especially prominent in the United States, while
MISSIONARIES have also spread the movement throughout the world.
“Evangelical” comes from the Greek word for GOSPEL or “good news,” euangelion. It means “based on the gospel.”
During the REFORMATION Martin LUTHER and his followers preferred to call themselves Evangeli- cal rather than Lutheran. Many Lutherans today still use the term, for example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Lutherans like this term because they emphasize the “gospel” or “good news” of SALVATION by GRACE through FAITH: that GOD saves people freely if they accept his gift.
But in the English language Evangelical Chris- tianity generally does not refer to LUTHERANISM. It refers to a very different kind of Protestant Chris- tianity. This form began in England and North America during the 18th century. It is associated with a personal experience of conversion, revival meetings, and intense missionary activity. Evan- gelical Christianity in this sense was the dominant religion in the United States after the Revolution- ary War.
EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY
Most Christians believe that God acts in the world through the Holy Spirit. Evangelical Christianity began from a distinctive view of how the Spirit acts.
Orthodox, Catholic, and most Protestant churches have traditionally taught that the Spirit acts especially in SACRAMENTS and, for Protestants, in preaching “the Word.” Evangelical Christians taught that the Spirit acts in the human heart. They emphasized a personal, emotionally power- ful experience of conversion. As a result, they are popularly called “born again” Christians. They also taught that after Christians are saved, they should strive for “sanctifi cation” and moral perfection. One moral demand was extremely important in the history of Evangelical Christianity: not drinking alcohol. It led eventually to the legal prohibition of alcohol in the United States from 1920 to 1933.
John WESLEY (1703–91), who founded the Methodists, played an important role in the rise of Evangelical Christianity in England. In the United States, Evangelical Christianity began dur- ing the First Great Awakening. This was a revival
movement that swept through the British colonies in North America in the middle 1700s. Until the middle 1800s all major branches of PROTESTANTISM
in the United States—Methodists, Baptists, Con- gregationalists, and Presbyterians—were evangeli- cal. They often stressed patriotism and opposed Catholicism.
By the late 1800s Evangelical Christianity had gone from the dominant religion to a religion on the outside. Many members of churches that were once Evangelical became attracted to modern ways of looking at the world. In response, Evangelicals insisted that they could tolerate no compromise with the world. It was in this climate that funda- mentalism was born.
Apart from fundamentalism, Evangelical Chris- tianity remained relatively quiet until after World War Two. At that point evangelical thinkers like the American theologian, Carl F. H. Henry (1913– 2003), tried to formulate a version of evangelical- ism that was conservative but not fundamentalist. The popular American preacher, Billy Graham, is often seen as part of this movement. The strictest fundamentalists rejected him because he agreed to associate with more liberal Christians.
By the middle of the 1970s Evangelical Chris- tianity was again a major force in American life. Liberal churches were losing members, but con- servative churches were growing. “A born-again Christian,” Jimmy Carter, was elected president. Other Protestant churches, such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Christian Reformed Church, were moving in an Evangelical direction.
At the end of the century Evangelical Chris- tianity became a force in American politics. Its members often, but not always, supported conser- vative causes.
See also FUNDAMENTALISM, CHRISTIAN.
Further reading: Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (New York: Knopf, 2000); Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory; A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, 3d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Joel A. Carpenter. Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997); Amy Johnson Frykholm, Rapture Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Mark A. Noll, American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
Eve
From the Hebrew Hawwah, perhaps related to the word for “living”; the name of the mother of all human beings in JUDAISM and in religions it has inspired. In the BIBLE Eve appears in the second and third chapters of Genesis. There she is created from the rib of ADAM as a companion for him. It is she who fi rst listens to the serpent and violates GOD’s command not to eat from the tree of knowledge. In punishment, she must bear children in pain (see FALL, THE).Ancient Christians sometimes looked on MARY, JESUS’ mother, as a second Eve, just as they looked on Jesus as a second Adam. They also justifi ed the subordinate position of women by recalling that Eve was created from Adam and led him into SIN
(see 1 Timothy 2.11–15).
Another ancient religious complex, GNOSTICISM, used the fi gure of Eve differently. Gnostics often inverted relations in Jewish stories. That happens with Eve in, for example, an ancient book “On the Origin of the World.” (Nag Hammadi Codices 2.5). In that book, Adam is the lifeless creation of EVIL, dark demigods. Eve is a representative from the world of light and life. She sees Adam, pities him, gives him life, instructs him, and lays the founda- tion for future SALVATION.
evil
That which is bad, yet is. Perhaps the most diffi cult problem in religion is the problem of evil. If GOD or ultimate reality is good, why is there evil? Evil is serious suffering in mind or body, especially when the pain is seen as unjust and undeserved. It is that which is not as we believe it was meant to be and should be: the innocent child upon whom cruel tortures are imposed, the horrors of war and plague, any being unable to fulfi ll the life for which it was born. Evil seems to be deeply ingrained in our world, yet because religion wants to look atthings from a perspective above the world and from which to interpret all that transpires in it, it must say something about the reasons for evil.
JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, and ISLAM basically see evil as the result of the disobedience to God of creatures having the free will to obey or not. In some traditional stories, it was fi rst ANGELS, who on rebelling against God, then became DEVILSAND DEMONS, although the notion of a devil is foreign in Judaism. Then humans, as in the story of ADAM
and EVE in the Garden of Eden, succumbed to evil of their own will though they were also tempted by a devil. By bringing in devils and demons as well as humans, these stories seem to be saying that not all evil is directly due to human agency. In Chris- tianity, there is also evil embedded in nature— fl oods, droughts, the cruelty of animals. Perhaps it goes back to a cosmic rebellion and “fall” before humans came onto the scene. GNOSTICISM, a religion of the ancient world related to Judaism and Chris- tianity, thought that our entire world was made by a “demiurge” or lower and incompetent god with little good will toward humans, who botched the job of fashioning this particular abode of life.
SALVATION is out of this world altogether, back to the Halls of Light from which we ultimately came, before we were trapped in the demiurge’s mess of an evil world.
ZOROASTRIANISM adopted a dualistic view, say- ing the world is a battleground between Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Light, and Ahriman, the source of evil; in one view, these two are eternal prin- ciples, though Ahura Mazda will eventually pre- vail in this world. That perspective has probably infl uenced the other Western religions, as when in Christianity the role of SATAN as Prince of Dark- ness and great adversary of God is emphasized, and this world is seen as provisionally his domain. In the East, evil is basically ascribed to KARMA, or cause and effect from our thoughts, words, and deeds, and from ignorance, not seeing things as they really are and so not rightly assessing the results of acts. There is not only individual karma, but also group karma, of communities, nations, the world as a whole, and one may be entangled in it as well.
Religions have also said that some apparent evil is not really such, but has a purpose in evo- lution, in educating persons, or in teaching non- attachment, and so is experienced only by those of imperfect spiritual development. Yet the prob- lem of evil must undoubtedly be regarded as not completely solved. Many people who reject reli- gion altogether do so on the grounds of its seeming inability to deal with the problem of evil in a world created by a good God.