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But in America, you get rid of the Church of Scotland, you get rid of the Church of England, and what are you left with? Well you're left with nothing except people who, like Asbury, know how to put it together themselves. Which is one reason the small-group feature of the Methodists is so important in the U.S. It doesn't take a minister, and it doesn't take seminary education. It just takes five or six people willing to meet and read the Bible together and ask what's the Lord doing to convict you of your sin.

While that was one of the strengths of evangelicalism, one of its weaknesses is that historically it's primarily a reform movement.

You're right. Almost universally, what evangelicalism has been great at doing is bringing life back to cold religious form. But, evangelicalism is a parasitic movement. The great evangelical leaders are not theoreticians of institutions. Some of them are very good theologians on questions of personal salvation. They're not theologians of culture, they're not theologians of society. There are problems with the Christian outreach that is just the theology of society, but there are also problems when the individual attention is so strong that culture and society is lost sight of.

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The Rise of Evangelicalsim: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys is available from Christianbook.com and other book retailers.

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The Rise of Evangelicalsim is the first book in a series by Intervarsity Press.

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June (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49