The word “Evangelical” comes from the Greek prefix, “εὐ”, meaning “good” and the word, “αγγέλιον”, translated as angel or messenger (euangelion). We have made this to mean “good news,” or as some Christians in the middle ages said, “God spell” or “Gospel.”

What is the good news? It is a core belief in Christianity that Jesus Christ, the son of God, lived a holy and blameless life, died on the cross and that sacrifice paid a cosmic debt for the sinfulness of each and every human being–our price to receive the grace of this gift being the acceptance of Jesus Christ into our life. That’s it.

Evangelicalism, however, is not as ancient as we wish to believe. It’s also not quite as diverse as we wish. In some ways, Evangelicalism in the sense that it is used in the media is very specifically, a form of Christian practice by mostly white, Protestant Americans that emerged in the 18th century. Thankfully, one of the goals of this blog is to widen the term beyond specific demography and move back to first principles, creating something of a “big tent” Evangelicalism based on ideas rather than race, political belief or even, in some cases, dogmatic theological points.

To get there, we need a definition of “Evangelicalism” and so we will adhere to David Bebbington’s very simple formulation. Evangelicism has four characteristics:

• conversionism
• biblicism
• crucicentrism
• activism

A definition might be something like: Evangelicals are those followers of Jesus Christ who believe that Christian life begins with conversion (being born-again, turning from sin, etc. — conversionism), the centrality and authority of the Bible and its inherent trueness (biblicism), the pivotal moment in history as Christ’s death on the cross followed by his resurrection (crucicentrism) and the need to share this story (activism).