DECONSTRUCTING EVANGELICALISM
Conservative Protestantism in the age of Billy Graham
By D.G. Hart. Baker. 224 pages
ISBN 0 8010 2728 4
This book asks the penetrating question: what does it mean to be an evangelical? Everybody knows that evangelicalism is something to do with Billy Graham, Fuller Seminary, Christianity Today magazine, and being born again. (The author writes from an American perspective.)
But when you try to pin down a more rigorous definition, you have a struggle on your hands. The author trawls through volumes of religious and social history to discover how the modern evangelical movement might be described. He concludes that the boundaries are ill-defined and the doctrinal base somewhat uncertain. Clearly the accepted definition of evangelical must be extremely broad if around 40% of all Americans claim to belong to this constituency. Hart maintains that the designation 'evangelical' is nothing more than a nose of wax, which has been used by all manner of groups and individuals over the years who take it in different ways and define it according to their own perspective.
