Before George Marsden and Mark Noll were, David Bebbington was. This is to say, that before prominent evangelical historians became so because of their definitive and defining work on the history of evangelicalism, David Bebbington, whose name is seldom heard in the United States outside academic circles, wrote a book arguably more important than any by Marsden or Noll on the history of evangelicalism. Part of the problem for Bebbington, a self-conscious Baptist from England who teaches at the University of Stirling in Scotland, was the subject of his book, well captured by the title, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Routledge, 1989). Despite the United States' global footprint, its citizens and believers tend to be a parochial lot, and so a book on the history of British evangelicalism would not appear to be useful for American evangelicals. Even so, for all of the literature on evangelicalism that historians such as Marsden and Noll have inspired since the Reagan Revolution made born-again Protestantism a subject with which to be reckoned (and sometimes endured), no American church historian has attempted a survey of evangelicalism as erudite, comprehensive, detailed, and economical (under 300 pages of text) as Bebbington's study of British evangelicalism.
Even if Bebbington is not the church-narthex name that Noll and Marsden are, his definition of evangelicalism is one that many Americans have heard even if not being able to attach a name to it. Bebbington argued that four distinguishing marks had characterized evangelicalism from the early eighteenth century down to the time of his writing: an emphasis on conversion (conversionism), a zeal for holy living (activism), a stress upon biblical authority (biblicism), and an understanding of the gospel that centered in the cross (crucicentism). What contributed to the usefulness of Bebbington's definition was not simply that it could be reduced to bullet points or even that it resonated with most Protestants who self-applied the term "evangelical." No, the import of Bebbington's work was that his definition stemmed from detailed observations of British evangelicalism over the course of a quarter millennia. In other words, he did not start with a definition and then look for Protestants from various churches who fit his pigeon hole. Instead, he looked at those who called themselves evangelicals and concluded that traits set evangelicals apart from Anglicans, liberals, Barthians, Lutherans, etc.
Too often the appropriation of Bebbington's work, however, has included the definition but neglected the history. Often missed is that his book begins with 1730. Many born-again Protestants tend to regard their faith as synonymous with the one preached by Paul and practiced by Philemon. Others with a measure of historical awareness may concede that modern evangelicalism is different from the church of the Acts and the apostles if only because of the intervening period in which Roman Catholicism dominated Christianity in the West. Here, though, evangelicalism is often the same kind of Protestantism advocated by the likes of Luther and Calvin. But by tracing the beginnings of evangelicalism not to 1530 but to 1730, Bebbington indicated that his subject was a new kind of Protestantism, one in which the revivals of the First Great Awakening transformed Protestantism to give the faith of the Reformers' heirs at least a style if not a zeal that was distinct from older Protestantism. This did not mean that evangelical religion was without precedent; its proponents, from John Wesley and George Whitefield to Jonathan Edwards, did draw upon strains within English Protestantism both inside and outside the Church of England. Still, evangelicalism was sufficiently different from Puritanism and Anglicanism to classify it as new.
The reason for going on at length about Bebbington's book before turning to the collection of essays under review is that The Advent of Evangelicalism is precisely an assessment of Bebbington's implicit argument about the novelty of born-again Protestantism. It is not a hostile book since the editors dedicate it to Bebbington and several of the contributors are former students of the University of Stirling historian. And yet, for all the deference shown, seventeen different authors take their shot at Bebbington by arguing, or sometimes merely suggesting, that Bebbington may have erred by emphasizing discontinuity rather than continuity between evangelicalism and earlier forms of Protestantism. The argument for continuity comes in three different waves: one section providing overviews of regional patterns (Scotland, Wales, England, New England, and Holland); another section featuring specific comparisons (Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Puritanism, Edwards, and the histories of revivals written by revivalists); and one more section examining specific doctrines or practices (conversion, assurance, eschatology, and Scripture).
As readable and informative as all the essays are-though the book may be of most interest to historians who study evangelicalism-they suffer from a defect inherent to a project such as this. By letting Bebbington's definition of evangelicalism set the terms, many of the authors wind up looking for features such as conversion or the centrality of the cross in earlier Protestant figures and eras. So, for example, Cameron A. MacKenzie can write that-despite differences among evangelicals, Lutherans, and Reformed-Luther was an evangelical. The reason? He had a high view of the Bible, believed in justification by faith alone, saw the need to oppose error in the church, taught that good works were the fruit of saving faith, and sensed continuity between his own teaching and the church through the ages. Another example is Paul Helm's chapter on Calvin. Among the four points outlined by Bebbington, Helm finds basic agreement between Calvin and evangelicalism, even arguing that Calvin's comments on the change in his life in 1534 that led him to identify with the Protestant cause was akin to the kind of instantaneous conversion later advanced by the revivalists. Helm even holds out that Calvin attached enough importance to this conversion to give him evangelical affinities. (The book concludes with a response from Bebbington who essentially has none of the challenges to his argument and insists once again, with great tact and deft historical touch, that evangelicalism represented a "revolutionary development in Protestant history" [432].)
If the contributors had followed Bebbington's own approach rather than starting with his definition, they might have begun with older developments in Protestantism before seeking to find harmony between, for instance, the Reformers and the Awakeners. In fact, one of the greatest clouds hovering over this volume, aside from Bebbington's gracious negative response, is the Reformation's doctrine of the church and regard for worship and the Sacraments. For instance, how exactly should Calvin, who said that outside the church there was no forgiveness of sins ("There is no other entrance into life, save as she may conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us from her breasts, and embrace us in her loving care to the end"), be harmonized with George Whitefield, who said of his ministry that it was indifferent to matters of church government, ordination, and liturgy ("It was best to preach the new birth, and the power of godliness, and not to insist so much on the form: for people would never be brought to one mind as to that; nor did Jesus Christ ever intend it")? Historians such as David Bebbington and Mark Noll have argued on the basis of different impulses like these that evangelicalism was a new kind of Protestantism. Most evangelicals find little discomfort in that conclusion, but born-again historians, who would like to have as much comfort from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as from the eighteenth and nineteenth, are the ones, as this book demonstrates, who understand best the import of Bebbington's or Noll's arguments for their own identity as evangelicals. For anyone wanting to understand such disquiet, this book has it.
