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 PrintableVersion The biographical dictionary of evangelicalsBrief livesTHE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF EVANGELICALS This volume is the latest in a series of extremely valuable dictionaries produced by IVP over recent years. Others have dealt with theological issues, this one deals with Christian biography. How does it define its scope? The introduction directs us basically to the well-worn definition of 'evangelical' created by David Bebbington (a consulting editor). The four distinguishing features of evangelicals are said to be conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucicentrism (cross-centredness). While helpful this does have weaknesses. Oliver Barclay has pointed out that it nowhere focuses on the person of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. The book's orbit is further limited to people born before 1935, though one of 1936 vintage did get through the net! The third boundary marker is that it generally focuses on evangelicals within the English speaking world, though some like Watchman Nee are included. How do you review such a vast book? Well, I have to confess that I have not read it all. Rather I chose one or two personages from each letter of the alphabet and hoped that this selection would give me a fair flavour of the whole. My sampling brought much delight. I learned a lot which I found fascinating. I learned, for example, of David George, the first black Baptist pastor in the US who set up a mission in Sierra Leone. I learned that Christabel Pankhurst, that pioneer of women's suffrage, became a Christian in 1918, and went public in 1921 going on to speak at many millennialist rallies in the USA. I learned that A. W. Tozer's condition for becoming the pastor of Chicago's Southside Gospel Tabernacle was that he would not be required to do visitation. What a wonderfully varied group of people evangelicals are! This is a mine of information and inspiration. I am sure that it is very difficult for the editor to compile a book like this without regrets and anomalies of various kinds surfacing. In this sense I have great sympathy and admiration for Timothy Larsen. However, having made such allowances some of what I read worried me. For example, I was surprised that there is no entry for the great Bible Commentator Matthew Henry, still widely used by many Christians. Yet at the same time, somehow, A.S. Peake, the writer of a most dreadfully liberal Bible commentary is included as an 'evangelical.' Heretical health and wealth gospel preachers appear. At one level that is fine - we need to know about movements. But they seem to appear with little or no caveat. It was this kind of thing that made me uneasy. I found there was little particular warmth towards those who in the past would have been seen as stalwart defenders of the UCCF doctrinal basis, and at the same time there was no clear rejection of much that is theologically liberal or downright screwball. So, though the book is of tremendous value, it sits too much on the fence. It is ironic that the entry for Carl F. Henry speaks of the great man's increasing concern that evangelicalism 'may lose its identity by uncritical accommodation.' Well, yes. JEBJohn Benton© Evangelicals Now - October 2003 |
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