Tradition · 1735

Evangelical

A movement across Protestant denominations that stresses personal conversion, the authority of the Bible, the saving death of Christ on the cross, and active sharing of the faith.

It began in the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s in Britain and North America, led by figures such as John Wesley, George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, and drew on both Methodist and Reformed streams. It is a cross-denominational network rather than one church, and includes many Baptist, Anglican and Pentecostal Christians. In the 20th century John Stott and others gave it an international shape, notably at the Lausanne Congress (1974).

Evangelicals hold a range of views on contested questions such as Women in Ministry, Sexuality and Marriage and Scripture and Inerrancy.