enjoyed his book but I find many parts this article disturbing.
Evangelicals emerged as a potent political force in the late 1970s and early '80s with the Rev. Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority" crusade on issues such as abortion, gay rights and school prayer.
Those campaigns made "evangelical" synonymous with "conservative" in the public eye. In fact, the term has nothing to do with politics. Evangelicals are Christians who have accepted Jesus as their savior (an experience often called being "born again") and who take the Bible as the word of God, to be faithfully obeyed.I think the ECLA, for one, might disagree with that description.
Bush is an evangelical, as are Democratic former Presidents Carter and Clinton.
A decade ago, white evangelicals were fairly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. Today, the group leans heavily Republican. White evangelicals make up 23% of the electorate; in the last election, 78% backed Bush, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.Has the division changed or has the definition changed? :wtf: First they taint the term Christian and now Evangelical.
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/EvangelicalEvangelical has several distinct meanings:
In its original sense, it means belonging or related to the Gospel (Greek: euangelion - good news) of the New Testament.
In the United States and the UK, it usually refers to adherents of Evangelicalism.
In mainland Europe, especially in the German speaking and nordic countries, Evangelical (evangelisch) is a general designation for churches adhering to beliefs of the Reformation, e.g. Evangelical Lutheran Church, Evangelical Reformed Church, or Evangelical Methodist Church, in contrast to Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches. In this sense, it comprises everything from a liberal state church to a conservative free church in the Baptist or Pietist tradition.
However, in German there are now two words used which are commonly translated "Evangelical": "evangelisch" meaning Protestant, and more narrowly the Lutheran and Reformed churches, and "evangelikal", pertaining to Evangelicalism. In Austria, the United Lutheran and Reformed Church (Evangelische Kirche in Oesterreich) claims a monopoly on the former term and has in the past sued independent churches using the designation "evangelisch".
In non-Christian circles it means "of a tendancy to pursuade others to your views". Microsoft employs evangelists to get their customers excited about their products and technologies, such as Robert Scoble