4.1 Towards a Definition of Evangelicals and “Evangelicalism”
4.1.1 Evangelical Christianity: A Historical Synopsis
Etymologically, ‘Evangelical’ simply means “of the good news” or “related to the Gospel.” (Olson 2007). According to McGrath (1995:5), the modern use of the word dates to the sixteenth century when it was used to refer to Catholic writers who wanted to follow biblical beliefs and directives that they perceived were being ignored by the late medieval church. David Bebbington (1989) highlights that historians regularly apply the term ‘Evangelical’46 to the churches arising from the Reformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth century as opposed to the Roman Catholic (see also Bloesch 1983:15). Adrio König (1998:81) takes this further by indicating that the word Evangelical has both the specific concept of “Evangel” which relates to the Greek word evangelion, used for the gospel of Jesus Christ in general and also for each one of the four Gospels included in the New Testament. It is suggested that Martin Luther adopted the Greek term euagelion, (from eu-“good” and angelion “message”) meaning “the good news,” or more commonly,
45 Citing other leading scholars such as Hunter (1983), Freston (2001) observes that the large United States body of literature on the subject of defining ‘Evangelical’ has come up with varied definitions. He admits that the international focus makes definition even harder, since a United States definition can by no means be regarded as universally applicable to a phenomenon generally regarded as originating in eighteenth century Europe and whose centre of gravity is now in Africa and Latin America.
46 Initially, ‘evangelical’ with a lower case was occasionally used to mean ‘of the gospel,’ the term
‘Evangelical’ with a capital letter is applied to any aspect of the movement beginning in the 1730s (Bebbington 1989).
the “gospel,” dubbing his breakaway Reformation Movement the evangelische Kirke, or
“Evangelical Church”— a name still generally applied to the Lutheran Church in German (McGrath 1995:5 and Wheaton College 2008:2).47 Although the terms
‘Evangelical’ and ‘fundamentalist’ are often conflated (McGrath 1995), Tite Tiénou (1990:9) asserts that Evangelical has acquired the meaning of one who conforms to the essential doctrines of the Gospel and to the basic facts and truths of Christianity. For him, Evangelicals are therefore those Christians who are committed to the authority of the word of God as their ‘rule of faith and practice’ (Tiénou 1990). What clearly emerges from this observation is that Evangelicals have their roots from the historic Reformation (Protestant) tradition.
Historically, Olson (2007:8-14) delineates seven historical categories48 through which Evangelical Christianity can be understood. Of these categories, James Hunter (1983:7) and Balcomb (2001:4) point out the four major religious and theological traditions which contemporary evangelicalism emerged from as: (1)the Reformed-confessional traditions, (2) the Anabaptist tradition and the Piestist movements of the 16th and 17th centuries (the Baptist tradition), and (3) the Great Awakenings in Britain and America of the 18th centuries leading into Holiness-Pentecostal tradition and movements of the 19th century and the Azusa Street revival of the 20th century. Balcomb (2001) argues that the roots of Evangelicals can be traced back to the Montanist movement of the second century.
Ezekiel Mathole (2005:11) identifies the fundamentalist, Dispensationalist, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Ecumenical and Non-orthodox Conciliar Evangelicals as the main groupings of Evangelicals that currently exist.
Notably, Evangelical Christianity in Africa is wide-spread. The historical categories and groupings mentioned above have informed the religious positions of Evangelical heritage in Africa and South Africa in particular. The history of the missionary societies convincingly show that the African heritage of Christianity reached its establishment through the mission societies formed in the West, in Europe and North America (Tiénou 1990:13). With Africa as a good target for evangelisation, evangelicalism became not only
47 In the English-speaking world, however, the modern usage usually connotes the religious movements and denominations which sprung forth from a series of revivals that swept the North Atlantic Anglo- American world in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The key figures associated with these revivals (also considered as early leaders of Evangelicalism) included the itinerant English evangelist George Whitefield (1715-1770); the founder of the Methodism, John Wesley (1703-1791); and American philosopher and theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) (Wheaton College 2008:2).
48 See Olson, Pocket History of Evangelical Theology (2007) for a detailed discussion of the seven categories.
a South African form of Christianity but a worldwide phenomenon. Bernhard Ott (2001:29) shows how it was primarily through Bible and mission societies that especially British evangelicalism reached other continents of the world in the nineteenth century.49 This was certainly so with South Africa in that the early missionaries were Evangelicals, and as Balcomb observes:
One only has to read the historical documentation around the emergence of the African resistance movements, the development of the African National Congress, and the launching of the Freedom Charter in 1955 to realise how profoundly the democratic ideal in South Africa has been shaped by the Christian gospel (2001:8)
The impact of the Christian religion in South Africa is therefore one that is never underestimated. Elaborating on what the use of Christian theology can accomplish, Dean Curry (1990) contends that the history of South Africa is a story which bears significant influence of religion, arguing:
Throughout South Africa’s three centuries of modern history, religion has played a major role in shaping the contours of all areas of South African life. During the formative years of the Dutch influence in the late seventeenth century, the religion of the Reformed Church was given special protection as the vehicle through which the Afrikaner identity was forged. Nearly 150 years later, the Boer Voortrekkers attributed their survival against the Zulu to the direct intervention of God. In the eyes of the Afrikaner, their 1838 vow at blood River established an immutable covenant between God and the chosen Boer race (1990:50).
Often, the justification of theological ideologies and positions advanced by Evangelicals on the basis of the ‘gospel’ or by the use of the Bible must be critically interrogated. On this note, despite the fact that South Africa has been profoundly shaped by Evangelical Christianity50 (de Gruchy 1995 and Balcomb 2001), Clint Le Bruyns (2006:344) contends
49 The formation of the International Foreign Missions Association (IFMA) in 1920 and the creation of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA) in 1945 in the United States jointly established the Evangelical office in Nairobi (Tiénou 1990:14) to strengthen the Evangelical Movement in Africa. Tiénou (1990) note that since 1966, this has become known as the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar (AEAM)
50 It is observed that the question on religion is no longer asked in the census According to Statistics South Africa (http://www.statssa.gove.za/census2011/fag.asp), the question on religion was low on the list of priorities as informed by the users of census data, and it therefore did not make it onto the final list of data items. As observed in my earlier research (Owino 2010) based on Bureau of Demography, Human Right and Labour (2006:1-4) the available statistical information indicates that approximately 80% of the population belonged to the Christian faith. Christian churches included the Dutch Reformed family of churches, constituting approximately 6.7 percent of the population and the Roman Catholic Church consisted approximately 7.1 percent. Protestant denominations included the Methodist (6.8 percent),
that very little theological attention has been paid to Evangelicals in South Africa. From my review, most literature available on Evangelicals focuses on their role regarding liberation in South Africa, social change and transformation, political involvements and issues of democracy.51 In my view, presently, much scholarly attention is required in relation to Evangelical Christianity and its impact on gender construction and relations, which is still scant.
Understood as a South African form of Christianity, Balcomb (2001:5-8) suggests that there are four types of Evangelicals. The first group are those who consciously locate themselves within an historical and doctrinal Holiness tradition (movement) and deliberately separate themselves from non-Evangelicals who are informed by a dualist category regarding the identity of the church. The second group is the Pentecostal movement traced directly to the Azusa Street tradition. Balcomb (2001) further classifies the Pentecostals into three groups in what he calls the Classical, New (Neo) and Charismatic Pentecostals. The third group consists of Evangelicals commonly called the
“mainline” churches, denominations that are not overtly or historically Evangelical but have Evangelicals in these denominations although not in the majority. The fourth group of Evangelicals belong to the African Independent Churches (AICs). For the purpose of this study therefore, my focus on evangelicalism is concentrated on the second and the third groups—Pentecostal-Charismatic and conservative Evangelicals (from the mainline), which covered the majority of men who attended the MMC. A description of evangelicalism therefore proves vital at this stage.