The religious experience has historically been formed by the doctrine that the believer follows. There are many models of early evangelism that has shaped what we now know as modern day evangelism. Krapohl and Lippy, Kidd, and Lambert all have theoretical ideas associated with evangelism. Johnathon Edwards uses the role of personal experience in shaping his ideals of evangelism. Social and cultural context are significant factors in understanding the role played by religious experience in producing the early evangelical identity.
Krapohl and Lippy understands there is significant historical baggage associated with the terms evangelicalism. Current day society explains “religion increasingly is considered more a matter of private or subjective feeling than of shared meanings” (Krapohl and Lippy, 1999). Evangelicalism is associated in part by the public display of religion. It did play a prominent role in American history. The norm benchmarks of evangelicalism typically emphasize the practices and beliefs of this movements. In a study of evangelicalism found many different factors associated with the religion. In defining the historical basis for evangelicalism, nine different values needs to be considered.
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"What Was The Role Of Religious Experience In Fashioning Early Evangelical Identity?".
First, evangelicals validates that the Bible is very important to them. They strongly believe that the word of God is accurate in its teachings and is directly from God. Thirdly, they believe that God is all-knowing and all-perfect creator of the Universe and still is in control of the world today. Fourthly, they believe that prayer can change everything. These evangelical followers declare themselves as Christians. Sixthly, they read the Bible on their own time at least once a week. They share their beliefs with non-believers at least once a month. They have all made a personal commitment to God that is extremely important in their lives. Lastly, they believe they are going to heaven based on their profession of Christ and they have confessed their sins.
According to their analysis over centuries of studies, evangelicalism according to Krapohl and Lippy (1999) there are six main factors in the description of American Evangelism. These include: 1. Complex, dynamic, and protean. 2. Trans denominational in nature. 3. Normatively described. 4. Historically described. 5. Symbolically linked to the larger American culture. 6. Identified as either “intentionally” or “unintentionally”. Religion is strongly associated with emotion, and this has been true in early evangelism as well as modern day evangelism as it has evolved.
Kidd believes that virtually everywhere in the twenty-first century America, the signs point to the influence of evangelical Christianity. “Puritanism helped shape early American evangelicalism. Despair over perceived immortality led to some Puritan ministers to believe that only revival could deliver the churches from their sins, and that the advent of great new awakenings might herald the last days” (Kidd, 2009). They utilized covenant renewals, which caused many halfway members to convert at the same time. However evangelical revivals later in time were scheduled for a specific time in efforts to covert those who had fallen from their religious platforms.
Frank Lambert discusses Angelic evangelist George Whitfield and his zeal to promote a spiritual rebirth. “He transported cartons of his own printed sermons, journals, letters, and prayers. These items represented just part of the apparatus he employed to generate religious enthusiasm in the intercolonial revivals known as the Great Awakening” (Lambert, 1990). However this approach to evangelical revival was highly commercialized and many found his approach to religion to be more about money. However, Whitfield is one of the evangelist that shaped the great awakening. “One landmark in early American historiography has indicated that commerce – long viewed as destructive of traditional values, including piety – served as a means of promoting community and religion” (Lambert, 1990). Religion was more commercialized than focusing on the need to change community, and people.
Johnathon Edwards was a Congregationalist and a theologian minister who faced the heightening of the revival. “The consternation caused by the Great Awakening, as it came to be called, was great enough to sustain reflection upon the emotionality that was unleashed by religious revivals and the constitution of religious affections more generally” (Griffith, 2008). The enthusiasm associated with religion is often based on the emotions associated with it. The emotions are represented of God’s presence. The gaining of the word and the individual being moved by such an outpour of emotion is God’s hand touching their lives. “I confess that when I see a great crying out in a congregation, in the manner that I have seen it, when those things are held forth to ‘em that are worthy of their being greatly affected by, I rejoice in it, much more than merely in an appearance of solemn attention, and a shew of affection by weeping; and that because there has been those outcries, I have found from time to time a much greater and more excellent effect” (Griffith, 2008).
The context of the religious experience may have changed from the original form of evangelical revivals. Early evangelism played a vital role in shaping religion as we know it today. It is important to understand that culture and society are influences on religion and how it viewed today. Emotions are also directly associated in what as well as why one believes what they do. Rivals were used in early religious experience to fashion the early evangelical identity. There some cases where evangelists utilized their religious visits for commercial gains, however for the most part it was to move society to a joint worshiping of God. To instill religion into communities and society into worship. These evangelists of early religious history are vital players in influences modern day religious experience.
- Griffith, Marie R. (2008) American Religion A Documentary History. Oxford University Press.
- Kidd, Thomas. (2009) The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America. Yale University Press.
- Krapohl, Robert H. & Charles H. Lippy. (1999) The Evangelicals: A Historical, Thematic, and Biographical Guide. Greenwood Publishing.
- Lambert, Frank. (1990) “Pedlar in Divinity” George Whitefield and the Great Awakening, 1737-1745. The Journal of American History.
