graham.''"5 This quip is revelatory of a sociological reality about evangelicalism; it has often produced hugely visible and charismatic figures ranging from Aimee Semple Macpherson to Billy Sunday to Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell to Rick Warren to John Piper to Jim Wallis to Rob Bell to . . . whoever comes next. An "evangelical" in this sense would be someone who knows who these evangelical icons are and who takes as authoritative one, some, or all of them.    Noting the importance of the denominational and confessional diversity of evangelicalism, evangelical church historian Timothy Weber sees evangelicalism as "a large extended family" with four main branches including: 1. classical: loyalists to the Reformation, with a tendency toward creedalism and away from the value of religious experience 2. pietistic: also within the Reformation stream but including; an emphasis on religious experience and including both pietism and Puritanism; 3. fundamentalist: defined as opposing "liberal, critical, and evolutionary teaching" but also including "their ''neo-evangelical'' offspring"; 4. progressive: including those who attempt to reconcile modernity with a variety of evangelical beliefs.6 This sophisticated and helpful definition points already at sociological diversities within evangelicalism.    Or we could just go back to the etymological origins of the word evangelical, which at least are clear. The English word evangelical and associated words like evangelism come from the Greek word εύαγγέλιον (euangelion). Every definition of these terms must, therefore, reckon with their original meaning: "good news."7 (Evangelicals themselves will sometimes argue about which versions of our faith still represent "good news" to a suffering and unjust world and thus still merit the term "evangelical.") And as traced by Mark Noll--who is evangelicalism''s foremost historian--the use of the term evangelical as an adjective dates back at least to the Middle Ages, when writers used it to describe the prophet Isaiah or the followers of St. Francis.8    More history helps us gain some clarity. The term evangelical began taking on its modern shape during the sixteenth century with the advent of the Protestant Reformation, at which point it began to be used as a synonym for Protestant--as is still the case in Germany today, where Evangelische means Protestant and especially Lutheran.9 The movement that would become what we are describing when we say evangelicalism, however, offers a particular fl of Christian faith that neither includes all Protestants nor is limited solely to Reformation-descended Protestantism. As we will see, though, the reformist impulse, implanted at its birth, continues to impact evangelicalism even; now. This impulse has at times focused on doctrine and therefore on renewing theological seriousness or offering resistance to theological (or ethical) liberalism. Some of evangelicalism''s greatest contributions to Christianity, however, have been about the renewal of passion in moribund Christianity and the drive to move people back toward devout "biblical" Christianity.    The first "modern" evangelicals were born when some newly minted Protestants were insultingly called "evangelicals" and chose to accept the label. The ensuing religious foment of sixteenththrough eighteenth-century Europe and the fledgling American colonies then gave rise to several more movements varyingly described as evangelical including Puritanism, Pietism, and the revival movements of the first American "Great Awakening." Formed for a variety of activist and evangelistic goals, evangelical "associations" then began taking root in the fertile, more disestablished religious soil of nineteenth-century North America.10 Evangelicalism as a movement was always multi-denominational and multi-confessional, including Calvinists (but also Arminians), Wesleyans, Anabaptists, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Holiness, and eventually charismatics, Pentecostals, and others. There are even evangelical Episcopalians, now often called Anglicans in the U.S. setting, and some speak of evangelical Catholics. The historic black churches are almost all evangelical by any theological definition, though they have often not been institutionally close to predominantly white evangelical bodies due to the tortured history of race in America. Evangelicalism has never been confined to official denominational structures--sometimes evangelicals are a minority within a broader denomination while at other times they dominate a particular denomination--thus there are self-identified evangelicals in; the mainline Presbyterian and Methodist denominations while the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole is normally viewed as evangelical. Meanwhile, evangelicals have tended to produce a lush crop of parachurch organizations for various mission and activist purposes. So evangelicals include groups ranging from the Salvation Army to the Vineyard churches to the World Relief and World Vision social ministries. In some ways the leaders of these groups act as each era''s current evangelical gatekeepers, an unofficial house of bishops for a decentralized evangelicalism attempting to retain its vitality and identity.    These evangelical institutions--some old and some new, including churches, colleges, publishing houses, and parachurch groups--continue to help define and shape the evangelical subculture. If you know Wheaton, Gordon, and Azusa Pacific universities; if you have heard of Books & Culture, Relevant, and Charisma magazines; if you read books published by Thomas Nelson, Baker, and Zondervan publishing houses; if you participated in Campus Crusade, RUF, or Intervarsity Christian Fellowship while in college; if you sang worship songs from Hillsong or have attended the Passion conference held in Atlanta each year--you probably are, or were, an evangelical. Each nation with a strong evangelical presence could tell its own version of the same story; meanwhile, there are institutions of global evangelicalism, such as the World Evangelical Fellowship and the Lausanne Movement.    AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM AND ITS SOCIAL ETHICS    But now let us focus more tightly on the trajectory of American evangelicalism and its social ethics. The waves of religious and cultural change cresting around the turn of the twentieth century left an indelible imprint on all aspects of American Christianity, including what became American evangelicalism. American Christian; approaches
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