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IV. Towards Resolution of the Discord About Evangelicalism's Longevity

In preparation of this paper, I was struck again and again at how often vital pieces of information

embedded in David Bebbington's footnotes had also been accessible to other interpreters before him and

since. For instance, he is able to incorporate the contentions of Geoffrey Nuttall about the survival of an

evangelical emphasis in early 18

century Nonconformity an emphasis including itinerant evangelism

and field preaching without turning aside from his overall thesis of Evangelicalism's being something

new.

The inference I would draw from this fact is not that we are confronting selective handling of

evidence or tendentious argument, but that we have in Bebbington an example of history writing being

pursued according to a striking model of explanation. So convinced is Bebbington that 18

century

Evangelicalism is a movement demonstrating a clear attempt to embrace emphases and ideas supplied by

the Enlightenment, that he has chosen to

subject to this impressive insight a whole range of evidence

which could tend to undermine it. I would venture to guess that this historian was generally aware of

every line of evidence of evangelical continuity which I have here brought forward (though I would

observe that he demonstrates much less familiarity with movements before 1700 than after). But the

reason for Bebbington's doing so is wholly admirable: he has been seeking to rehabilitate the

Evangelicalism of the 18

century for an audience dissimilar to you who hear or read this paper the

secular academy. He has judged, shrewdly I take it, that social and intellectual historians with or

without Christian commitment are most likely to pay attention to the religious developments of this period

when they are portrayed as innovations and striking departures. This is a strategy which I can admire,

but cannot wholly endorse as it involves a strong element of exaggeration.

What I would advocate instead is not that we return to a sclerotic insistence that Evangelicalism

is not subject to change (a claim as objectionable in Evangelical as it is in Roman Christianity),but that we

be more prepared than formerly to speak about Evangelicalisms i.e. varying expressions or

manifestations of the Evangelical faith in different centuries or eras as well as in diverse cultures. Is not

his concern to highlight striking developments and departures in the eighteenth century as well served if

we agree to speak of "the Evangelicalism of the eighteenth century" as compared to "the Evangelicalism

Alexandre Ganoczy, The Young Calvin, (Edinburgh, T.&T. Clark, 1988). pp. 89-92.

Supra p. 11 and footnote 41.