I am an Evangelical

The debate about the label evangelical has resurfaced again, as Thabiti Anyabwile has tweeted that he no longer wishes to be classed as an evangelical. In his context, this seems to be because of the devaluing of the term and the constituency in the US context with socio-political content, i.e. right-wing Republicanism, Trump and approaches to issues like race and poverty have come to define evangelicalism for some. It's worth reading Steve Kneale's blog thinking this through from a non-US position.

The issue of a label being devalued to the point of being worse than useless strikes a chord though. It's something I've discussed on the podcast with Steve before and something I've written about before. Like many evangelicals who went through the selection process within the Church of England, I watched the label "evangelical" be systematically devalued. Lots of us have a story about training sessions where the wings of the church (liberal, catholic and evangelical) were described so that when the question was asked, "what are you?", everyone was compelled to say: "Well a bit of all of them!" That was only possible by describing evangelicalism (and the other wings) in such a way as to miss many of it's distinctives! It also meant that much and many are described as evangelical when they are not.

This is different to the issue Anyabwile is describing. In my case, the definition of evangelical was spuriously diluted. In his, I think it would be right to say it was spuriously concentrated, i.e. it was made more specific on issues of politics for example. Neither is particularly conducive to wanting to keep the term.

And yet for me, in my context, it's true that I am keen to keep the word evangelical, the church plant I serve is affiliated to the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches and we even named the church plant Rochdale Evangelical Church.

Here's a few reasons why:

1. I prefer to keep and try and redeem labels, even if I have to define them. At the most obvious level, I do this with the label "Christian" all the time. That can mean so many things in the 21st Century in the UK, but I feel I need to keep it, even if I need to repeatedly define it biblically. I might feel the same about terms like "disciple" and I will need to do it with all kinds of terms like "faith" or "holiness." Labels (like all words) will always need definition, but I think they are worth fighting to retain.
2. The label evangelical has strong biblical roots. The Greek word εὐαγγελιον  in the New Testament is the one we translate as "gospel" or "good news". So when I use evangelical it helps me describe myself as gospel-centred, which I think is good.
3. The label evangelical has historical content and weight looking back to the Reformation, through the evangelical revivals and into many modern day evangelical organisations. Whether we look at the the Bebbington Quadrilateral as a definition or something like the IFES statement of faith or indeed books by evangelical luminaries like John Stott or Martyn Lloyd Jones, we find a definite theological unity that I think defies historical and geographical location.
4. The label evangelical has a useful breadth. I am other things that put me in a subset of evangelicalism (e.g. Reformed and complementarian), but the term evangelical, properly applied, gives useful gospel unity.
5. I don't think the label evangelical has the connotations in the UK that it has in the US. Certainly there can be some transference, but more or less I think it is understood on the inside of evangelicalism (although we often need to sharpen up our understanding let's be honest) and has almost no content outside (although I accept that when the US sneezes etc.).

I'm not sure what I would do in Anyabwile's situation. I certainly feel his concern and it's not nice to be pulled into being defined as something you are not. I wish people would stop trying to appropriate labels that don't describe them or redefine labels to describe only them and you certainly have to work with the language that is used. If only people would use the right labels for the right things! However, at the moment, I want to push back in our context. I am an evangelical. I define it from it's biblical and historical roots. It should neither be co-opted into a fuzzy all-inclusive mush nor defined by things it has never included.