According to a study from the Pew Research Center , about 76 percent of evangelical Protestants are white. About 11 percent are Latino, and six percent are black. Two percent identify as Asian and five percent identify as mixed. Another Gallup poll, however, showed that 61 percent of non-Hispanic blacks identified themselves as born-again or evangelical.
Forty-four percent of Hispanics said the same, and 38 percent of non-Hispanic whites also identified as born-again or evangelical. While there is disagreement about the term evangelical, there are a few people that have been lauded as significantly influential to the faith.
As noted above, one of those people is the late Billy Graham, who became one of the most prominent evangelicals of all time. Many evangelical leaders have faced criticism for their success, wealth, or beliefs, but these Christians have largely found a voice for Christianity. This article is part of our Denomination Series listing historical facts and theological information about different factions within and from the Christian religion.
We provide these articles to help you understand the distinctions between denominations including origin, leadership, doctrine, and beliefs. Explore the various characteristics of different denominations from our list below! Share this. Here are 10 Things to Know. More in Denominations What is Calvinism? The item on which the leaders are most evenly split is the question of whether consuming alcohol is compatible with being a good evangelical Christian. Beliefs about this issue are related to the regional backgrounds of the respondents.
These regional differences may also reflect the influence of other religious and cultural traditions in certain areas of the world. This near unanimity contrasts sharply with the answers given by rank-and-file evangelicals on surveys in the U. Evangelical Protestants in the U. As a point of comparison, evangelical Protestants in the U.
By a wide margin, the evangelical leaders surveyed reject the idea that human beings and other living things have evolved over time due solely to natural processes. Leaders from the Global North are more likely than those from the Global South to say that the evolution of living things, guided by a supreme being, has taken place.
When it comes to these beliefs about eschatology or the End Times, regional differences once again are notable. The global evangelical leaders tend to be frequent church-goers. Leaders from the Global South are more likely than those from the Global North to participate in prayer or study groups and to tune in to religious media. Renewalist leaders are also more likely to engage in these activities. High numbers of the leaders surveyed also report having experienced or witnessed practices that are often associated with renewalist groups.
Not surprisingly, renewalist leaders that is, those who identify as either Pentecostal or charismatic are more likely than other leaders to report having these experiences. While non-renewalist leaders are less likely to say they have experienced each of these things, large numbers still claim some of them. Some of these experiences appear to be more common in the Global South, where renewalist identification is higher.
But even accounting for identification as a renewalist Christian, leaders from the Global South are significantly more likely than those from the Global North to say they have witnessed or experienced the devil or evil spirits being driven out of a person. They are also more likely to say they have experienced or witnessed a divine healing. And while renewalist identification is most important in understanding differences in rates of speaking in tongues, there is also a geographic difference among non-renewalist leaders on this item, with those from the South twice as likely as those from the North to have participated.
When it comes to the prosperity gospel — an issue that generates considerable controversy among Christians globally — the Lausanne leaders express a clear consensus. The disparate nature of evangelicalism makes its members difficult to define. Because they span a range of denominations, churches, and organizations, there is no single membership statement to delineate identity. As a result, individual observers are left to decide how to define what makes someone or something evangelical.
To the pollster, it is a sociological term. To the pastor, it is a denominational or doctrinal term. And to the politician, it is a synonym for a white Christian Republican.
So what is an evangelical, for the love of God, and why does it even matter? The answer requires an understanding of both the history and the theology of the movement. The Greek root word is used in the New Testament and was popularized in the first centuries A. But words are more than their etymologies and dictionary definitions. They carry connotations with them too, which change over time and across geographies as they are used in different ways and settings. According to the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College outside of Chicago, Martin Luther first used the Latinized form of the word evangelium to describe the non-Catholic churches birthed by the Protestant Reformation in the s.
But the term largely took hold in the English-speaking world more than a century later during the Great Awakening, a series of revivals in Britain and the American colonies led by fiery preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield.
Because of their influence, evangelicalism became a synonym for revivalism, or a fervent expression of Christianity marked by an emphasis on converting outsiders.
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