THE EMERGENCE OF EVANGELICALISM
Ed. By Michael A.G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart
Apollos. 432 pages. £19.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-254-7
In 1989 the historian David Bebbington published his landmark study, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: a history from the 1730s to the 1980s. It was a significant achievement and has proved highly influential. My own battered copy, avidly read on holiday flights in the summer of 1989, is evidence of frequent use and lendings.
In this book, Professor Bebbington, an active member of a Baptist church in Stirling, maintains that evangelicalism is distinguished by four qualities: conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism. This description has been widely adopted: a standard essay topic nowadays is to discuss this ‘Bebbington quadrilateral’, and it is frequently employed in discussions of present-day evangelicalism.
