The Evangelical Movement

Evangelicalism is a movement arising out of English-speaking Protestantism in the 1730s. In Britain it was inaugurated with the revivals led by, most notably, John Wesley (1703–1791) and George Whitefield (1714–1770). Their ministries produced the Methodist movement, a cluster of churches and, eventually, denominations that were the primary expression of evangelicalism in the eighteenth century. David Bebbington has identified four characteristics of evangelicalism: conversionism (an experience of spiritual transformation that marks one's movement from spiritual death to spiritual life, from condemned to redeemed), activism (a sacrificial commitment to evangelism, missions and good works), biblicism (an emphasis on the authority of the Bible in the Christian faith), and crucicentrism (an emphasis on the work of Christ on the cross as achieving a substitutionary atonement that provides a way for the sins of human beings to be forgiven). This definition has become standard for historians of religion.

In America, in addition to George Whitefield, who spent much of his time ministering there, the Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was the most outstanding figure in that first generation of evangelicals. Evangelical doctrine, experience, and practice spread widely across the denominational spectrum on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, in addition to the large Methodist denominations that were added to the religious landscape, the largest of the older denominations outside the church establishment – the Congregationalists and Baptists – were thoroughly evangelical by the mid-nineteenth century. For example, two of the most famous religious figures of Victorian Britain were the Congregationalist missionary David Livingstone (1813–1873) and the Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892), both of whom were evangelicals whose ministries were marked by a commitment to activism. Even the Society of Friends or Quakers, a body that had often been viewed as unorthodox by the other denominations, had a significant evangelical section in the Victorian era. The prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845) is a prominent example of an evangelical Quaker. The movement also spread into the establishment, and the evangelical party became a strong force in the Church of England. Already in the late eighteenth century, the movement was represented by notable evangelical Anglican laymen and women such as the anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce (1759–1833) and the ‘Blue Stocking’ and author Hannah More (1745–1833)