From the beginning, American Christianity appeared legalistic to many British sensibilities.
With Puritanical emphases on purity of church practice, or the fundamentalist controversy in the 1920s, American faith often tended to be viewed as fixated on the law. Of course, the role of the law in Christianity is a theological matter of great significance. But irrespective of exegetical considerations, the ‘feel’ of American Christianity — with its support for Prohibition at one extreme to some Christians’ tacit (even vocal) support for racial segregation at the other — seemed to many in Britain to be motivated by law as much as grace.
Legalism is dead
Then things changed. Modern American evangelicalism dealt a death blow to the appearance of legalism. Few could accuse D.L. Moody or Billy Graham of being legalistic. In fact, if anything, the modern American evangelical movement has liberalised to the point of becoming a broad church, a group where many classic evangelicals question the validity of its continued designation as ‘evangelical’.
