3
not only with reference to the regions of the United Kingdom but also with reference to near-
contemporary Continental movements such as Moravianism.
7
Importantly, his reconstruction of this
period and its significance has now come to be so widely accepted that the May-June 2001 cover story of
Books and Culture proclaimed for a predominantly North American readership that Evangelicalism was
"An eighteenth century British movement (which) crossed the Atlantic, took new forms, and spread
around the world".
8
I do not wish to oppose this view from some hoary traditionalist stance for this, it can be
argued, is not the authentic evangelical way. I do not wish either to contend that the mere recurring use
of the term "evangelical" over a series of centuries ensures a constancy of meaning for the term. Yet I do
oppose it on the ground of necessary caution. To the extent that Evangelicalism accepts this
reconstruction of its own lineage, it also accepts its own extensive disconnectedness from seminal events
and persons in earlier Christian history. We ought not to accept that this is so without the most
compelling evidence, and as I hope to demonstrate, the evidence for this view is other than compelling.
Let us proceed to survey the main features of the Bebbington view, to enumerate the serious objections
which can be raised against it, and to provide a modest proposal for the synthesis of the view of
Bebbington with older opinions.
II. The Bebbington Thesis in Broad Outline
David Bebbington has not asked us to cashier old cherished notions of a perennial evangelical
Christianity without reason; he provides
five. We will identify and briefly comment on these before
proceeding to present the substantial evidences for evangelicalism's longer existence. The
five are:
I.
The distinctive evangelical characteristics of
conversionism, activism, Biblicism, and
crucicentrism only emerge clearly in the 18
th
century.
9
This quite astonishing claim is very difficult to sustain. Having made an extended case for it over
a dozen pages, it is subsequently radically qualified by the author. There is a belated admission that, of
the four characteristics all except activism were as much a part of Puritan as of Methodist Christianity.
10
5
Thomas More apparently used the term to designate supporters of the Reformation. Bebbington, Evangelicalism p.
1. This was a usage earlier identified by John Stott in his Christ the Controversialist p. 31.
6
Bebbington pp. 1, 74
7
Bebbington, p. 37
8
Books and Culture, May-June 2001, cover story.
9
Bebbington, pp. 5-17.