Evangelical Christianity

Although many people associate evangelicalism with modern religious leaders like Billy Graham and Rick Warren, its roots can be traced to the eighteenth century. In response to social, political, economic, and intellectual transformations that were transatlantic in scope, eighteenth-century Protestants throughout the Atlantic world gradually created a new kind of faith that we now call evangelicalism. The word itself was not new, and its roots stretch back to the Greek euangelion, meaning “gospel.” The sixteenth-century Protestant reformers used “evangelical” to emphasize their reliance on the gospel message they found in scripture.

Yet during the eighteenth century, the word became increasingly identified with revivalists who emphasized a personal relationship with God, the joy of being born again, and the call to spread the gospel around the globe. Thousands of converts were drawn to evangelicalism because it helped them to make sense of changes in everyday life that did not yet have a name. Words like capitalism, individualism, enlightenment, and humanitarianism were not coined until the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

Evangelical ministers offered convincing answers to the most pressing questions of that time—questions about the nature of God, the meaning of suffering, and the definition of truth. Evangelical leaders of the 1730s and ’40s drew on deep biblical and Reformed traditions. They also represented a substantially new version of Protestantism that adapted to new realities in the early modern period. 

In the mid-1900s, with the advent of radio, television, and magazines, evangelicalism experienced a new surge in popularity. Many Christians who were in historically separate denominational families began to come together under different theological or cultural causes. As a result, this era saw the rise of evangelical media platforms like the Christianity Today magazine and cross-denominational organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ. By the end of the 20th century, many evangelicals started to identify with the “evangelical” label more than even their own denominations. Someone who is PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) may feel they have more in common with someone who is SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) than someone who is PCUSA (Presbyterian Church USA), which would have been very strange a hundred years ago.

{Source: Usborne Encyclopedia of World Religions by Susan Meredith and Clare Hickman}

What My Faith Means to Me

Pastor Larry Lin, Matthew 5:9 Outreach Manager 

Family Origin

My parents immigrated from China to the United States in the early 1980s, and they both independently converted from agnosticism to Christianity by the end of the decade. Like many immigrants from poverty-stricken and war-stricken countries, my parents needed no convincing that sin was real. Suffering at such a large scale could not simply be the accidental consequence of natural selection–there must be some divine, moral component to it. The whole world must somehow be in the wrong. 

Christianity provided not only an explanation for that evil but also a solution. It taught that a Son of God also suffered under that evil, but he rose from the dead victorious, giving eternal hope for all who believe. The Christian faith provided meaning to a world that seemed so meaningless.

Early Formation

My upbringing was filled with privilege–I was raised in a relatively wealthy and sheltered home in suburban California. Yet I was frequently unhappy. Growing up, I was awkward and shy, and I constantly felt left out. It also didn’t help that I was one of a few Asians at my school. And as it was with immigrant families, my parents and I had very different cultural values, and we argued frequently. By the time I was in high school, I had a history of suicidal thoughts and punching holes in walls.

The one place that I found solace was in the church. People (most of them, at least) were friendly and caring there. The songs we sang reached me at emotional levels I didn’t know I could experience. And the message of the Christian faith–that Jesus loved me so much that he would die for me–made me feel valued. It didn’t matter what the world threw at me–I could find hope in the belief that God was real, that God understands me, that God has a plan.

I would journal a lot in my teenage years. I would frequently write something along the lines of, “I hate everything about life. But I can’t give up. I know God has a plan for me.” 

Abandonment and Attachment

When I finished high school, I intentionally chose to go to college on the other side of the country. I wanted to be a new man. I blossomed in my new environment, socially and emotionally, and my faith matured as well. 

One day during my senior year, however, I got a call from my mom and she told me that my dad had left her. Looking back now, it was obvious that their marriage had been deteriorating for years. But when it happened, I was totally shocked. 

Despite our differences, I had looked up to my father a lot. His life was marked by wisdom, perseverance, and courage. In many ways, I wanted to be like him. So when he left, despite my mom’s pleas for him to stay, I started to question everything I knew.

Perhaps in an alternative universe, my dad’s withdrawal from my family would have caused me to doubt my faith. But strangely, my dad’s departure caused me to lean more heavily on my faith than ever before. It forced me to reckon with humanity’s brokenness and frailty and the fact that human beings are prone to promise breaking. Sin was real. 

In that place of abandonment, the cross took on a new meaning. At the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). According to the Christian faith, the Son of God experienced what I experienced. And why? The Christian message is that the cross represented a trade between Jesus and humanity. Jesus, the perfect Son of God, was abandoned by God so that sinners could be welcomed into God’s family. Because God forsook his Son on the cross, he can promise to us, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).

Ultimately, my dad’s abandonment of my family reinforced my attachment to my Christian faith. It was another reminder to me that the world will let me down, but God never will. Eventually, I left my path toward an engineering career and pursued vocational ministry.

External Labels and Self-Discovery

In 2013, I moved to Baltimore and started working at a Southern Baptist church. I didn’t think of myself as a Southern Baptist–I was just a follower of Jesus who worked at a church, and the church happened to be Southern Baptist. In fact, up until that point, I never identified as any specific type of Christian. I had taken on certain labels when needed, like Protestant, Evangelical, or Reformed, but I didn’t think much of them. They were just ways for me to intellectually categorize my beliefs systems.

But several things happened shortly after my move to Baltimore. Firstly, I started to gradually shift away from my political roots–I had been a conservative Libertarian since high school–to become an independent voter that didn’t squarely sit within any major party. Secondly, I noticed that many of the Christians in my life (including my personal friends and public influencers) were also beginning to be more politically vocal, and their positions were often different from mine.

Evangelicalism, for me, had always been a spiritual term, free from cultural or political connotations. This term classified the subset of Christians who, as David Bebbington explains, emphasized being born again, viewed Scripture as authoritative, focused on Jesus Christ’s atonement on the cross, and called for cultural engagement. I identified as an evangelical because those four things described me. 

But overwhelmingly, around the rise of Donald Trump, the term came to take on cultural or political baggage that I didn’t identify with, and it took me on a journey of self-reflection. Why are so many people who believe the same foundational things as me are so different from me culturally and politically? Are they not connecting the dots, or am I not connecting the dots? As James 3:11 says, “Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and saltwater?”

During this time, many prominent Christians left their conservative denominations or started to shun the label “evangelical.” There were times when I felt tempted to do the same. I was concerned about how people on the outside would perceive me if I continued to pastor a Southern Baptist church.

One day in 2018, I was reading Michael Wear’s book Reclaiming Hope, in which he wrote, “Some wonder why our political parties have become more extreme, why Congress is in a stalemate, and compromise is nowhere to be found. A major reason is that many of the people who would provide either of our political parties with some semblance of balance have left the party altogether.” 

A light bulb went off in my mind. Wear was obviously writing about political parties, but I immediately thought of modern evangelicalism. Perhaps God was calling me to evangelicalism, not so that I would fall in line with all of the evangelical stereotypes, but so that I could bring about balance and reform from the inside.

My Christian faith teaches me that God didn’t give up on humankind; he entered into our world, lived just like one of us, and even died with us. And when he did that, he changed the world. I realized that’s what I needed to do with evangelicals. I need to live in their world to change it.

When I was growing up, all I ever wanted was to be liked. But now I realize that it doesn’t matter how people perceive or categorize me. What matters is that I know who I am. I am a follower of Jesus. He is the Son of God who became a human being for me, who gave his life for me, and I’ll do my best to give my life to him.