Evangelicalism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Evangelicalism - Essay ExampleThe term means, in it simplest denotation, pertaining to the evangel, which is the Christian gospel, or computable news, that God redeems sinful humanity through His son, Jesus Christ. Evangelicals have stressed that people find salvation only through personal faith in Christs atoning death and through the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit. They find these views to be the central theme of the Bible, which they hold to be divinely inspired and the ultimate authority for their Christian faith and practice The tag Evangelical also denotes these Christians commitment to proclaim this gospel to others by word and deed. 1Variations time and place have nuanced the terms consequence and usage, and loaded it with much historic freight. The Evangelical label was first used by the churches of the Lutheran Reformation in the sixteenth century, but it gained wider currency during the widespread revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Ev angelical became the common label for movements of spiritual renewal and evangelistic outreach within Protestantism. This generic understanding of Evangelical also makes it an appropriate label for contemporary Biblicist and charismatic movements within the Roman Catholic Church.In late twentieth-century usage, Evangelical also frequently connotes conservative, in that the Evangelical movements and traditions have opposed theological li... Evangelical Christianity also has made rapid strides outside of the North Atlantic region, especially in the past twenty-five years. Religious statisticians claim that half of the worlds Evangelicals right away reside in the so-called Third World, and they project that by the year 2000, three-fourths will be from these regions. In Africa, for example, conversions and church-planting are projected to give that chaste more Christians than North America by the turn of the next century. In parts of East Asia as well, notably in China and Indonesia, Evangelicals account for most(prenominal) of the recent dynamism Christianity has shown. In Latin America, where conversion to Evangelical Christianity outpaces the birthrate, Pentecostalism is the fastest growing alternative to traditional Roman Catholicism. Even in Europe, where the Christian heritage of the Middle Ages, the Reformation, and the pietist/evangelical revivals of prior centuries has waned very rapidly, fresh renewal movements have begun and are struggling against the secular tide. Because of these worldwide trends, students of religion have been scrambling to understand the history, character, and veritable thrust of the varied family of movements and traditions known as Evangelicalism. In the United States, where Evangelical revivalism was the dominant religious persuasion in the nineteenth century, a harvest of information on religion in the Early Republic has appeared in the last twenty years, and it has underscored an important message to know American Evangel icals is to know a with child(p) deal about the heart and soul of nineteenth-century America. 2Thereafter, Evangelical Christianity began to lose its cultural dominance in the United States, and it