Seminar: What is evangelicalism?

Catalog description

Conversion, commitment to certain ethical norms, conviction about the Bible, and Jesus-centrism - these impulses characterize the movement known as evangelicalism, according to one trusted historian. As one style of western Christianity, evangelicalism emphasizes individual transformation by divine power that then guides (and even guards) individual action in the world. The movement recognizes the Bible’s unique authority, especially as it witnesses to Jesus’ death on the cross as the central fact of human existence. In this seminar, we will consider this classic definition as it relates - or doesn’t - to the movement’s U.S. history, theology, and culture from the nineteenth century to the present. Did American evangelicalism ever look like this? What additional dimensions of evangelicalism have developed under the U.S.’s particular framework of religious liberty and culture of religious inventiveness? What is the current state of Christian evangelicalism in the U.S.? Is evangelicalism also properly considered a political movement? Why or why not?