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Evangelicalism is at a serious crossroads in the United States and is quickly losing it’s theological identity.

Initiatives such as the National Campaign to Proclaim Hope and The Gospel Coalition indicate that Evangelicals nationwide sense that the very term “Evangelical” has lost it’s meaning. To some, it seems, being “Evangelical” nowadays only refers to someone attending a mega church with a Starbucks in the food court and grape juice at Communion. After all, if there were actual wine at Communion that, well, would simply be Catholic.

The history of the word “Evangelical” in the United Church of Christ context should be instructive for us and would be instructive for America’s larger evangelical movement if they cared to listen. Perhaps now they do care to listen… so what will be our contribution to the emerging dialog? Refreshing our memories about our “Evangelical” past is where to start.

First, as we all recall, one of the communions helping form the UCC was the “Evangelical and Reformed Church”. That’s where we should begin remembering and renewing the term “Evangelical” to assist the present discussions. In our context “Evangelical” didn’t refer to someone with a penchant for contemporary Christian music, an introverted spiritual individualism that was just fundamentalism without the “don’ts”, or even churches serving Decaf Lattes.

Instead, “Evangelical” in UCC history referred directly to Lutheran Confessional Orthodoxy from the Reformation as mediated to the American setting through Lutheran Pietism. The legacy of Lutheran Confessional Orthodoxy (i.e. the Augsburg Confession, the Book of Concord, and Luther’s catechisms) communicated the objective nature of God’s saving work: salvation comes through God’s grace; God’s Law continually critiques us and our motives and reveals us to be sinners under judgment; the only saving righteousness we sinners can rely on is an alien righteousness outside of us procured and given by Jesus Christ; the only obedience that matters is the New Obedience springing from grateful faith and working through love ( as also described in the Heidelberg Catechism’s Third section.)

Lutheran Pietism arose in reaction to what Spener, Francke and others of their day considered to be the dead orthodoxy of Lutheranism long after the Reformation. Pietism deeply influenced the “Evangelical” forebears whose children joined the UCC. Their opponents on the Continent accused them of the heresy of seeking God’s forgiveness through their good works. They countered in terms that showed they sought to encourage and emphasize the radical nature of the New Obedience and the inseparability of justification by grace and the New Obedience. They staunchly affirmed the doctrine of justification by grace through faith and sanctification by grace through faith for that matter. The Pietists are remembered today for creating the orphanages that inspired George Muller of England. It was the Pietists, in fact, who lead Muller to a vital faith in addition of setting an example that valued mission works and other Christian labors.

This Pietistic form of confessional Lutheranism, then, defines the term “Evangelical” in the history of the United Church of Christ. It was characterized by a strong emphasis on the objective work of God in Christ to save sinners and reliance upon the Holy Scriptures as the infallible rule of faith and practice. All the while they insisted that God’s objective truth results in subjective change in individuals, churches, and cultures. This Pietistic strain of Lutheran orthodoxy (much to the dismay of some modern conservative confessional Lutherans!) was not threatened by Reformed believers. They would ultimately merge as an “Evangelical and Reformed Church”. Therefore it was a type of Evangelicalism focused on the core of the Reformation Gospel and not on the issues that separated believers on the continent and elsewhere in the US. In that way “Evangelical and Reformed” came to refer to a type of Reformation Consensus that we see in the irenic attempts of Elector Frederick and Zacharius Ursinus among others to declare their faith without unnecessary offense to the Lutheran political and religious establishment in such works as the Heidelberg Catechism.

As today’s Evangelicalism finds itself in a quandary as to its identity, Evangelicals in the United Church of Christ have quite a bit of history behind them to inform the debate that will shape the Evangelicalism of the future. From our own history, we know that the word “Evangelical” is not defined by such vague things as a certain type of personal experience, a certain style of worship, or having a food court at church. Instead, “Evangelical” as we know refers to vital orthodoxy that confesses the objective nature of salvation as what God has done in history for us and revealed by God’s objective Word the Bible. At the same time, “Evangelical” also means  we confess that God is at work in us subjectively transforming individuals and cultures through the work of mission as these works are inspired by our gratitude to Jesus Christ for His salvation.

Our history reminds us of a profound evangelicalism worthy of emulation as today’s “Evangelicals” find themselves adrift in relativism and preoccupation with things that are not the core of the Good News of Christ. The question confronting us is twofold:

1. Will we embrace the fullness of our own Evangelical identity?

2. Will we have an example to offer modern Evangelicals seeking their way into the future?