To church historians, George Whitefield was known one of the 18th century’s most brilliant evangelical preachers. This popular Anglo-American revivalist was well-known for his mass appeal to the populace and was what today would be considered a celebrity He was “a preacher capable of commanding mass audiences (and offerings) across two continents, without any institutional support, through the sheer power of his personality.” George Whitfield was a new brand of preacher that arose from a time of church authority in matters of salvation to an era of salvation of the individual by faith in Jesus Christ alone. In this paper, the author will discuss reasons for this radical change of ecclesiastical authority, how it spread throughout the 19th
…show more content…
Reformers such as Martin Luther centuries earlier debunked this idea of the Church’s salvific role and instead, taught that righteousness came by faith of the believer in Christ alone, and that the church had no role in the believer’s salvation. This laid the foundation for evangelicals, such as John Wesley and others.
So, what were some of the roots of early evangelicalism? How did they give rise to this movement? Evangelical Christianity in the eighteenth century represented something new. However, this was not new in the sense as it was a brand-new idea. As was previously mentioned, Luther espoused this much earlier. This was not an understanding that grew out of nothing, but was rather the logical growth of the …show more content…
Simply put, Fundamentalism is a subset of the evangelical movement, which follows the tenets of evangelicalism, but adheres to a more rigid theology in other matters. This group has been more recently become known as “Conservative Evangelicals.”
“Fundamentalism was a movement that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within American Protestantism reacting against “modernist” theology and biblical criticism as well as changes in the nation’s cultural and social scene. Taking its name from The Fundamentals (1910-1915), a twelve-volume set of essays designed to combat Liberal theology, the movement grew by leaps and bounds after World War I.
During the 1920s, fundamentalists waged a war against modernism in three ways: by (unsuccessfully) attempting to regain control of Protestant denominations, mission boards, and seminaries; by supporting (with mixed success) Prohibition, Sunday “blue laws,” and other measures defending traditional Protestant morality and sensibilities; and (fairly successfully) by attempting to stop the teaching of evolution in the public schools, a doctrine which they saw as inextricably linked to the development of “German” higher criticism and the source of the Great
Reformers such as Martin Luther centuries earlier debunked this idea of the Church’s salvific role and instead, taught that righteousness came by faith of the believer in Christ alone, and that the church had no role in the believer’s salvation. This laid the foundation for evangelicals, such as John Wesley and others.
So, what were some of the roots of early evangelicalism? How did they give rise to this movement? Evangelical Christianity in the eighteenth century represented something new. However, this was not new in the sense as it was a brand-new idea. As was previously mentioned, Luther espoused this much earlier. This was not an understanding that grew out of nothing, but was rather the logical growth of the …show more content…
Simply put, Fundamentalism is a subset of the evangelical movement, which follows the tenets of evangelicalism, but adheres to a more rigid theology in other matters. This group has been more recently become known as “Conservative Evangelicals.”
“Fundamentalism was a movement that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within American Protestantism reacting against “modernist” theology and biblical criticism as well as changes in the nation’s cultural and social scene. Taking its name from The Fundamentals (1910-1915), a twelve-volume set of essays designed to combat Liberal theology, the movement grew by leaps and bounds after World War I.
During the 1920s, fundamentalists waged a war against modernism in three ways: by (unsuccessfully) attempting to regain control of Protestant denominations, mission boards, and seminaries; by supporting (with mixed success) Prohibition, Sunday “blue laws,” and other measures defending traditional Protestant morality and sensibilities; and (fairly successfully) by attempting to stop the teaching of evolution in the public schools, a doctrine which they saw as inextricably linked to the development of “German” higher criticism and the source of the Great