Replies

This is not a trivial issue for me.

Any devout follower of Jesus Christ is a proponent of the Evangelium: the Gospel, the Good News. That label should have nothing to do with a specific denomination or theology!

Starting in the 19th Century, especially with the tent revivals, the term “Evangelical” began to be a term used to distinguish “real” (”born again”) Christians from the pretenders: Catholics and Protestants. They supposed their personal invitation emphasis, and their revival mission emphasis, made them genuine believers.

Contrary to the common conception among the secular media, and even some professing Christians, “Evangelical” is not interchangeable with “Protestant”. The term, as commonly used, actually more closely aligns with the Anabaptist/Arminian conglomerate. Calvinists may be Protestant (Reformed), but they are anabaptist (lower case) in the sense that they do not believe Baptism is anything but a symbolic rite.

John Piper - whom I have distrusted since the 1970s - exemplifies the strangely awkward hybrid of Arminian and Calvinist philosophy that is now common in the “Evangelical” camp. (Piper is from Fuller Theological Seminary, which I consider the premier heresy factory.)

I attended a “non-denominational” Christian junior high and high school. I was then one of just three Lutherans attending. The truth is that “non-denominational” (whether church or school) is a de facto denomination unto itself; it is almost never Protestant (nor welcoming to Protestants), and almost always some sort of Arminian/Anabaptist entity.

I was harassed and maligned by the “Evangelicals” at that school for all six years - including by some teachers, who were all Anabaptist generally, and mostly some sort of Baptist specifically. That “non-denom” would never have hired a Lutheran teacher.

One longtime classmate flatly told me I was not - and could not be - an Evangelical, simply because I was a Lutheran. He did not consider that hateful; he considered it truthful. He was a leader in a Southern Baptist congregation, and went on to become an ordained minister.

I told him (to his confusion and disbelief) that some Lutheran denominations have historically included the term, Evangelical, in their organizational name, and that Lutheran churches historically have spent more on missions than many other denominations. The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod was created from a union of several Lutheran groups that used the term “Evangelical” in their formal names.

My college roommates were also “Evangelicals” of the Piper hybrid sort; they sneered at the idea that I, a Lutheran, could possibly be an authentic Evangelical.

Knowledgeable Anabaptists do not - not! - regard themselves as Protestants. They consider themselves to be theologically descended from the First Century Church, without having ever been part of the Catholic Church, which they consider a corruption of the true Church: Since their forebears never took part in it, they never had to protest it from within; they consider themselves wholly apart, and never corrupted.

I refuse to abuse this sacred term as do so many in the mainstream media, in conservative literature, and in the institutionalized church.

While I do not enjoy overuse of labels (see I Corinthians 1:11-13), I accept the practical temporal validity of terms such as “Arminian” and “Calvinist”. I do not accept the abuse of the term “Evangelical”: That strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

I am an Evangelical - whether Anabaptists and Arminians like it or not!

P.S.

To a much lesser extent, I also oppose the incondign appropriation of the term “Reformed” by Calvinists. There were reformers before Calvin, and beside Calvin, and the Calvinists have no right to apply that term exclusively to themselves. That is both deceitful and arrogant.

(That is separate from any argument for or against the entire Reformed movement as being Biblically valid.)