Did evangelicalism predate the eighteenth century?

Abstract

Dr. David Bebbington’s remarkable volume, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, was recognized from its 1989 publication as a work of massive research and winsome presentation. On both sides of the Atlantic, it has justly established its author as a primary interpreter of the Evangelical past. But the volume, in the process of chronicling Evangelical developments across 250 years, has circulated ideas which give pause. Chief among these is the viewpoint, repeatedly urged, that Evangelicalism only began to exist after the pivotal events of the 1730s which we recognize to have marked the onset of an extended period of awakening. While the book certainly allowed that there were movements and individuals inside and outside Britain which served as precursors to Evangelicalism’s emergence, it denies that Evangelicalism itself has a pedigree older than the early eighteenth century. The author of the article has observed the rapid dissemination of this thesis since 1989 and some of the uses to which it is being put. He cautions that we should not concede – as something incontestable – that Evangelicalism had no existence before 1730. If we concede this without more compelling reasons than are put forward in Evangelicalism in Modern Britain we will have prematurely consented to the view that Evangelicalism is merely the child of one era or epoch.