I believe it is very important that we broaden our definition of Christian, but at the same time narrow our definition of Evangelical. Very often people confuse the two these days. The Evangelical movement has always been a movement within the wider Christian movement. Often it has been accused of believing that only other Evangelicals are really Christians. It is no wonder then, that some today do not like it when people suggest they are probably not an Evangelical. The latest in a long line of examples of this is a recent debate over whether Rachel Held Evans is an Evangelical or not. Answering the question “What is an evangelical?” is far from easy, but I will attempt it in my next post. Clearly though, if “Evangelical” is a subset of “Christian” we do well to first understand what is the meaning of Christian. I have always been taught to never assume anything.
Having a clear understanding of what is a Christian is very important. However, when we look at many statements of faith for Evangelical organizations, they actually often in fact define Christian doctrine that many from other wings of the church could affirm. Thus if used as the meaning of “Evangelical”, such statements are surely way too broad. Equally, many other attempts to define Evangelicalism quite rightly look at certain aspects more unique to the movement, but in doing so often fail to make the point that Evangelicals do in fact also hold very tightly to those truths that all Christian movements adhere to.
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