Theology, History, and the Question of Identity

It is the summer of 1976. A Gallup poll asks Americans a deceptively simple question: "Have you been born again?" Thirty-four percent say yes. Overnight, a single survey question gives a name to a movement that has existed in America for over two centuries.

In Episode 4, hosts John Fea, Dan Hummel, and Maggie Capra invite two theologians into the conversation — scholars who have spent their careers thinking carefully about what evangelicalism actually is, not just what it has historically looked like. Their perspectives challenge, sharpen, and enrich the historical framework the hosts have relied on since Episode 1: the Bebbington Quadrilateral.

The result is a wide-ranging, genuinely probing conversation about definition, identity, behavior, celebrity, race, and the limits of both history and theology as disciplines. What emerges is not a tidy answer — but a more honest picture of why this question matters and why it resists easy resolution.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Vincent Bacote has been a professor of theology at Wheaton College in Illinois since 2000, where he also serves as director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics. His scholarship lives at the intersection of Christian conviction and public life, with published work on the Holy Spirit, Abraham Kuyper, and the relationship between race and the evangelical tradition.

Cory Marsh is a professor of New Testament and director of the Master of Theology program at Southern California Seminary (SCS), a small, confessional institution committed to dispensational theology and the authority of Scripture. He holds four degrees from SCS and a Ph.D. in Biblical Theology from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He co-hosts The Pastor-Scholar Podcast and serves as scholar-in-residence at Revolved Bible Church in San Juan Capistrano.

The Bebbington Quadrilateral Revisited

The episode opens with host John Fea reminding listeners of the framework that has structured the podcast since its first episode: the Bebbington Quadrilateral, proposed by British historian David Bebbington in his landmark 1989 study of evangelicalism.

Both guests affirm the Quadrilateral as a helpful foundation — but both also push beyond it.

What Bacote Adds: The Holy Spirit and a "Bible-Centric Ecumenism"
Bacote frames his definition of evangelicalism as a "conservative Protestant ecumenism" — people from different denominational backgrounds united by a shared commitment to scripture. He endorses a fifth element to the Quadrilateral: something explicitly addressing the work of the Holy Spirit. As global Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity grows, he argues, pneumatology (the doctrine of the Spirit) can no longer be assumed as a background feature — it must be named.

Bacote also raises a deeper challenge. For Black evangelicals, the entailments of the Quadrilateral go further than many White evangelicals have been willing to follow. If biblicism is genuine, it demands engagement with the full scope of scripture's social vision — including the radical claim of Revelation 5:9, that Christ purchased a people from every tribe and tongue. Survival, Bacote argues, has always required Black evangelicals to take that seriously in a way that comfort has sometimes allowed others to avoid.

What Marsh Adds: The "Vintage Faith" Quintilateral

Marsh builds on and extends the Bebbington Quadrilateral, arguing that evangelicalism must be defined not only by beliefs but also by the behaviors those beliefs produce. His model — which he calls "vintage faith" — consists of five pillars:

1. Supremacy of Scripture — The Bible as the inerrant, final authority for faith and practice
2. Exclusivity of Jesus — Salvation found only through faith in Christ's substitutionary death and resurrection
3. Zealous Evangelism — A Spirit-empowered mandate to proclaim the gospel and make disciples, rooted in the conviction that personal redemption is the true catalyst for social change
4. Theological Education — A commitment to growing in knowledge of God and Scripture through formal and informal study
5. Local Church Fellowship — Consistent physical assembly with other believers for worship, accountability, mutual encouragement, and faithful exposition of Scripture 

Marsh introduces what he calls the "crucial X factor": local church fellowship as a non-negotiable fundamental. He argues that without physical accountability structures — elders, deacons, community — evangelical identity becomes unmoored. This shapes his sharp critique of Christian celebrityism.

On Christian Celebrityism

One of the most pointed exchanges in the episode involves the question of celebrity culture within evangelicalism. Marsh draws a clear distinction between the two categories:

1. Christian Celebrity: Social power without proximity. Influence exercised at a remove, without genuine accountability, grounded in platform rather than person.
2. Public Minister: Social influence within proximity. A minister whose wide reach is rooted in the local church — accountable to elders, known in community, not merely a persona. 

Marsh draws on Katelyn Beaty's definition of Christian celebrity from her book Celebrities for Jesus (Brazos Press, 2022) — "social power without proximity" — to name what he sees as one of evangelicalism's most corrosive tendencies. When platform substitutes for accountability, he argues, moral failure becomes structurally predictable. His prescription is blunt: "We need to kill Christian celebrityism."

The hosts engage this critique with some complexity. Dan Hummel notes that historically, evangelicalism has often cohered through major personalities — Whitfield, Moody, Billy Graham, Falwell — and that celebrity and structural necessity have been harder to separate than Marsh's framework suggests.

Historians and Theologians: Different Questions, Different Methods

After the guest interviews, the hosts reflect on the methodological tensions the conversations exposed. The discussion turns on a key distinction:

• Historians tend to ask: What IS evangelicalism — who has claimed the label, what did they believe, what did they do? Definitions are drawn from the data.
• Theologians tend to ask: What OUGHT evangelicalism to be — what core convictions define it, what behaviors must flow from those convictions? Definitions are normative. 

Dan Hummel observes that Bebbington's Quadrilateral appeals to theologians precisely because it is "trans-historical" — it describes categories that feel eternal rather than historically contingent. Historians, trained to situate ideas in time and place, find this both useful and insufficient.

The hosts also raise a third category — orthopathy, or "right affection" — alongside orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice). How an evangelical feels toward neighbors, enemies, and fellow believers rarely appears in formal definitions, and yet it keeps surfacing in contemporary debates about evangelical public life.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED

• David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (Unwin Hyman, 1989)
• Vincent Bacote, Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News (2020)
• Cory Marsh, Recovering a Vintage Faith: Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity (Mentor, 2026)
• Katelyn Beaty, Celebrities for Jesus (Brazos Press, 2022)
• Thomas Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis (Yale University Press, 2019)
• John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011)
• Isaac Sharp [referenced in discussion of self-identifying evangelicals]
• Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Eerdmans, 1947)
• Tim Larson [Wheaton College colleague of Bacote, advocate for adding the Holy Spirit to the Quadrilateral]

Hosts:

JOHN FEA - Visiting Fellow in History, Lumen Center; Distinguished Professor of History, Messiah University

MAGGIE CAPRA - Visiting Instructor in American History, Beloit College

DAN HUMMEL - Director of the Lumen Center; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This podcast is brought to you by the Lumen Center and STUDIO, both initiatives of the SL Brown Foundation. 

Find out more about our work:

• slbf.org/lumen-center
• slbf.org/studio

Produced by Daniel Johnson and Dave Conour

Edited by Dave Conour 

Transcript

Introduction: Have You Been Born Again?

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It is the summer of 1976. A Gallup poll has just asked Americans a simple question. Have you been born again? 34% say yes. Overnight, that single question defines a movement. Reporters, politicians, and advertisers suddenly have a word for something that has existed in America for over 200 years. They call them evangelicals. But what does the word actually mean? Ask a historian, ask a sociologist, ask a pastor, ask a pollster, you will not get the same answer twice.

Meet the Guests: Two Theologians, Two Perspectives

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Today, we are going to ask two theologians. One works at the institution some call the Harvard of Evangelical Higher Education, Wheaton College in Illinois. The other teaches at a small but fiercely conservative seminary tucked in the hills east of San Diego. They come from different traditions, they have different temperaments, and they have both just written books trying to answer the same urgent question. What is an evangelical? And does that definition even hold anymore?

The Bebbington Quadrilateral Explained

SPEAKER_01 1:11

For the first three episodes of this podcast, our hosts have been leaning on one framework above all others, the Bebington Quadrilateral. Historian David Bebbington proposed it in 1989. Four markers that define an evangelical. Here, host John Fia reminds us of the framework.

SPEAKER_05 1:29

So the Bebington Quadrilateral is associated with a historian of British evangelicalism. His name is David Bebington, but it has really taken on a kind of life of its own in the States as well, about how to define evangelicals. What is an evangelical? And it's really based on certain theological principles, four of them, thus obviously a quadrilateral. The first one is what Bebington calls conversionism. In other words, evangelicals believe that the central moment of a Christian's life is the born-again experience, the conversion. In order to be truly saved, have eternal life, become a Christian, you must encounter God, believe in his death, burial, and resurrection for your sins, and accept that at some point in your life. You know, literally say a sinner's prayer, maybe, or something to that effect. So evangelicals are defined by conversionism, uh perhaps in a way that other forms of Christianity are not. Second, uh, in the Bebington quadrilateral is this idea of biblicism, that the Bible is inspired, it is the word of God, and it has authority over your life. Now, Biblicism, you know, is also a characteristic of other forms of Christianity as well, but put it together with conversionism and the next two isms I'm going to talk about, you have what Bebington calls an evangelical. So third then would be crucicentrism. And that's just a big word for saying Jesus' death on the cross paid for the sins of individuals, paid for the sins of the world, right? Jesus died for your sins. What happened on Good Friday was that Jesus took the weight of the world's sins on himself and paid the price of death so that we don't have to, right? Well, obviously we'll physically die, but we'll have eternal life. Add that to conversionism and biblicism. And then the fourth one is activism. And this is Bebington understands this in a couple of ways. One is through evangelism. Evangelicals want to share their faith with others. If they have the message of salvation and eternal life, it's only natural that they will want to share that with others so that they can experience eternal life as well. So here would be an example of like Billy Graham, right? Preaching the gospel, getting people saved. And then a secondary aspect of activism is just being engaged in dealing with injustice in the world, you know, reforming institutions, trying to bring Christianity to bear on all of the kind of social ills, whether it be everything from abortion to slavery to racism, you know, whatever the case might happen to be as evangelicals understand them, but there's a certain activist impulse within evangelicalism. So when you put those four things together: conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism, you have a kind of theological religious definition of an evangelical.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Vincent

Guest Profile: Vincent Bacote

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Bacot has been at Wheaton College since the year 2000. He is a professor of theology and the director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics, which means he spends his professional life at the intersection of Christian conviction and public life. He has written about the Holy Spirit, about Abraham Kuiper, about race and the evangelical tradition. His 2020 book, Reckoning with Race and Performing the Good News, asked a hard question. If evangelicalism is really about the good news, why has that good news often been bad news for black Americans inside the movement? Baycoat is not someone who has abandoned evangelicalism. He is someone who believes in it enough to push it.

Guest Profile: Corey Marsh

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Corey Marsh is a different kind of evangelical. He is a professor of New Testament and director of the Master of Theology program at Southern California Seminary, a small, deeply confessional institution committed to dispensational theology and the authority of Scripture. He holds four degrees from SCS and a PhD in Biblical Theology from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He co-hosts a podcast called the Pastor Scholar Podcast. He is scholar in residence at Revolve Bible Church in San Juan, Capistrano. And he just published a book with a title that says everything about where he is coming from: Recovering of Vintage Faith, Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity. His argument, in a sentence, modern evangelicalism has gone soft, and the only solution is to go back to the source. Vince,

Interview: Vincent Bacote on the Quadrilateral

SPEAKER_01 6:14

welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_05 6:15

Thank you. Great to participate. So we've been having this discussion about the Bebington quadrilateral as the basis for our historical conversation of evangelicalism so far. We've we're now we now have three episodes under our belt. What is your take on the quadrilateral as a definition for evangelicalism, both today and maybe historically and some of the historical work you've done? Do you find anything maybe insufficient with the quadrilateral?

SPEAKER_04 6:45

Well, it's helpful, I think, for talking about how all these people that would have an alley fight about eschatology, church order, and many other things, how uh they are still family, or as Tim Larson puts it, how they all say, But I st I believe that you really are an authentic Christian and you share those common commitments. And I think to the extent that if we're talking about most evangelicals that still kind of like go to these non-denominational churches, Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, it does define who they are. But of course, we're in a moment where the politicization of the term means that there are a lot of people who use the term because um whether they're particularly moral or not, or read the Bible very much or not, you then have people c using the label uh because of how they're choosing to vote and because they kind of want to be a Republican with a little Jesus sprinkled on it. So for me, debut quadrilateral still obtains because yes, there's a lot to talk about about evangelicals and their connections to certain political commitments, but still if you go into most of these churches, your quote unquote average evangelical church, the people if you have people who are regular attenders, whatever their political affiliations, they're still not mostly hearing politics from the pulpit. And what they are participating in is something associated with this commitment to the Bible, this importance of conversion, the need to share your faith, and obviously the centrality of Christ's work on the cross. If there is one thing that would be needed to be added to that, I do think to the extent that you know the fastest growing Christianity worldwide is Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, I think you do have to contend with the fact a kind of uh mainstreaming of charismatics and Pentecostals using the label or s or or regarding themselves as part of the family. And so while they may have been those kind of peripheral cousins in a way, even into the 80s and early 90s, arguably the fact that you have more of these other people that were in the game, but you know, say like someone like Sam Storms, right? I mean, people who are definitely not cessationists, definitely more inclined to be talking about that we need to include this kind of continuationism as part of it in terms of spiritual gifts. I think you then have to add that fifth piece that you know my colleague Larson likes to add about the importance of a work of the Holy Spirit being part of this. And I would argue, having written a book about the Holy Spirit for my dissertation, that if you're going to take pneumatology seriously, then something about pneumatology being in there would be nice because sometimes what happens obviously is the Christology swallows up the pneumatology.

Bacote: Adding a Fifth Marker — The Holy Spirit

SPEAKER_05 9:25

I think not only has Tim Larson, your colleague at Wheaton, sort of suggested that the Holy Spirit should be I think historically too, I think Thomas Kidd has kind of uh added the Holy Spirit in some way. Uh I I can't remember exactly where he does that, maybe in his book on what is an evangelical, right? He adds the Holy Spirit to the mix.

SPEAKER_07 9:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:46

So again, we're three historians here discussing evangelicalism. So I'm assuming that you're still using the Bebington quadrilateral, maybe throwing in the Holy Spirit as the kind of operative definition of what or how you would define an evangelical. Is that fair to say before I move forward?

SPEAKER_04 10:04

Yes, although I think about what I would call the elevator speech version of what evangelical is. And so to me, it's a kind of Bible-centric ecumenism. Uh people who say they're committed to the Bible, coming from different denominational backgrounds, that this biblicism is central to who they are, and that commitment to me and my Bible, so to speak, which which entails the things about conversion, Christian centrism, and shared faith. That's what makes them what they are, right? Or I was trying to say a conservative Protestant ecumenism is what I'd like to say in terms of like that's like a thr that's my sort of three-word definition of it that implies the Bebington quadrilateral. I definitely think it's useful, but obviously we can add more.

SPEAKER_05 10:46

I'm also hearing by embracing the Bebington quadrilateral, I'm also hearing a kind of theological definition of what an evangelical is, as opposed to say a political definition or some kind of other sociocultural definition of what makes it evangelical that sometimes you hear historians and others making. Am I hearing you right on that?

SPEAKER_04 11:09

Well, yes, as a theologian and ethicist, I really can't help it. That's correct. And the other thing is that if the root word is evangelic, I mean it would not be the first word co-opted in world history where people used it for other ends and meant other things more than they meant the evangel itself. But if that's the root word of it, the gospel does mean something. And so to me, you cannot. That's one of the reasons for me why people talk about I think it's useless, etc. It's like, well, last time I checked, the gospel's pretty powerful. I don't want to be giving that up to people that are uh doing their best to show that they actually are committed to other things than that gospel. Yeah, I remember John Perkins saying that when he was on campus once. He's like, why am I gonna give this up to crazy people?

SPEAKER_07 11:53

Corey, great to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 11:55

I'm honored to be here. Thank you for the invite. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Awesome. So we've been using the Bebington quadrilateral in our first three episodes as really the anchor to talk about evangelicalism and the history of evangelicalism. What do you make of the Bebington quadrilateral? And as a theologian, do you find anything insufficient or lacking in that definition?

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Sure. Yeah, I'll start with I actually value Bebington's quadrilateral. I think it is a good place that gives us some benchmarks of uh describing evangelicalism by certain core beliefs, if we can put it that way. Now, I know Bebington, he's more analyzing evangelicalism in Britain in the 19th century, but I think it is helpful as a model going into American evangelicalism as well. In fact, in my new book, I do build on his model. So his ideas of biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, activism. I think these are helpful categories. And if I'm not mistaken, I believe Bevington starts off saying, if not in that particular book somewhere else, that uh evangelicalism has been nothing if not biblicist. And I agree with him. So I think everything starts with scripture. So he's got a helpful model. Some have pushed back on it. I know some theologians, some ethicists, Vincent Bacot's one of them on my mind who I've spoken with and we've had as a uh an ETS as a keynote speaker, and he was pushing back and critical of uh Bebington's model. And others have as well, and they have some really good points because it might be a little insufficient. Uh so for me, um, if I would say that there is any weaknesses in that model, something that I think I contribute to, perhaps in in my model in my work vintage faith, he doesn't say anything about church fellowship, right, that I can remember. Nothing about the consistent church fellowship of being among the community of saints and how important that is. And I don't remember him referring to the participation in any sense of theological education. I don't think that can fit those two things cannot fit in his quadrilateral. And I do consider those essentials or fundamentals for a for an authentic evangelical identity because both actually have baked into their ideas, that is, church fellowship and theological education, checks and balances, accountability, if you will. If we're looking at evangelicalism as core convictions exclusively, and that is it, well, you're minimizing the behavior that should develop or emerge from those convictions. And as much as I value Bebington's quadrilateral, I do think there needs to be something about behavior or lifestyle that results from those convictions. So I would add church fellowship as well as participation and you're growing in knowledge of the word together, whether in formal or informal settings of theological education.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

It's interesting that you'd expand it into uh and you do this in your book too. So beyond beliefs, right? So if the Bebington quadrilateral is around a set of beliefs, then you have things like participating in education, participating in a local church that are activities or or resulting actions from it. Are there any like I could imagine some people interested in this conversation wanting other things as actions? I don't know, participating in communion or getting baptized or many other things. Why the two that you pick, the local congregation and the theological education?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Well, I think what you just said, Dan, actually is baked into the idea of church fellowship. So communion, for example, baptism, discipleship, church discipline. Oftentimes, especially in American evangelicalism, church discipline becomes like operation crowd reduction. And so pastors are afraid to practice it, even though Jesus instituted it in Matthew 16. All of those ideas are within that idea of what I say is uh what I call the crucial X factors. Not only is church fellowship not secondary, I couldn't, I call it a fundamental for evangelical identity. It's the crucial X factor. It is accountability among your elders and deacons and saints, where it's not only just evangelical beliefs are positioned in creed alone, but you're practicing it in day-to-day life and doing life together and being held accountable to those beliefs as well. And when it comes to what you just brought up, which is so important, the Lord's table, taking communion. I know some churches, evangelical traditions, will practice footwashing based on John 13 and what Jesus gives as a pattern. Baptizing and baptism is another one. These things require physical participation. You need to be there presently. So I would even push back on the idea of online church and taking, you know, I know some people will take communion online. Um, and now obviously there are circumstances where you can't attend church personally or physically, but the model we have in the New Testament is it requires physical fellowship. And there's something holy and powerful when saints are gathered together under the exposition of the scriptures and taking the Lord's table together and doing baptisms and being a part of that as a church fellowship and holding one another accountable to these things. There's something powerful and holy about that. So I think, again, to raise the idea of church fellowship to a fundamental, that might be a weakness in Bebington's model, as helpful as his model is. I see it as a crucial X factor. Participation in theological education as another one that should happen in the church at some level, but obviously not all churches have the resources available that a seminary or a Christian university or Bible college can provide. You know, for example, you know, church history classes and learning the languages and all the theological disciplines, biblical theology, systematic theology, practical theology, historical theology, all those things. You need resources and experts to be able to help, at least those who are qualified to be able to teach those things. And the average church just does not have the uh the uh time or the space or the resources to do that. And so formal education becomes a supplemental help. You know, it's a parachurch ministry to come alongside the church, you can submit to the local church as the authoritative structure, which I believe is the proper role between the seminary and the church. But there has to be something to growing in knowledge. I think of to give a biblical theological perspective here, you've asked me to do that. The very last thing the apostle Peter leaves to the world before his death, 2 Peter 3:18, is a present active imperative to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're to grow in knowledge and grace together. And I think of Paul, his big prayer to the Philippians in Philippians chapter 1, verses 9 and 10 around there, that they are to grow in their love, should abound more and more with all knowledge and full discernment. So for Peter, grace and knowledge come together. For Paul, love and knowledge come together. We can't divorce the two. We grow on our theological knowledge, and as we do, we grow in our love for God and for the people that are made in his image. So I believe both church fellowship, participation in theological education, those are fundamentals for an authentic evangelical identity.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

Very helpful. Believe it or not, we've talked to Vince Bacot earlier today, asking him some of these same questions. And one of the things he brought up, and I just want your take on it, and I don't know if this was what you and him talked about before, but he wanted a fifth Bebington point on pneumatology, something around the Holy Spirit. And this is something that Tim Larson and some other commentators have have said as well. That there needs to be something about the active work of the Holy Spirit or a sort of conviction that the Holy Spirit is active in the world. What do you make of that? Is that anything that that you'd see raised to the same level as what you've been talking about?

SPEAKER_02 19:34

Sure. Now I understand Baycote's point, and that's a good one. If I understand Bebington's model accurately, I do believe the role of the Holy Spirit and the power of the Holy Spirit and his presence is within the idea of things like conversionism as well as activism. You cannot be converted from an evangelical perspective without the Holy Spirit rebirthing, if I can use that word, your spirit, your own human spirit. So it takes the Holy Spirit to invade a person for them to see their need for Christ and to trust in him. So that's in the idea of conversionism as well as activism, the idea of doing missions work and evangelism and church planting. Now, perhaps I'm taking it more of an evangelical perspective there as a theologian than a historian, where Bebington's activism could be all these different ideas of humanitarian philanthropy and things like that, which have their place. But from a true evangelical missions perspective, you cannot do it without the Holy Spirit. We see that in Acts chapter 13. Paul and Barnabas are set apart. It's where the missions movement starts. And it's the Holy Spirit himself who says, set apart for me, Paul and Barnabas, for the work that I have for them to do. And that's what starts the Christian missions movement. So the Holy Spirit most certainly is required for any type of legitimate church planting and missions work. If that is what Vincent is uh is getting at, then I 100% agree. And I think perhaps that is a weakness in Bebington's model, but if I understand Bebington correctly again, and it's been a while since I've read his work, I think those ideas are within conversionism and activism. Maybe they're not, but if they're not, then they certainly should be more explicit. And that is something that is particular in my view of evangelicalism. In fact, I call it a fundamental uh the idea of zealous evangelism because it requires the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit to do it.

Bacote: Black Evangelicalism and the Ethics of Belief

SPEAKER_05 21:26

One final question, Vince. You're a theologian, but you've also done some historical work on black evangelicalism. You have uh produced a documentary and associated association with Christianity today on I guess it's fair to say post World War II, kind of black evangelicalism, right? Um if you from your knowledge of of black evangelicalism and if you bring this kind of racial component into it, does that at all change how we should think about the Bebington quadrilateral in a way to define the movement? Words, are your theological definition does that kind of transcend not just race but all kinds of other kind of categories? Right? What what do we do about black evangelicals? I mean, are these are these people who embrace the Bebington quadrilateral plus something else, or help us sort that out? You know what I would say, honestly?

SPEAKER_04 22:20

It's people who embrace the Bebington quadrilateral but live more into the aspirations to where that quadrilateral ought to take you in terms of its entailments. Because if you have this biblicism, this crucientrism, uh, this conversionism, which means that uh a life that is changed, this is a life that has changed that ought to mean something about commitment to all of your neighbors because you are this changed person. If you will, it entails a broader ethic than a lot of mainstream, if you will, white evangelicals have maybe thought of when they're thinking about the movement because they've thought they're thinking, I believe, more about content and information. Hey, it's the Bible, it's what it says is true. We do want to talk about obeying it, but the bifurcation between theology and ethics, I think there's more, if you will, the luxury for that bifurcation when you kind of already belong to society. You've got all these things that make your life already kind of comfortable. Even to the extent that people are talking about the evangelicals thinking about themselves as a kind of remnant or whatever. It's like, well, people think about themselves as a remnant because there's a lot about being American that they assume and take for granted, and there's other things that they would like to assume or take for granted that they cannot anymore. It's a very different thing when if you're an African American, survival requires you. Or a kind of mental gymnastics enables you to step away from it. But those people aside, survival requires you to say this cannot just be about talking about this faith. It has to very much be about the lived reality of that faith. If there's the lived reality of that faith, that's a faith that if you say you believe everything that this Bible says, then you believe in Revelation 5.9 when Jesus died for people from every tribe and tongue and nation to purchase a people from every tribe and tongue and nation, it probably means something about those people living together and figuring out how to do that living together. But also recognizing that that in the truthfulness of that Bible that if everyone's also working out their salvation with fear and trembling, you know, if they're being transformed by the renewing of their minds, if those things are happening, you know that you are in a process of moving towards being those people rather than saying, hey, you know, it's it's political to say that we're living towards being those people together. Let's be content with like being in our own domains. I don't think you can take the trajectory of scripture seriously if you're not going to talk about us living well together, which then it requires you to engage the kind of things that you have to engage if you're flourishing requires it because you can't take for granted certain kinds of flourishing in a society that for most of its history in the United States, by law antagonized you if you're non-white. And so I think black evangelicals would be calling the evangelical movement, this movement that moves out of fundamentalism but still predominately these white institutions. It's calling it to say, if you're really this, or even if we go back to Henry's uneasy conscience, I mean, because he mentions a Carl F. H.

SPEAKER_05 25:23

Henry. Carl F. H. Henry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:25

If it was going to be persuasive, the witness is going to include actually putting into practice something that humans are, it's very hard for humans to do, which is to live with people who aren't like whoever us is. And but it requires you to have to pursue that if you're a minority and you're up against it, and you're in a country that says, hey, we're this country where we should all be able to live together. And then you can't because the enculturation around the laws and the segregation, all those things, you know, that that hardwires things in society. To rewire all of that takes a lot of ethical practice that ought to move out of the entailments flowing from the confession about what's in this biblicism. It also, for the most part, at least a little bit helps you to think about this important question. It's one thing to say, I have the biblicism. It's another thing to say that while never asking what other commitments actually rival my commitment to the Bible, like perhaps a commitment to being a good American, a commitment to my culture. And if I'm never asking those questions amid my commitment to biblicism, then you know these things that people call control beliefs, they are also functioning as a kind of king, if you will, that's saying, don't forget your loyalty to me. And if you're never asking that question, then what happens is you can say you're committed to the Bible all you want, and maybe you mean it, but you are not attending to the fact that there are other things that are kind of unchecked running your life, and you're really asking the Bible to sponsor those things, if you're never asking it to do anything about those things. And so to me, I think that's one of the questions that when people are talking about the problems with the evangelical movement, in my view, if people say we're the Bible people, people assume you really mean you want to live out the whole thing. When you don't do it, that's why the scandals get more attention. That's why the devastations are greater. And then that's why people also say, you know what it was really about? It was about power. It was about money. It was about not wanting to change. But why would those things happen? Because there are these controlled beliefs that are unchecked. Or people, you know, behind the scenes, they admit it, but they're but they still want to say they're the Bible people. And I think that's that's just an important thing with that that I've had to really think about a lot, probably in the last decade, I think, because I'm the kind of person who used to say the one thing you can do with an evangelical is put a Bible in front of their face all the time. Because it's like you said you believe all of this. So do you really believe all this? And I think you can still do that, but it's a c it's occurred to me that I have to add the question, what else do you really believe? What else are your ultimate commitments? And if you're willing to ask that question, then I think that it can enable evangelicals to move further into what are, I think, the aspirations or the trajectory to which I think the evangelical movement can go, where evangelicals really are good news people.

SPEAKER_05 28:17

Thanks, Vince. This has been incredibly helpful. Um, and I think it's gonna make for some good conversation for us as we move forward with future episodes of this podcast. Thanks for taking some time. Thanks for coming on. I'm glad to do it. Thank you very much.

Interview: Corey Marsh on Historians and Theologians

SPEAKER_03 28:39

Okay, so we're three historians. We're talking about evangelicalism. As a theologian, what do you think is the biggest strength a group of historians can bring to discussing this identity question? And then conversely, what do you think is the shortfall of the historical method on this? And I'm thinking a bit of the intro to your book where you are engaging with some historians. Now, that that's not all historians and they have particular views, but there are a number of historians that you are engaging with and finding some things to affirm and then other things to critique from them.

SPEAKER_02 29:09

Yeah, now obviously it goes without saying. I mean, uh uh historical analysis brings enormous value to the discussion for any movement. That should be obvious. In fact, even the Christian movement, Paul sources the Christian faith on a historical event in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection. I mean, he literally says if Jesus has not been raised, then we are most to be pitied. We're still dead in our sins. So it's even brought down to a testable, discoverable historical event. So we certainly need the work of historians. I mean, we have an entire discipline within theology, historical theology for this very reason. So seriously, massively important. Now, I'm I'm a little bit out of my lane with you guys. So I mean, my PhD is in biblical theology. I'm not a historian. I'm not I'm not trained at that level in history, so I want to be a little careful in how I talk about any blind spots to use your um language, if there's any weaknesses, whatever. But I I mean, as a theologian, I would say a couple things. The theologian in me wants to remind historians that the evangel is a theological term. The evangel, Latin for the gospel, it's a theological concept, is it not? Like right off the bat. And I think that maybe that there are there is a tendency of some historians to evaluate a theological identity mainly through a cultural lens to the exclusion of theological convictions that define the identity, right? And and not obviously not all historians do this. I mean, this is I mean, Dan, you and I are friends, and I have professors, colleagues, friends who are historians. And I and again, the Christian faith is based on historical events, so we can't divorce theology from history too far, but there are distinctions here to be made. And I think with modern historians, perhaps, there might be a pressure with some to feel maybe they need to be contrarian in their quest for neutrality, perhaps, you know, like rejecting anything that's considered traditional, you know, and not and some historians tend to do that, and inevitably I think they fall in line with everybody else, you know, even using the same terms. For example, in my book, I I critique some who cannot use the word evangelicalism without affixing the adjective white in front of it. So now evangelicalism becomes white evangelicalism. It's because that's what's trendy, or at least that's what scholars are expecting to do our historians, because now we're tracing a movement that seems to resonate with a certain ethnicity or something like that. And I don't know if there's any, you know, how much accuracy in these things that I'm saying right now, but uh I would go back to the idea that first of all, the evangel in evangelicalism is theological to the core, and that should be elevated when historians are doing their work. And also, as an evangelical, I'm gonna say for evangelical historians in particular, don't shy away from your faith, from your theological convictions and be careful in analyzing a movement only from a cultural perspective and not from the theological convictions that make it up, um, that that are that what the identity of evangelicalism is, and not to feel pressured. And this is even me as a biblical theologian, as a scholar, in fact, because I have the same type of pressures where you have to adopt terms from the academy or from colleagues that are publishing, not to fall in that line and having to feel like you, unless you're being contrarian to tradition, not that all tradition is good by any mean, but feeling like if I'm contrary to tradition, then I'm doing real historical work. That's not always the best model to it to adopt, I guess. So to be a little careful with those things.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

Maybe I'm just restating something you've already said, but one thing that maybe this is what you mean by a cultural perspective, but I think one thing I detected while reading your book is that historians tend to be focused on who sort of the is of evangelicalism, like what do we actually see in the world, and that dictates our term for us? Who are the people who basically have claimed to be evangelical and what do they do? And let's summarize that into a general definition. Whereas I I detect you wanted to do in your book a sort of ought. Like, yes, there are all these people that say they're evangelicals. Your job isn't to sort of document that, your job is to sort of speak it with your expertise into what you think an evangelical actually is, regardless of what the historical record, you know, what people in history who have said they're evangelical are. Is that another way of

Marsh: The "Is" vs. "Ought" Problem

SPEAKER_03 33:23

saying sort of the same distinction?

SPEAKER_02 33:24

Yeah. Absolutely spot on. I think when you adopt a cultural perspective to the exclusion of the theological convictions of what makes up evangelicalism, you will inevitably define evangelicalism by who identifies as an evangelical. And that is a problem. I use this cute little term. Modern evangelicalism is evangelicalism now, right? Because it's just mushy middle, it's it's jiggly, what are it's a it's elastic, it's hard to define. And there's reasons why. How do we get to the place where we're at now where we have self-identifying Muslim evangelicals, self-identifying Hindu evangelicals, self-identifying Catholic evangelicals? If evangelicalism is meant to incorporate all these different traditions, then the word evangelicalism means nothing. But that's what happens when journalists and pollsters send out surveys, you know, with questions that are, you know, expecting a certain response, you know, questions as vague as have you ever had a religious experience? Yes, okay, you're converted. Conversionism, according to Bebington's model, means you're an evangelical. It's that simple. Or do you vote Republican? Did you vote for Donald Trump? Okay, well, you're an evangelical, you know, that's part of the evangelical voting block, and now you're labeled as an evangelical. And then you have people that I just, their lifestyles are antithetical to what I believe the New Testament teaches. For example, Isaac Sharp's book, I interact with that in my work. Fascinating insights, what he has. But there are some that he believes that are what he calls other evangelicals who have a right to the label that are clearly antithetical to what historical, authentic, what I call vintage evangelicalism is. Going back to my point that evangelicalism cannot be defined merely by positions or beliefs, but also behavior. So it's a lifestyle as well. All of this stuff makes for the mushiness of evangelicalism. I am an active member of ETS, the largest academic evangelical society in North America. In fact, I just uh served a three-year term and just stepped down from being president of one of the largest geographic regions. I think I think it is the largest geographical region in ETS. I love ETS. I mean, it's a wonderful place to be able to share our ideas, reverberate them, um, be critiqued, and advance the knowledge of Christ in an academic setting. It's a wonderful platform to do it. However, there are only two beliefs that you have to sign off on to be an ETS member. And I think they are evangelical beliefs, but are they really enough? And the two are you believe the original autographs are inerrant, and two, you believe in the Trinity. Now, those are evangelical beliefs. However, I can easily see a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox adherent signing off on, yes, they believe in the Trinity, of course. And inerrancy, interestingly enough, gets finagled by a lot of people that are trying to retain their professorships or whatever it may be. They have to sign off on the document. There's one author, a leading evangelical that I quote in the book, who calls these types of people functional inerrantists, that they don't really believe in the inerrancy of scripture, but they're doing so they're able to finagle it enough to be able to justify them signing off in the document, and they can keep their tenure, you know, their jobs as professors or whatever. And honestly, as I'm talking, I don't have a single human, one of them in my mind who I'm talking about, but this is a blanketed thing. There are people at the society whose evangelical bona fides are questionable when you get down at that level, because there's only two beliefs that you have to sign off on. Nothing about church fellowship, nothing about are you believing in personal, are you zealous in your evangelism and understanding personal depravity, therefore the person needs Christ personally. All these things that I include in my model aren't there. And so evangelicalism has, is there really a gatekeeper for it? No, it's it's not ETS and it's not other groups who use the evangelical label. Unfortunately, when we look at evangelicalism from a cultural lens to bring this to circle back to this, that is the inevitable result. You're going to latch on to self-identifying evangelicals, who I would say, according to my model, are anything but even if there's some similarity in some of the some of the beliefs. I mean, all of mine, I have five. And I hate being reductionistic like that. I don't like using numbers and tie and titles of books and things like that. But I do think you can add more, perhaps. You mentioned Baycote. You can add more if you're going to say something on pneumatology, which I still think are is part of Bedmonton's model. But either way, let's just say it's not. You can add pneumatology for sure. Doctrine of the Spirit. You can add more to my model, but I don't think you can take away any of those five. Those are the irreducible minimum for vintage, authentic, historic evangelicalism.

Marsh: Five Fundamentals of Evangelical Identity

SPEAKER_03 37:58

List the five really quick so we have that on record.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Sure. I mean, and that's what maybe why I'm adding to the conversation. I'm not starting it. I'm entering into a conversation, so I'm not saying I'm the last word on the matter at all. But rather than being defined by sociological markers, you know, like race, politics, or self-identification, which I'm talking about right now, evangelicalism is a biblical theological identity rooted in the evangel gospel, and should be defined by core beliefs and the behaviors they produce. And that is my thesis. So in its what I call vintage expression, evangelicalism is characterized by five fundamental pillars, and here they are. The first one is the supremacy of scripture. Going back to Bebington's Biblicist model, uh, first marker, a commitment to the Bible is the absolute, inerrant, and final authority for faith and practice have defined evangelicals going back to John Wycliffe in the fourth 14th century. The exclusivity of Jesus. And I will say this everything starts with that first supremacy of scripture idea. All these other beliefs come from our understanding of Scripture, which leads number two, the exclusivity of Jesus, the conviction that salvation is found only through faith in the substitutionary death and resurrection of Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners, which leads to zealous evangelism. If you have faith and you understand that, you want to tell others about it. So evangelicalism historically, zealous evangelism, an active spirit-empowered mandate to proclaim the gospel and make disciples driven by the belief that personal human depravity makes individual redemption the only true catalyst for cultural change. So instead of trying to change nations through legislation, some type of Christian laws or nationalism or something like that, no. Historic evangelicalism on the personal level, theological education, a dedication of growing in the knowledge of God and his word through both formal and informal study is my number four. And my fifth one is what I what I referred to earlier as the crucial X factor, local church fellowship, consistent physical assembly with other believers for worship, accountability, mutual encouragement, and centrally, I would say, being equipped under the faithful exposition of Scripture. So those five things, the supremacy of scripture, the exclusivity of Christ, zealous evangelism, theological education, and local church fellowship, and ultimately genuine evangelicalism, I would describe it as a centrifugal movement. It spirals outward where transformed lives serve as the primary engine for transforming society.

SPEAKER_03 40:26

That's

Marsh: The Case Against Christian Celebrityism

SPEAKER_03 40:27

great. Okay, we just have a couple minutes. This is the hot one that I was ending with, which is about evangelical celebrityism or Christian celebrityism, as you call it. And you have a lot to say against it in your book. This is the question I was trying to come up with. For a lot of people, the the major figures of the movement or the biggest churches or the people who have the most best-selling books or so forth really are at the top of who they think of when they think of an evangelical. What do you do with that? I understand you're sort of you don't want the cultural evangelicalism to dominate, but there is such a predisposition to think of those people as embodying this movement. I mean, I don't want to push this too far, but you could go back in time and think about the major so-called celebrities of that moment, Billy Graham, Dwight Moody, famous preachers in the 19th century, and so forth. And maybe you'd be down to a case by case on their bona fides, but how do you think about sort of the public image of evangelicalism that often you might even ask an evangelical in a pew and they would reference these books and these people's ministries and so forth, related to the way you want to define it and how you want to actually sort of, if anything, I think you say you want to kill that. You want to kill that expression of evangelicalism.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Yeah, absolutely. And I don't use that word lightly. We need to kill Christian celebrities. Now, this is where I, as a conservative evangelical, I even refer to myself as a biblical fundamentalist, but one who is just holding to the fundamentals of the faith. This is where I do agree with those progressive and critical authors who pinpoint the obsession that modern evangelicals have with celebrityism. It is embarrassing, and it is true. We have turned this holy bloody faith of our savior into an industry. And this is where Christian celebrityism and Christian politics, evangelical politics, kind of meld together because you know you have platforms now that are advocating for things that are outside the five fundamentals that I provide and say even others like Bedmonton provide. It is a problem, um, no doubt. And I think that you mentioned celebrityism and you mentioned some names. I would make a distinction, as I do, I believe, in the book, but I make a distinction between a celebrity and merely being famous or well known. Okay, what I call there's a Christian celebrity and then there's a public minister. Those are two different things. A public minister has a white influence, he's well known, or she's well known, and that's not that necessarily just being well known doesn't make one a celebrity. What makes one a celebrity, and I borrow on Caitlin Beatty's definition in her book, Um Celebrities for Jesus, which I found very helpful. She defines Christian celebrityism, off the top of my head, I'm trying to remember, was social power without proximity, which was very helpful. Someone who has got power and they are not close to their people and people aren't close to them. There's a persona on stage that is considered to be the person, but there's no real accountability. There's no closeness. I define a public minister, someone who the Lord blesses their ministry and it's fanning into flame and they're able to have an impact for the church and for the gospel, maybe even worldwide. That doesn't make them a celebrity, but a public minister would be so having social influence. So not power, you're not lording it over people. You have social influence within proximity, meaning that you are grounded in that what I call the crucial X factor, the local church. You have an accountability structure. You have elders and deacons and saints who are keeping you accountable and know you, know your life, and your and you know their life. It's not just a persona or a public figure they know, they know the actual real person. It comes down to accountability, Dan. Really, when it comes to the Christian celebrity and the Public minister. And unfortunately, we, even as evangelicals, it's sort of in our blood to celebritize our favorite Bible teachers, our favorite theologians, our favorite pastors. And we see this historically going all the way back in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 3. Paul is calling out the Corinthian believers for celebritizing their favorite or performing cliques, schismata is the Greek word, schisms, factions around their favorite Bible teachers, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, who's Peter, and even Christ. These weren't the crazy charismatics or people that were just, you know, that they were latching onto. They were latching on to the highest, the greatest Bible expositors in history. And so that tells me, like we, uh me, I'm saying me right now, like my tribe, our tribe, whatever, our conservative evangelical tribe, we do have the proclivity to elevate our favorite Bible expositor, our favorite faithful theologian on a stage higher than they should be. And when that person starts becoming sort of the pharaoh on top of their own pyramid, so to speak, and employing a bunch of people under them, well, now you enter in the greatest justification in American evangelicalism for any anything's existent existence, and that is providing jobs, right? Now there are jobs. So the people that are employed by the celebrity doesn't want to hold them accountable if they're teaching aberrant doctrine or their lifestyle is showing that they're something other than what they're portraying because their jobs are at stake. And then it's not by coincidence when you see some conservative evangelical celebrities have a scandal or a moral failure, something like that. And then you go down to the root level, they're not even a member of a church. They're not held accountable at the local church level, something like that. These things are all intertwined. All of that is to say, and yeah, I do say it in the book, we need to kill it. We are not meant to be celebrities. Jesus Christ is the one that we should be elevating above all things, all people, all matters, and everything should be revolving around him. And if we have some type of ministry or some type of business hijacking biblical names or something like that, whatever, we've now industrialized it and trivialized this holy and bloody faith based on our savior, on our Lord and Savior. That leads to the powder keg of what is today Christian celebrityism.

SPEAKER_03 46:10

Stimulating stuff, Corey. Thank you. Um, this will be helpful for us for this episode and as we go forward as well. So thanks for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

All right.

Host Debrief: What Historians Learn from Theologians

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Well, I think those conversations were really helpful. One thing that I'd like to hear from just all of us kind of comment on is how can we as historians learn from theologians' perceptions of evangelicalism and sort of weaknesses, strengths, or how it should be defined. Uh, and also like what do we as historians wish they would take more into consideration? I'm wondering if either of you have thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_05 46:50

You know, if you think of, and I hate to put it this way, but if you think of historians looking at theologians, we tend to look at anything as a source, right? You know, and and it's hard not to view two theologians talking about evangelicalism as like kind of a primary source that we're not going to analyze, right, in some ways. It is interesting to see that the discipline of theology, right? And I'm not saying this would be universal for the discipline of theology, but the the discipline of theology seems to be concerned about theology. There are public theologians who bring this into more engagement with whatever American democracy or, you know, you know, uh this old kind of public theologi- Reinhold Nieber type public theologian, but they were both clearly not interested, or perhaps not interested in engaging with the social cultural aspects that I think historians tend to tend to gravitate toward. This gets back to the whole question of like how we treat our sources. I mean, clearly among theologians, evangelical theologians, and I think Vince and and Corey were on separate maybe different ends of a spectrum, maybe not ends, but coming from different places on these questions. Certainly among theologians, they there is this Bebington still makes sense for the most part, at least at the core of Bebington. They see themselves as evangelicals because of the theological. I'm probably thinking about this in light of the larger historiography right now, that's trying to push against the theological definition of evangelicalism. Some initial thoughts.

SPEAKER_03 48:26

Yeah, I I think one way that historians have critiqued Bebington is to say that his definition is what we call transhistorical, or it's not grounded enough in particular time and place. I think that's exactly why it's appealing to theologians, is because in their discipline they are fine dealing with sort of categories that are for all intense purposes eternal and universal. And my sense would be unless you get a certain type of theologian who's really grounded in historical training, they're gonna tend to find histing things to be possibly annoying, if not erroneous. And I don't know, I uh when it can be sort of just a good exercise to hear other perspectives that don't do the thing you tend to do very often when you come to a concept. And so that was helpful to me. And then I do see some kinship as a primarily an intellectual historian, that's what I would see myself. There is just a value for certain concepts or ideas being at the center of how we talk about evangelicalism. And if you're coming at evangelicalism from a cultural historian's perspective or an economic historian's perspective, or political historian's perspective, those ideas might be in there depending on what you're talking about and your predilections, but those tend to get downplayed as secondary or at, you know, even worse, as smokescreen for the real interests that are economic or something else. And what I heard from both Vince and Corey was a real uh focus on these core theological ideas. I can appreciate that and also affirm that that sort of lines up as an intellectual historian with how I also approach the movement.

SPEAKER_05 50:08

The first point you made is an interesting one, too. You know, we're talking about theologians broadly. I think this is a particular issue among a certain kind of confessional or evangelical historian, right? The faith once delivered, right? It's timeless. It's right. If you were talking to like a you know a liberal Protestant historian, of course theology changes because we have to get it up to speed with current trends in whatever science or you know, whatever it happens to be. If you were a modernist, right, this goes back to our episode, episode three. Yeah you know, you're you're you might be more open to historicizing the faith. So I think both of these theologians being evangelical theologians, you know, adds to your first point even more about the worry about historicizing.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

I mean, Dan, what you said about the importance of ideas really resonates with me because that's one of the things that really draws me to the history of evangelicalism, is because I do think it is something that is so motivated by what people believe and what they believe is right or what they believe is a priority over other things. Um, and I think that understanding the movement is often really rooted in understanding that. And so I find myself also frustrated with works on the history of evangelicalism where that's not the central component, because that just sits outside of my understanding. Yet at the same time, as historians, we want to know about influences and power structures and all these other things because we don't live in a vacuum where what we believe is the only thing that matters. And so I think understanding the other components, cultural, political, sociological, all these sorts of things does really help shape our past. And that's what gives us this full picture. And so I really appreciate both of their views, the way that they would kind of tweak definitions of evangelicalism. And I think too, the sort of emphasis on ethics and motivation is refreshing to hear, just because there's a sort of almost optimism or hopefulness in what that can mean in both of their talks that I don't think historians do much of. We're not an optimistic bunch. And so I liked that. I appreciated how they both spoke into that. I think on the other hand, one thing that I wanted to hear more of, and it just isn't a concern for theologians, perhaps, is that how would you track people down based on that definition? Like if you wanted to do a history of evangelicalism, like a broad history of it, and kind of rework it based around these two different definitions, like who would be on the outside, who would be on the inside, what archives would you visit, which ones would you kind of cast aside? And that gets into the nitty-gritty work of historians, kind of going back, John, to your point about primary sources, like what would we reconfigure? And that's a piece that, of course, for their work isn't as central, but it does have me kind of thinking in terms of what would I change if I wanted to take these newer definitions seriously and apply

How Pollsters Define Evangelical — And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_00 53:04

them.

SPEAKER_03 53:04

Yeah, I mean, I felt the same thing, which is this this sounds like an impossible task for the historian. Yeah, I think that was one of the things Bebington as a historian himself was trying to account for was like how how can you make a definition that's broad enough that you don't have to sort of interrogate every individual person you're gonna include while also saying something. You know, on a on a related note, I uh well, one thing I thought that was interesting is is all of us rely on polling to even understand sort of how big is evangelicalism. Like none of us have asked everybody. Right. And so we're reliant on these people who do polls. And what was interesting to me was to think about, you know, that there's at least three big polling agencies. There's there's more, but I think of Pew of Gallup and then the general social survey. Each of those has their own way they define evangelical, and some of it actually, I I was just thinking about this when I was reflecting on how they were defining it. They actually sort of, particularly for Corey, the one that that I think is always the most interesting is Pew, which does the religious landscape survey every seven years. And if you go really into the data, they really define evangelicalism by what church people go to. And so there's an assumption, what what I love if they say go to is what you're a member of. So I guess you could be a member and never go, which is probably not an insignificant number of people. But it was more, you know, if you think of Gallup was the famous one in 1976, who basically equated being born again with evangelicals. So very low rate of entry. Uh, you know, a third of the country says they were born again. We have a huge number of evangelicals. Pugh gets much more specific and says, like, well, if you're a Baptist of this type, you're an evangelical. But if you're a Baptist of this type, you're a mainline Protestant. And these certain Lutheran groups are evangelical, these certain and I actually thought, like, oh, that that would that's actually a methodology that is really taking seriously where people attend. Now it's a stand-in for a set of beliefs, I assume that's why Pew does it. And then the GSS is a little more, as far as I understand it, it's more self-identifying. It's probably the thing that no one really likes, which is as long as someone says they're an evangelical, we're gonna count them as one. It doesn't you don't even ask any more questions. Do you even know what that word means? You just say, if you think you are one, you are one for the sake of this survey. But that that all just made me think about like the even pollsters have to make these decisions, and there's sort of theological ramifications to them, or there's at least assumptions to them that both Corey and Vince highlighted as ones that I I bet are being made with not a lot of critical thinking or or reflection. I I could think of we we mentioned in in both interviews the sort of the question of the Holy Spirit and where does that fit into evangelical identity? I mean, that's a i I know on the the Pew one, like they actually separate Pentecostals from evangelicals, and that's another methodological decision. And we can have sociologists doing that, historians are doing that, and then the theologians do it in their in their own way, and they're much less focused on the real-world data, you could say, or or polling or historical primary sources, but they're doing it from their own perspective, and I think it's an interesting perspective to add to the mix as we ask these questions around definitions.

SPEAKER_05 56:21

I think the 81%, the number that's thrown around of evangelicals who evangelical voters in 2016, 2020, or 24, I mean it varies 80, 81%, who voted for Trump. I think if I remember correctly, I can't remember which agency it was. It certainly wasn't Pew what you're describing, Dan is what Pew does. It was not only are you an evangelical, but are you a born-again Christian? And if you answered yes, you know, you were you were tagged as an evangelical. I'm not aware of, you know, responding a little bit to Corey, you know, I'm not aware of any polling in which people ask, have you had any kind of religious experience, right? Where you're yeah, I think that's what's the word he used, or are you a Republican? Well then you're an evangelical. I don't I don't know if any polling that would would be that fast and loose. But the point is well taken, right? I mean, you know, when you're just asking, are you an evangelical, it's gonna be different than the way Pew kind of breaks this down, right? Which seems to be much more responsible and scholarly.

SPEAKER_03 57:19

Maybe I I think so too, but I th I think they've gotten pushback from scholars for such a what they what those scholars see as reductive, sort of like, oh, it's just where you go to church. Like it doesn't it doesn't actually say what you act like as an individual what you actually believe. So I think there's probably downsides to all these things.

SPEAKER_05 57:35

Well Corey gets in Corey's questions are legitimate, you know, about like, well, do you go not only do you go to church, like what are your practices? You know, his his argument about theological education and local church fellowship, uh, I'm not entirely convinced by them simply because I think any form of Christianity, right? Catholics are concerned about theological education and local church fellowship. So are mainline Protestants, right? But having said that, I think when it comes to the whole polling question, and if polling is the way the larger culture is going to define evangelicalism, then you know it does raise interesting questions like just how committed you. I mean, we we have this problem in it's a lot more difficult, but we have this problem in the 18th century, right? Trying to figure out how Christian the 18th century was, uh, you know, church attendance, church membership, participation, and communion, right? These are all questions that that uh not just relate to post-World War II stuff, but there's a lot of really interesting scholarship about how could America be a Christian nation at the time of the revolution when church membership was at an all-time low in the entire, you know, in the 18th century. What do you well, what do you mean by church membership? So those are those are fair questions, I think, that that Corey especially asks about. Although I'm not sure it makes it distinctly evangelic. You know, I think there's I think we've talked about this. I think the born-again issue, right? They bore the the conversion story is certainly something that makes an evangelical Christian different than a you know the the instantaneous new birth, right? Now again, Catholics who say, well, we have born-again. I don't know, it's I don't think it's essential. I'm not sure theological education and local church fellowship help us at all, you know, in making the Bebington quadrilateral. I think it plays into the critique by historians like Tim Glosh or Matt Sutton, who will say, you know, well, the Bebington quadrilateral as a theological definition is not helpful because all denominations believe these things.

Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy, and Orthopathy

SPEAKER_03 59:41

One thing that just came to my mind that wasn't talked about by these theologians, but I just saw an op-ed that made this point. So we have this term orthodoxy, which is about right belief, and then we have orthopraxy, which are the sort of the right actions. And I think what Corey's doing is extending the definition into certain practices that you have to do. And then there's this third thing, like in the traditional three sort of orthos, is orthopathy, which is the affection. Like, how do you actually are you a kind person? Are you humble? You're all the fruit of the spirit type language from the Bible. And that never comes up, sort of, in these definitional things. And I I sort of get why from a historian's perspective, because it seems somewhat arbitrary. Maybe I'm giving away my methodology here, but like it seems like that would be a very hard thing, one to sort of judge. This person was too angry, they are not a true evangelical, or something like that. That doesn't seem what the historian should do. But even from the theologians, like that, that tends not to be what comes through. And maybe like with the Holy Spirit and Bebington, you're just assuming if you're converted that you have you're a kinder person or something. And so it's like coming through those ways. But I was thinking about that too, is just like, I don't know if we're gonna get out of our historian mode. Like, is there something to say about the way an evangelical comports themselves that is actually part of the definition? Or is that just too much fluff and and and not really relevant to the definitional question?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

I mean, it's an interesting question. I think it I might have to be one of those historians who's like that would change so dramatically over time, and it's also so gendered that I would not want it to be part of it, because that would be something that would apply very differently to people in different situations and or just have different personalities. So I would be cautious about that. I also think one of the things that is interesting in these theologians' definitions is that historians can almost not define evangelicals through right behavior, because that gives historians an excuse to kick people out when they don't do what they don't like them to do. So think about like a Christian historian, evangelical historian who is an apologist, who's trying to write a history that paints their tradition in a really glowing light. If you base it on the behaviors that you're like, this is true evangelicalism, it's very easy to not have to deal with the tough side of things, which is where things went awry or where priorities weren't aligned with the Bible, et cetera. And so I think that's another reason that historians have a tendency to avoid that kind of orthopraxy or even orthopathy, because it it's almost too easy of an out to only pick the people that we'd love to tell stories about if we were, you know, this kind of hagiographic tradition, but we aren't. That's kind of one of the things that historians as a profession have stepped away from because that was in the past the way that we did it before the field was professionalized. Yeah, I think that kind of hits that strain of me, that like, oh no, maybe not, because that would be taking it even further than looking at right practice.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:51

Yeah, this is the critique that I often get or got. I still get it sometimes with my book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation. So I'm arguing essentially, and I'm I'm making the case of here's what the founders believed, right? Here's what God, the word God means in the Declaration of Independence, here's what Christianity means in the Constitution. So and then, you know, I get in, I I didn't know what to do with slavery because I wanted to say, and I eventually did say, right, you know, did the founders want to create a Christian nation when it's so many of them held slaves? And I would get pushback from like historians saying, well, that's a behavior question, right? That's not a historical question. You're now condemning them, or no, you're now trying to make a historical claim about faith and the founding by defining Christianity by practice all of a sudden, right? Not by, well, John Adams believed this or that. So it's a similar comparison, at least in my mind, right? How do you get at this idea? Here's

Case Studies: David French, Billy Graham, and Moral Priorities

SPEAKER_05 1:03:51

here's another contemporary example of this, um, which I I don't know what to make of it, but David French, the popular uh you know, New York Times, he's an evangelical, he writes a column for the in the New York Times. He recently wrote a column in which he criticized evangelicals for, uh especially MAGA evangelicals, for attacking this candidate from Texas, this Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senec, James Tallerico, who is a Presbyterian seminarian. He's a liberal Protestant. You know, I don't think French wanted to turn him into some kind of evangelical or defend him as an evangelical, but he called out his fellow evangelicals for being mean, being angry because Tallarico didn't conform to their views on whatever it was, abortion or the yeah, I think he believes in the resurrection, but you know, all these, all these, but transgender stuff was big, right? So French basically said, like, there's another way of being Christian, and that's to be kind, to love your neighbor, and so forth. And I don't see a lot of that happening with these critics of Tallerico. They don't, Tallerico looks more Christian than they do. And the blowback on this from so many of these conservative evangelicals refuse to embrace the idea that what was it in orthopathy? Orthopathy was like a legitimate way of defining who a true Christian is, right? Right. And they just were like, no, he do you know what his view is on marriage, right? That could be part of the whole politicization of certain kind of evangelicalism, but but they wanted no part of the behavioral kind of issue. And I thought, you know, I don't necessarily agree with the theology of James Tallerico as an evangelical, but I I just found French very compelling on the way in which evangelicals are attacking this guy. So, you know, there are a lot of evangelicals who would themselves who would not even think of orthopathy as a as a as a defining characteristic, at least, at least right now. I mean, we could think about that historically too. I'm not I can't think of many. Historians, maybe for the reasons you suggest who have had a thought of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:05

Well, I imagine, and Dan, you I didn't read this op-ed, but I imagine it's not in isolation to orthodoxy, because I mean, right behavior can come out of anything. Yeah. And I mean, you just meet people that are profoundly kind, not based off of any kind of conviction or or belief rooted in religion at all. That's just their take on their place in the world. And so I I imagine that that orthodoxy has to be coupled with it, but it is something we are compelled to using biblical scripture. Like if we're, I mean, I don't think anybody that we've talked with and no one in this room is saying biblicism is not a core tenant of evangelicalism. Like it's absolutely up front and and center. And the Bible has very clear things to say about right belief, right behavior, right action. And so I think in that kind of context, it does matter.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:02

It's interesting. So I think over the last three episodes that we've done, right? You know, so so we had an episode on like right doctrine and the divisions over that. We had an episode about like the higher life and and the uh sanctification, and then born again, right? The born again experience was the first episode. One thing that we never discussed is how one treats their neighbor, right? Maybe this is the orthopathy, right? Is that a marker of evangelicals? I would probably, just thinking out loud, would think it would be uh something that should be true of all Christian faiths, not just evangelicals. So maybe it's not a defining category of evangelicals. But uh it's just interesting to see, especially now as you watch evangelicals in the public in public life. You know, they're fighting for doctrine, they're wanting to get people saved still, right? They're they're um you know, they they want to follow Jesus and be sanctified, right? Uh the loving your neighbor part has been a little bit of a struggle, I think, in the in the last ten or fifteen years, you know. So I I don't know if I'd put the I don't know if I'd put ortho uh orthopathy in the dep in the definition. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:22

I guess that's what I was raising was maybe maybe it I mean we haven't talked about it until now, so maybe it's just not it's not relevant. I of course I think it should connect to the other two. Um and maybe it's you know, maybe it's the the historians move of of histing that and asking someone should do that. I mean, we have like historians of emotion and other things that try to get at some of this, but um I I'm assuming at every stage of the last few hundred years there have been ways of being an evangelical, particularly if you're a leader that have been out out of the bounds of propriety and possibly so alternate to the way you're supposed to behave that you just become persona non grata in the movement. And that could be, I'm sure there's certain examples where someone is just so um angry or disputatious, um, even though that might be hard for us to imagine now based on some of the public people, but you could imagine at some point that that disqualifies you. You can imagine the opposite, too. Someone who doesn't stand up for their convictions or or whatever is seen as like not sufficiently evangelical. It's just interesting to me that that is a dimension that um uh again, there's there's other in other topics there have been historians who've tried to get at some of that. Um not not as much with the history of evangelicalism, um, that would add another layer to our definitional conversation. Um not maybe I I totally agree with you, Maggie, that it it could turn into a a self-serving way of um, but maybe maybe trying to make it more neutral, just asking the question of like, well, what's been in and out or more what's been out of bounds and why at different times.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:01

I mean, there's just so many different ways that this would change the way a history would be told. Because I'm I'm thinking about what Vince said about control beliefs and this idea that sometimes there are other things that we have to be really honest with ourselves about what else is a big factor here, um, which got me into thinking about the way that I think about priorities when it comes to evangelicals, that there are oftentimes, um, particularly within evangelical institutions, movements, missions, that they recognize that there are things that are good that they could fight for, but they think that there are things that are a greater good that are have a supreme position. I'm thinking specifically of Billy Graham and segregation um in the civil rights movement. Um, and he changed positions on that over time and things like that. But um that that centrality of will this hurt our ability to spread the gospel? And if it will, if it will distract, if it will do this, like that was often a reason to not pursue other things, not because they didn't see them as good biblical imperatives, but they weren't the ultimate biblical imperative.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:07

And it's there's such a temptation, I think, among the historian, that this is the old question of presentism, right? To then take a particular social or cultural issue in the present and sort of condemn, and maybe they need to be condemned, right? But but the natural impulse is to then condemn Billy Graham for not doing this, this, or this. Not enough, right? Right. When that was not for him at the time, his primary now, you know, you could argue about that, but that wouldn't really be much of a historical argument. It would be more of a theological or ethical debate, right? So you have all these books about, you know, how you know white evangelicals failed to join with the civil rights movement. That's true, but it was because they, if you want to be a good historian about it, it wasn't because they upheld segregation or thought, you know, they were there were even like white supremacists or races. It was just because we're not going to put all of our efforts there because this is a higher.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

Which on one hand you can see as being a failure to love their neighbors, their literal neighbors. Yes, right. That you have within their own community black evangelicals that were saying, Well, what about us? But at the same time, in their mindset, they are loving their neighbors afar. They're more concerned about missions, they're more concerned about the unreached. And that's where you have to put yourself in a pretty tough position of, well, how do you judge that? Like if you were to judge evangelicals on right emotion or like the right action behind loving their neighbors, it's like, well, which neighbors? Because that that does dramatically change the question. And I think there is something very meaningful about that question. We're going to talk about it in the next um episode. We're going to talk about racism or race in particular when it comes to evangelicalism and some of the complexity of it. Because I think we're getting to it. That it's always been there. And there's always been advocates within evangelicalism saying we're not doing enough, we're not doing enough. People vent studies are the ones. Yeah. Right. And so I think that really is a key thing that I think he brought up well. And it, yeah, it gets you thinking for sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:16

This gets back to your first question, Maggie, about like the historian's way of dealing with it, right? We're there to tell how they would have seen the world. Like, what was the all the possible scenarios that Billy Graham could have how he could have acted in the 1950s? Well, you know, the the scenario of making civil rights the number one thing certainly was there, right? But it wasn't his where he was. Now, just by saying that, maybe some listeners right now are suggesting, like, you know, they're judging me for even defending Billy Graham on these questions. Those aren't historical questions about whether he was right or wrong to privilege this or that. This is what he thought. And I think the theologian is going to want to dig in a little more deeply with like, was he right to not do as much as he did on right? And to me at least, those are not necessarily historical questions. I think the historian wants to unpack that complexity as much as possible so that the theologian or the ethicist or the civil rights activist or whatever can use the work of the historian to make whatever points they need to make.

What Both Guests Share: Evangelicalism as a Theological Movement

SPEAKER_05 1:14:25

I think one of the similarities between both of our guests, Corey and Vince, is that they both see evangelicalism as a theological movement. I mean, they can differ, you know, about what the five points are or whether there, you know, should be church attendance added in and theological education and so forth. But they both see evangelicalism as a a theological movement. I think Vince as a as a someone who is a little more engaged with the history of this. Uh and Vince is particularly interesting to me because there's a tendency, especially when you're dealing with black evangelicals or evangelicals who are marginalized, to privilege the sociocultural dimensions of evangelicalism over the theological ones. I mean, this is a dominant theme in sort of the more contemporary historiography of evangelicals. But Vince, who has spent a lot of time studying black evangelicals, I think would argue that despite the racial difficulties, the racial disparities that may have existed with some of the people he studies, the critiques they would have made of so-called white evangelicalism, they still found a common bond and it was the most important bond was a theological spiritual engagement with one another that transcended to some extent the racial differences. And I think that's what again, we could debate that, whether that's good or bad, but I think that's what I took away from Vince's uh analysis the most. You know, he's he's speaking from the evangelical Vatican, right? We in college, you know, it's the heart of kind of evangelical higher education, if you will, and and he's making this case. I think that's worth something.

Celebrity, Personality, and Evangelical Cohesion

SPEAKER_07 1:16:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:11

Well, it was sticking with me, um, and I it it's not a totally coherent response to something that we ended with Corey on, which was this question of celebrity evangelicalism or just the industrial size that a lot of evangelical media and personalities get. And part of me wants to affirm that, particularly, like I'd like to see a lot of that go away just as an in my personally as well.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:35

I want to kill it.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:36

Yeah, I don't like using such decisive language for sure. Yeah, like like I disappear it. On the other hand, that seems as I understand, so I I I have a sort of running uh low-grade theory on how evangelicalism coheres over time, and a lot of it's around personalities and like major figures that become because there's not a very strong institutional hierarchy, we have sort of distinctive eras that are defined by the Moody network or the Billy Graham network or the Jerry Falwell network.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:08

It's back to the empire discussion from episode three, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:17:11

That uh Maggie brought up. Right. And so um, you know, there there was a distinction made between a just merely famous person and a celebrity, and I think that's a that's a good distinction to make. I don't know in 20th century American culture how many famous pastors there have been who have not also been celebrities in the 20th century. I guess you could just accidentally become famous one time. I don't know if you sustain that over decades without intentionality, a team, marketing, all the other things that would go with it, and then you're very quickly veering into celebrity culture, I think. So I do still hold out in the way I understand how evangelicalism has developed, that there are actually really important roles for some of these celebrities in it, at least as a historian. I again this is this is ought distinction as well, where I tend to go toward the is and just sort of what are we talking about? And I tend to check at least as a historian, what do I wish it it looked like. Um, but I'm still holding that because I also find I'm holding that tension with what Corey said, because I also find that many of those celebrities don't actually represent a lot of what you consider mainstream evangelical belief. A lot of them have really peculiar beliefs, and there is this phenomenon of celebrity that is so totally disconnected from what we consider normal church life, that is really much more about media and other things. So I'm not sure how to square those things, but it's definitely something that I still am thinking about, and particularly thinking about because of the way evangelicalism is structured, which is that there isn't a lot of structure, that personalities are actually quite important to how organizations get built, institutions get founded, magazines and publishing houses come and go, revivals happen. This all seems to revolve around people, and so to discount those people as sort of because of their status as major figures as sort of not representative is something I'm I'm working through.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:09

Like you can't be a I don't see how you could be a celebrity without all those PRs. It goes back to Whitfield, right, from our first episode. But what was the other one? The not the celebrity, but the public minister? Public minister.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:22

I mean, it boils down to accountability, right? Like I was kind of thinking about it in terms of that Mars Hill podcast and Tim Keller's comment on an episode where he's like, that certain things couldn't happen to me because I'm always held accountable to someone. And talking about like celebrity or public minister, I think Keller would be an interesting case study there because he did always submit himself to others in a power structure because he was Presbyterian, right? And so he had that accountability structure there. And I I think that might be how Corey is defining is are they within a structure of accountability or not? Not necessarily do they have a PR team, but I'd have to kind of push him a little more to see.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:01

Does the public minister become or the pub, what is it, public minister? Does the public minister become the category of public, you know, enter that category because he has a PR team that is like he's known nationwide or she's known nationwide and thus builds respect within the community because look how important this person is to the world? Or is it something that happens organically within so I would think a based on his definition, an effective public minister, like no one would know about except in the congregation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:33

No, I don't think so. I don't think he's defined it that way. I think he is thinking about people that are very well known, yeah, but that root their authority in something other than themselves. So I think Francis Chan's comments about how like his celebrity is so ephemeral. People who are really conscious about the fact that people shouldn't trust them just because of their name, but because they're rooting themselves in something deeper. So I yeah, I I think that's what he's gesturing at.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:01

Dan's right though. I think it is a it's a fine yeah, I don't know how to it's an interesting thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:06

I think it needs to be maybe sussed out more clearly because it clearly is something that's captured all of our imaginations to be like, ah, there's something there there that like we have to get into because you're right, like personality, charisma, all of that is so central to the empire building of evangelicalism, particularly in the 20th century, but even before. So

Closing Reflections: A Mosaic That Keeps Shifting

SPEAKER_00 1:21:27

yeah. Yeah. So I think for me, um, I don't know that any of us are really being honest enough with ourselves that we like to talk about the quadrilateral because it makes it sound like we know a lot about math. So I just want to put that out there. Um, but more seriously, I also think change over time is the thing that just kind of is spinning in my head right now. And the question about pumanology and the role of the Holy Spirit is in some ways informed by the fact that we now know how important Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity is and continues to be. And so future historians are going to take that more seriously than perhaps we have. And so we're looking back and kind of looking for the roots of that. And I think that's one of the really dynamic components of evangelicalism is that you find these sort of ebbs and flows and groups that kind of come in and out. In some ways, Vince's work on black evangelicals also comments on that, right? Like there's a moment in the 20th century where black evangelicals are really very present and then less so, right? And that builds off of institutionalized components and all these other sorts of things that we'll probably talk about later. But that you have these moments in evangelical history where certain groups are so much more important and included, and then they kind of filter out. And so this umbrella term that we use, the nature of it is porous on purpose. Um, and so that's one of the reasons why when we look at these definitions, and you can look at it as, you know, eternally infuriating or kind of fun, because it is that mosaic where when you shift something, that the tiles change. And I think that the conversation that we've had with both of these scholars have kind of helped us see different ways that we can see that mosaic shift.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:22

Thanks for listening to American Evangelicals

Outro

SPEAKER_01 1:23:25

a History Podcast. In this episode, the conversation turned not to just what evangelicalism is, but to the challenge of defining it at all. John, Dan, and Maggie wrestled with the tension between theology and history, between belief and behavior, between institutions and personalities. Along the way, they explored questions historians and theologians continue to debate. What counts as evangelical identity? Can movements be defined by doctrine alone? How do historians account for ethics, race, celebrity, power, and change over time without flattening the complexity of the past? What emerged wasn't a neat conclusion, but something perhaps more valuable. A reminder that evangelicalism has always been a contested, evolving, deeply human story. And maybe that's why these conversations matter. They force us to not only ask how movements are defined, but who gets to define them in the first place. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to American Evangelicals, a history podcast, so you don't miss what's next. And if this episode sparked your curiosity, consider sharing it with someone who wants a deeper, more nuanced understanding of evangelical history. Until next time, thanks for listening.