1. What Is Evangelicalism? Toward a Working Definition With the rise of Trumpism, the American evangelical movement has more power and influence than ever. At the same time, according to numbers from the most recent Pew survey, more people are leaving the church than ever. For millions of Americans, evangelicalism is-or was-a way of life, influencing every aspect of their existence from the sacred to the mundane. Evangelicalism provides a ready-made worldview complete with stances on ethics, the afterlife, politics, and more, in addition to an entire custom consumer marketplace offering "Christian" alternatives for movies, music, books, and schools. Yet for millions of other Americans who exist outside of the evangelical realm, it's a strange, inscrutable subculture about which they might know little and understand even less, except that it's constantly in the news for trying to outlaw reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights. How did we reach a point where a minority group of Christians (albeit a quite large minority) exerts such tremendous sway over our politics and culture? Why and how are people defecting from this movement and becoming "exvangelical"? And where do we go from here? To start to grapple with these issues, we first need to understand what evangelicalism is. This is a trickier task than it might seem-deciding who "counts" as an evangelical and what the defining features of evangelicalism even are is a favorite pastime within evangelical circles. In the most literal sense, "evangelical" simply means "having to do with the gospel"; the English word gospel comes from an Old English translation of the Greek term euangelion , meaning "good news." But in the practical sense, it means something much more than that. Use of the word "evangelical" dates back to the Protestant Reformation, but over the centuries, its meaning has shifted and shifted again. Even in the present day, "evangelical" is a nebulous term. Scholars disagree on how to classify it, and believers use it however they see fit. Is it a theological perspective, a religious affiliation, a consumer culture, or a political voting bloc? The answer to all these questions is "Yes." We might say that, at its most basic, evangelicalism is a type of Protestant Christianity. In the United States, it's usually defined in opposition to Catholicism and "mainline Protestantism." What that means is that most American Christians can be categorized as either Catholic or Protestant, and the Protestants can be further subdivided into mainline Protestant, evangelical Protestant, and "historically black" Protestant. (Yes, the fact that "historically black" is its own category is extremely significant, a fact that I'll explore in depth throughout this book.) But unlike, say, "Catholic" or "Presbyterian," the word "evangelical" does not denote a specific denomination, and there is no centralized authority to adjudicate who is and who isn't evangelical. If you identify as evangelical, you likely also identify as a specific denomination like Baptist or Methodist... or you might eschew those categories altogether and identify as "nondenominational." If you're in certain denominations, like Baptist, you'd probably be classified as evangelical... but then again, you might not. This is why, for evangelicals and nonevangelicals alike, the definition of evangelical is often akin to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: "I know it when I see it." To that end, in order to let readers "see it," although this book is not a memoir, I want to start by telling you about a pretty typical American evangelical upbringing: mine. If evangelicalism is a sliding scale, I grew up somewhere in the middle. I went to church every week, and while my parents grew up in small, independently run churches in rural Indiana, I grew up attending a United Methodist church in slightly less-rural Indiana. Depending on who you ask, the UM church is more mainline than evangelical, but like any denomination, it takes on the local flavor of its region. The UM church in the majority-white small town in central Indiana where I grew up was more conservative than what you would find at a downtown Chicago UM church-with the significant caveat that, regardless of geography, the denomination ordains women as clergy. The first pastors I remember were women, and I would not learn until much later just how much that differentiated my faith experience from those who grew up in more conservative denominations (even though I did regularly visit my grandparents' churches, where women were not allowed to preach). But much of the rest of my church life was in keeping with the more conservative experiences I would have later. While my parents did not tightly control my media access, things still defaulted to a sort of conservative, "family-friendly" milieu. The Simpsons was bad because Bart mouthed off-that sort of thing. I remember "committing" to not having sex before marriage before I even really knew what sex was . I didn't know it then, but this was the evangelical bubble at work. I should note that, as a child, I didn't dislike my experience in church. I was a naturally religious kid and had both fond and formative experiences through church activities. The example my parents and others set has always stayed with me. I was curious about God and loved the Bible stories I learned. I read through the My First Bible Storybook I received in a single day. I wanted to be a good kid, and by and large, I was. I could also be a sickly kid. When I was two, my parents began to notice that I would sometimes slur my words as I spoke, and I was soon diagnosed with focal epilepsy-a form of epilepsy that only affects one area or region of the body. I spent the rest of my childhood undergoing varying degrees of medical intervention. In the 1980s and '90s, medical treatment of seizures was not what it is today. It relied heavily on barbiturates, and by my middle school years, I was on a drug cocktail of sixteen pills a day. I lost my coordination and balance and would see double-not a great condition to have while playing outfield in Little League baseball. If my stomach wasn't just right before I went to bed, I would be up much of the night vomiting. I also gained a lot of weight. Since I couldn't play sports anymore, I became more bookish, and with that bookishness came a renewed sense of religiosity and meaning-making. I understood my epilepsy as a "thorn in the flesh" given to me, just as one was given to the Apostle Paul so that he might not boast (2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Ephesians 2:8-10). Evangelicalism gave me the language for a sort of self-talk in which I convinced myself that my condition was meant to "keep me weak" and thus make me more dependent on God. When I was fourteen, my family moved to the Chicago suburbs and found ourselves at another United Methodist church down the road from our house. My sophomore year, I joined the youth group there. That small decision had a big impact on the trajectory of my life. Youth groups are powerful things. They offer ready-made friend groups and a sense of acceptance that teenagers crave. The teen years are all about exploring identity, and youth pastors around the nation are ready and willing to help you "explore your identity in Christ" even before your very first sense of self has had a chance to settle. It was in this environment that I got the brilliant idea to start signing my name with a Bible verse, which seemed like a very mature thing for a fifteen-year-old to do at the time. The verse was John 3:30: "He must increase, but I must decrease." In the space of a few weeks, putting that signature on my job applications lost me the chance at a job at Barnes & Noble-but got me a job at Lemstone Books, a regional Christian bookstore chain in the Midwest that was big at the time, if not as well-known as LifeWay or Family Christian. From there, I would walk, willfully, further into the bubble. It embraced me, and I embraced it. Even as it hurt me. My entire teenage life was built up in that environment. In my family, we were church people-my father attended Promise Keepers events, my mom led the staff-parish relations committee-but I was a Jesus Freak. Much of the money I earned from my job was funneled right back into purchasing books and music from the store-I couldn't resist the 35 percent employee discount. I bought nearly every book by Philip Yancey; a six-book box set of C. S. Lewis classics; Every Prophecy of the Bible by John F. Walvoord, with its ominous cover featuring a military helicopter and camel in silhouette; at least eight different Bibles; apologetics books like Josh McDowell's More Than a Carpenter ; devotionals like My Utmost for His Highest ; and so much Christian rock music. Switchfoot was my favorite band, followed by Third Day, the Insyderz, Sonicflood, and the Normals. My friends were all within this circle; any who weren't, I invited in. I didn't know any other way. Our youth group attended worship conferences at Moody Bible Institute; when one girl sprained her ankle during a Sonicflood concert, the lead singer came over and prayed for her. It was at youth group that I met both of the girlfriends I had before I met my wife (whom I met at a Christian college, mind you). It was all-encompassing. It was my world. By the ripe old age of seventeen, I had decided to become a pastor. I applied to a "Christ-centered" college called Indiana Wesleyan University, got in, and prepared to walk even further into the bubble. At this point, if you were raised evangelical, you're probably nodding along in recognition. You likely had a lot of the same experiences (and if you're really honest with yourself, you might even be a little jealous of Jeff Deyo's attempts at faith-healing my friend's ankle). If you weren't raised evangelical, you might still feel a sense of recognition: "Ah, you were one of those kids." In the '90s and '00s, there were certain things that distinguished "Christian kids" at public schools. There were the clothes-hackneyed, copyright-infringing T-shirts with proselytizing slogans. There were the clubs, whether they were youth groups, See You at the Pole, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Fellowship of Christian Students, or 30 Hour Famine. There was the music, much of which was cringeworthy and somehow sounded like the artist was faking it even when they were genuine, though some of it was beautiful, wrestled openly with questions of faith, or simply slapped. And, of course, there were the ham-fisted attempts to "witness to" kids at your school, who, depending on where you lived, were very likely also Christian . Because that's the thing about evangelicalism: it presents itself quite simply as Christianity . It is not conditioned or modified. Growing up, I knew that, yes, there existed Christians far afield who were Catholic or Coptic or Orthodox, but as far as I could tell, we only nominally considered them a part of our brotherhood. Our teachings, on the other hand, were immutable and eternal, as if the Christians of the first century handed their traditions and ways of life directly to us. Evangelical Christianity was default-setting Christianity; everything else was lumped into a big vague category of "other." But evangelicalism is not default-setting Christianity. It is evangelicalism. As we look back into history, what would become identifiable as modern evangelical theology has its roots in the nineteenth century; for a faith that measures its history in millennia, this is not a very long time at all. So we return once again to the slippery question: What is evangelicalism? The pop-culture and media-consumption signifiers I catalogued above identify believers as belonging to an in-group, but what does that in-group believe? If evangelicalism is a religious affiliation, what religious beliefs does it espouse? Since 1989, evangelicals have been able to answer this question by pointing to a neat list of theological concepts known by the oddly quaint-sounding title "the "Bebbington quadrilateral." First posited by historian David Bebbington in his book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain : A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, it describes evangelicalism as having four defining characteristics, which I'll explain in my own words. - Biblicism: Evangelicals emphasize the importance and authority of the Bible over that of any clergy or church tradition. - Crucicentrism: Evangelicals focus on Jesus's death on the cross as the defining and central feature of Christianity. - Conversionism: Evangelicals believe you must actively choose Christianity and be "born again" in a transformational moment. - Activism: Evangelicals emphasize bringing others into the faith. This theological definition of evangelicalism is true as far as it goes. You don't have to hang around evangelicals very long to hear about all four of these concepts in depth. Whether you've spent time in the evangelical world or not, you've probably heard phrases like "The Bible is the literal and inerrant word of God" (biblicism) or "Christ died for your sins" (crucicentrism), and you're aware that evangelicals proselytize to others (activism), asking people if they're "saved" or if they've "accepted Jesus into their hearts" (conversionism). But is this what's important about evangelicalism? Writing about the Bebbington quadrilateral in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind , evangelical historian Mark Noll calls it a "useful general definition" but notes that these evangelical impulses have never by themselves yielded cohesive, institutionally compact, easily definable, well-coordinated, or clearly demarcated groups of Christians. Rather, the history of these evangelical impulses has always been marked by shifts in which groups, leaders, institutions, goals, concerns, opponents, and aspirations become more or less visible and more or less influential over time. In other words, these theological concepts are not the essential and immutable tenets of evangelicalism. They are bent or broken, emphasized or de-emphasized, reinforced or ignored to fit the goals of the evangelical project-not the other way around. In thinking about whether theology is really the most important signifier of evangelicalism, it may be helpful to look at another "general definition" that is as pithy as Justice Stewart's one-line definition of pornography: the adage attributed to evangelical historian George Marsden that an evangelical is "anyone who likes Billy Graham." While that might have been true once, when you're reading this book in 2024 or later, it would be closer to the truth to say an evangelical is "anyone who likes Donald Trump-or, failing that, would still rather vote for a Republican than a Democrat." This is not just my read on the situation; in a 2021 study, the Pew Research Center reported that "there is solid evidence that White Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than White Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020." Are these newly born-again white evangelical Christians familiar with the tenets of the Bebbington quadrilateral? If it is as inherent to the evangelical experience as some propose, they should be. But, no, the far more likely reason they adopted the evangelical moniker is Trumpism. They were attracted to his cruel and racist politics, and they were happy to be part of an in-group that affirmed and worked to enact those politics. Excerpted from Exvangelical and Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement That's Fighting Back by Blake Chastain All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
