Skip to content
priorities in Christian life
The Main Thing

The Main Thing

  • About
  • Faith Blog
  • Faith Hope and Love and Contact

Where Do We Evangelicals Come From? Who Are We?

Jim July 25, 2020 Uncategorized

where do evangelicals come from
as % of total population with base of 1900

Church history spans nearly 2000 years since Pentecost. How much of that has been evangelical? Where do we evangelicals come from?

Let me first define what is an evangelical.

We evangelicals are people:

  • Who say each true Christian has one day where they become a saved Christian.
  • We lead people to say the sinner’s prayer to become a Christian.
  • Also, we believe the Holy Spirit enters a person at this point of decision.
  • We believe in the Bible and downplay church history and tradition relatively.
  • Further, we believe water baptism and communion are not keys to faith and salvation.
  • We deny the power of church attendance, water baptism, good works, and even reading the Bible in saving people.
  • We emphasize that all are born in sin and need to confess they are sinners and seek forgiveness without any merit. They emphasize faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the sole means to gain unmerited salvation.
  • Finally, we see spreading this truth is everyone’s responsiblity. All should help to spread locally and globally.

What is an Example of Countries Getting Faith Long Ago?

Have you heard that Russia accepted Christianity in 988 AD? It did.  Do you have a picture in your mind of evangelists reaching out to Russian farmers and trades people changing hearts and minds until finally even the Russian emperor confessed in 988?

What actually happened was church officials from Constantinople talked with the Prince of Ukraine, and he thought it a good move and accepted water baptism by pouring. He then announced that Russia was now Christian and forced the people at sword point into the Dnieper river to be baptized in mass and thus Russia was Christian.

Martin Luther made a deal with the princes of Germany and Prince and princely areas were claimed for Lutheran and later Calvinists. England made all people be Anglican in the 1600’s.

Roger Williams in 1640 founded Rhode Island as the first place in the world where people could believe what they wanted. That is not yet evangelical, but nearing.

Where Do We Evangelicals Come From? Right Here

John Wesley, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards about 1738 started asking people to make a decision for Christ along Evangelical lines. All three men published these ideas broadly and spoke with millions of people in both the UK and the US and thus Evangelicalism was born

Of 2.4 Billion people who say they are Christian, about 620 million are evangelical. This thinking started in english speaking communities in around 1738, but now has spread to the world.

It is cross denominational. You can find them in almost every church. Notably, the Orthodox Christians in Eastern Europe have no teaching on receiving Christ even close to evangelicalism.

However, we evangelicals in the West can have a feeling that all Christianity everywhere is like us. We are growing faster than the Church as a whole, but we are not yet even half of all Christians. House churches in China where I live are almost all evangelical and most are now Reformed.

In the Bible, no one ever does the sinner’s prayer. The New Testament did not even exist in Acts for example. I believe more evangelical faith existed in the first and second century AD and gradually other forms took over. People were saved by faith for 1500 years without any explicit evangelical theology.

My hope is that Evangelical faith and thinking can keep growing, but I must have the humility to know that lots of good and true faith has come through non evangelical Christianity. They are not the enemy as it were. Note my other blog Why Are We Divided?  Most Christians are not evangelical, but that is changing year by year. You may also want to read this on Evangelical growth.

 

 

facebookShare on Facebook
TwitterTweet
FollowFollow us
Church Splits From the First- Something to ConsiderPREV
Seeing the Bible Differently is Needed and NecessaryNEXT

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary

Recent Posts

  • Care for the Alien Among You
  • What About Life in the Spirit?
  • God is Bigger Since 1277AD
  • God Is Not Our Grandfather-He is More
  • New Life Already Began

Recent Comments

  • Jim on Chinese Church Faith Report
  • Anonymous on Chinese Church Faith Report
  • Brenda Hanson on Started a Blog for God and Did Not Pray
  • Carling S Labitoria on A Lesson Learned From My Great Grandfather
  • Donata on Faith Without Religion – Who Started That?

Archives

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019

Categories

  • About Me
  • Church Work
  • Culture/Sociology Issues
  • Family Issues
  • outside input
  • Theology
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Created with Taproot