What is an "Evangelical"?

Last night someone came up to me and said, "So, I hear you're an evangelical?" My first response was, "Well that depends on how you define that word." The word has not had a lot of positive connotations in the main-line churches for a while. It hasn't always been this way, just think of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) which is the more progressive/liberal Luthern Church. But lately, evangelists have smacked of greasy-haired huckster Bible salesmen, and I think it's taken even more of a turn for the worst.

This has to do with the fact that fundamentalists are abandoning that name and instead taking on the word evangelical as their nomenclature. They are doing so because the term fundamentalist has now become a negative term. The term fundamentalist comes from a book, The Fundamentals, published in 1910 which laid out the beliefs of fundamentalists against the modernists. But recently those who previously claimed the name have rejected it for several reasons, and after 9/11 it was nearly entirely rejected. Since now we talked about fundamentalist Muslims, they didn't want to be included in the same category (although in many ways they are the same), and so they needed a new word. Their ideals and beliefs did not change, they just needed a new word, and so they chose evangelical, and as a result this term has also now begun to take on all the traits associated with fundamentalists.

This has led progressive evangelicals to either fight for the name or chose something else. For a while Jim Wallace was promoting "Red Letter Christian" as the new term for progressives, but that seems to have fallen aside, or at least I haven't heard it for a while. So we have to ask how do those of us who want to be Christ to the world but reject fundamentalist principles find a location? What do progressives call themselves? Are we going to let the right lay claim to this name and destroy its meaning?

The term evangelical comes from the Greek word Euangelion which literally means "Good Message" or "Good News." It is the word from which we get the term gospel, as well as angel (messenger). It's a good word. It's an appropriate word. So how do we reclaim it? How do we redefine the term not only for ourselves but for society so that it again means "Good News" not close-minded bigot? And, while we're at it lets also reclaim the name liberal. Liberal is not a bad thing. In fact it's often a good thing, look up the definition sometime. I don't want to be called progressive I want to be called a liberal. I want to be known as a liberal evangelical, but if I was to say that phrase now people on both sides of the spectrum would have negative feelings about me.