Recently I asked the question, “Am I An Evangelical?‘ The post generated 10 different responses from maybe to absolutely not. Most recognized that the term is cultural to a certain extent and its meaning has changed.
But then Cheryl Dack posted the following response that made me really smile. In the interest of full disclosure, I do know Cheryl but I met her through my book after she asked me to submit a post for Bill Dahl’s Porpoise Diving Life.
According to Merriam Webster’s definition, evangelicalism is defined by: “emphasizing salvation by faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ through personal conversion, the authority of Scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual.”
So based on what I know about you (I’m reading your book and have less than two chapters to go), I would say that you are not evangelical, at least not in the strictest sense. However, I think it can be argued that you are simply going back to the Biblical narrative and REDEFINING things like “atonement,” “reconciliation,” and “evangelize.” As Jshmueller pointed out, you talk about the “good news,” but it is not the same good news that an evangelical would traditionally define it as. If the origins of the concept of evangelizing are actually Jesus’ Great Commission (“go into all the world and spread the good news…”) a case could be made that you are returning to the ORIGINAL “good news,” before it got all mixed up with religion again.
I think that the answer to your question entirely depends on who is answering! To an “evangelical,” the answer would be “no,” I suspect. To someone like me who is reading/watching from a spot outside traditional religion, I’d say you might be more evangelical than the evangelicals.
Those are words to a writers ear. My desire in writing Discovering The God Imagination was never to tear down my historical evangelical faith, but to inform it.
