Evangelicalism: an ABC

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2008/dec/08/religion-christianity

[Guardian] 9 Dec 2008--The question: What should evangelicals believe?

Ideally, it should be possible to say of evangelical belief what Bishop Stephen Neill once said (perhaps optimistically) of Anglicanism; there are no "special" doctrines, there is no "particular" theology, since evangelicals would claim for themselves what Neill claimed for the Church of England as a whole: "Show us anything clearly set forth in holy scripture that we do not teach and we will teach it. Show us anything in our teaching or practice is clearly contrary to holy scripture, and we will abandon it."

This does, however, raise two obvious questions. What does Scripture clearly set forth? What is clearly contrary to it? It is the difficulty of answering these questions which explains why evangelicals are so often divided (and, indeed, why Anglicanism is not simply evangelical). Yet historically, evangelicals have also been able to recognise and cooperate with one another, both within and across denominational boundaries. Though there have been real differences, there have at the same time been what Neill said truly defined Anglicanism, namely an evangelical "attitude" and an evangelical "atmosphere".