The evangelicals: A new christianity for the third millennium?

The increasingly rapid and widespread expression of the Protestant world over the past two centuries is the evangelicalism, i.e. the transversal reawakening of the Protestant churches. Its main features consist of conversion or being “born again”, witnessing the faith through a range of evangelistic activities, with a particular focus on Bible readings, often accompanied by very literal interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the evangelical world in general, and its main focus is to analyze the factors behind its dissemination and global success. Understanding the flexibility of the evangelical message and how it can be adapted to different historical and geographical contexts is the first step in attempting to answer the question posed in the title of this article, or if indeed the new Christianity will be evangelical. The partly methodological question of whether the definition “evangelicalism” is straining under the development of this ultimately too broad and all-encompassing movement is the theme of this paper.

Evangelical Christianity has represented for the past two centuries perhaps the most successfully diffused and popularized expression of Christianity at a global level. Indeed, the growth of evangelical Christianity continues unabated, especially in the global south. Evangelical Christianity's principal feature consist in its understanding of conversion, its advocacy of the importance of being "born again ", understood as the witnessing of the faith through a range of evangelical activities, with a particular focus on Bible readings, literally interpreted. The purpose of this paper is to explore the evangelical world in general, and to analyze in particular the factors behind its growing dissemination and tremendous global success. Understanding the flexibility of the evangelical message and the ways in which it has adapted to different historical and geographical contexts is however pnly the first step in attempting to answer the question posed in the title of this article, namely whether or not the future of Christianity is evangelical. Yet the investigation proposed must be accompanied and indeed is driven by the methodological problem of whether the very definition of "evangelical" current today is excessively strained by its ascription to a remarkably broad, all-encompassing, and indeed ever expanding, movement.