I didn’t know that I was an evangelical until I was 22, though I grew up in a tight-knit charismatic Christian community that any outsider, today, would call evangelical. But, back then, through the 1980s and 90s we were “Born Again” or “Charismatic.” We evangelized, but never referred to ourselves as evangelical.
Perhaps this is because it has always been difficult to know what one means by “evangelical.” Is it a theological construct, as some argue, or a social categorization? David Bebbington, a British historian who studied the movement, famously defined evangelicalism as marked by belief in conversionism, biblicism, activism, and crucicentrism. But, even there, wedged amongst theological propositions, the presence of activism suggests that evangelicalism is in fact a social movement.
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