Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism was a movement in Protestantism during the 18th century
in the English-speaking world.
There was a similar movement in German-speaking Protestantism called “Pietism.” This movement has had tremendous
intellectual, social and political consequences. Although it was in many ways contrary to the spirit of the
Enlightenment, it was also part of the Enlightenment. It was
opposed to the Enlightenment in that it maintained a Christian focus on the
supernatural activities of God, but it shared with the Enlightenment a similar
idea of knowledge and progress.
Evangelicals, like Enlightenment thinkers emphasized the importance knowing
things through observation and experience in contrast to tradition and
authority. Both Evangelicals and
Enlightenment writers believed that new knowledge would bring rapid progress in
human affairs.
The single most important figure in the history of Evangelicalism was John
Wesley, the founder of the Methodists (which between the Civil War and
World War II was the largest Protestant denomination in the United
States). John Wesley (1703- 91) was the evangelical movement's most
effective spokesman and organizer. It is calculated that during his long
life he traveled over 225,000 miles and preached some 40,000 sermons, most of
them in the open air. He was an ordained minister of the Church of
England, but he declined to settle down as a rector of a single church. Instead, he traveled constantly, preaching the
urgency of conversion. England was
already changing in the 1740s, when he began to preach. The industrial
revolution was just beginning, and new towns built around mines, textiles
manufacture, and trade with the American colonies, were growing up in the north
of England. Not surprisingly, Wesley was most successful there, where
traditional farming communities were breaking up and cities growing up with
relatively few official churches or clergymen to serve them.
Social change and a new style of religion can be threatening as well as
invigorating, and Wesley was often confronted with hostile crowds, sometimes
assembled by the local aristocrats. Wesley succeeded, however, in
persuading many to join him because he seemed to address the personal
experience of his listeners. One who heard him reported that "his
countenance struck such an awful dread upon me before I heard him speak, it
made my heart beat like the pendulum of a clock, and when he did speak I though
his whole discourse was aimed at me." This again is the secret of
evangelical religion: it is deeply personal. And it is also very
hopeful. Wesley's message, in the briefest of terms, was that God
promised everyone can escape the burden of sin immediately, if God’s grace was
allowed to work in your soul. The rewards of faith were both great and
immediate. This he called "present salvation."
The religion that Wesley preached was the dramatic transformation of
life. Nothing was to be the same; every aspect of life changed. Instead
of waiting for the death and for heaven, Wesley preached that a new life could
begin now. This transformation was supposed to be clearly observable both
through feelings and actions. The proof of God's transforming grace was
in the very tangible transformations of one's heart and of one's life.
This is what Wesley called "experimental faith" --in other words the
growing freedom from sin is found in one's everyday personal experience.
The Methodist societies were organized according to this experience.
Those who had not experienced conversion met together in classes for
"penitents." Those who had felt a spiritual renewal, but were
just starting their journey to holiness meet in classes called "bands."
Those more advanced members met in so-called "select
societies." These classes provided fellowship among similarly minded
people, and the basis for testifying, singing, Bible reading and praying.
This Methodist system helped to make Methodism the largest of the evangelical
organizations (and provided the original model for today's array of self-help
groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous).
We have two Methodist documents that attempt to explain how this transformation
of the soul--or conversion--takes place. The first is a hymn written by
Charles Wesley, John's brother and collaborator, "Come, O thou Traveller
Unknown." How would you describe the mood and plot of this
song? We will listen to musical settings of these lyrics to see how the
music expresses it. What can be learned about evangelical faith from this
piece?
The second document, An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, comes from John Wesley's early career, in
1743. As a straight-forward argument, it contrasts with his brother’s
hymn, and makes for a good comparison. As the title indicates, he was
addressing non-Methodists in the age of the enlightenment, and attempting to
explain that reason was at the foundation of Methodist faith. How can
this be? Is not the emotional piety of Methodism the opposite of cool
reason? First he defines knowledge as John Locke and Enlightenment
philosophers defined it: it is gained through the impression on the mind
of sensory experience. Wesley explains then how one gains knowledge of
the divine. Voltaire might agree with that way Wesley argues, but would
not agree that there is any such thing as an “eye of faith” or an “ear of
faith.” In other words, Voltaire
would disagree that there is a supernatural world beyond the natural one.
In spite of their focus on God and grace, Wesley and all evangelicals
thought of their faith as quite practical, that is to say it was to have real,
concrete results. He emphasized philanthropy--doing good to your neighbor
as both a spiritual discipline and a sign of the increasing sanctification of
the soul. In 1772, in the wake of some important trials concerning the
status of slaves in Britain, he was one of the first evangelicals to denounce
slavery and advocate its abolition. For Wesley, personal renewal spilled
into social activism.
To summarize, we can identify three key traits of Evangelical thought:
1. salvation is personal. There is, as in the Enlightenment generally,
a focus on personal experience of truth.
Each person is expected to test the truth for him or herself.
2. salvation is present It begins immediately to turn the sinner away
from sin, resulting in the complete transformation of that person's life in
every aspect. Like Enlightenment
thinkers, Evangelicals were more concerned with this world and this life than
they were with the life after death.
3. salvation is practical.
Evangelical faith was expected to
change the world as well as the
sinner. Social sins such as slavery were attacked as well as personal
sins. Like Enlightenment
thinkers generally, Evangelicals
believed that the potential of new knowledge would lead to both personal and
social progress.
This is the kind of faith that ignited the anti-slavery movement in Britain
and the United States, and then a whole chain of reform movements thereafter,
all conducted in the spirit of a mission: temperance and prohibition,
anti-gambling, the women's rights, civil rights, and peace movements.
The current version of evangelicalism took shape at the beginning of the
20th in reaction against the increasing tendency of evangelical churches such
as the Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, to emphasize
social activism at the expense of personal religion. It was also a
reaction against the conditions and pressures of the urban, industrial
world. Contemporary evangelicalism is thus conditioned by a need to resist change rather than make it. An older emphasis
on progress is replaced with an emphasis on the traditional. Earlier in the last century,
evangelicals emphasized personal religion and avoided political action. In the last generation, this has
changed. Evangelicalism has once again
become politically active, although in a mirror opposite way to the past. Instead of representing an optimistic
vision of progress, the new politics is one of resistance to changes they
oppose. The pessimism of the new
evangelicalism (society and intellect are going in the wrong direction)
distinguishes the new evangelicalism both from their past and from the spirit
of the Enlightenment. One old link
between Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment has been broken.
The age of the Enlightenment was also the age of Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism, as represented by John
Wesley and his brother Charles, was a reconfiguration of Protestantism in the
age of reason and industry. Although
Voltaire and Wesley would not agree about the existence of the supernatural
works of God, they would agree that Europeans must seek new knowledge verified
by personal experience rather than traditional authority, and they would agree
that this new knowledge will transform society and generate human progress. Ironically, the Evangelicals were first
into the field of social change by igniting the anti-slavery movement. The Enlightenment would later have an
even larger impact in shaping the American and French Revolutions.