At a time when The Episcopal Church has clearly abandoned evangelical faith and witness for "doctrines" of inclusion and diversity, Millennium Development Goals and pansexuality, Archbishop Duncan's clear and unalloyed witness to Scripture as the final authority on all matters of faith and practice is resolute and uncompromising. He and his new Anglican province are evangelical in ethos and conviction and proclaim the evangel to all who will listen.

What is an Evangelical?

The term evangelical has its etymological roots in the Greek word for "gospel" or "good news": ευαγγελιον (evangelion), from eu- "good" and angelion "message." In that sense, to be evangelical would mean to be a believer in the gospel that is the message of Jesus Christ.

Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement that began in Great Britain in the 1730s. It gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Its key commitments are:

*The need for personal conversion (or being "born again").

*Actively expressing and sharing the gospel.

*A high regard for biblical authority, especially biblical inerrancy, but not exclusively so.

*An emphasis on teachings that proclaim the saving death and subsequent resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The term "Evangelicalism" is a wide reaching definitional "canopy" that covers a diverse number of Protestant groups. It originates in the Greek word euangelion, meaning "the good news," or, more commonly, the "gospel." During the Reformation, Martin Luther adapted the Greek term, dubbing his breakaway movement the evangelische kirke, or "evangelical church"– a name still generally applied to the Lutheran Church in Germany.

Past

By the English Middle Ages, the term had been expanded to include not only the message, but also the New Testament which contains the message, and more specifically, the four books of the Bible in which the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are portrayed. The first published use of the term evangelical in English was in 1531 by William Tyndale, who wrote "He exhorteth them to proceed constantly in the evangelical truth." One year later, the earliest recorded use in reference to a theological distinction was by Sir Thomas More, who spoke of "Tyndale [and] his evangelical brother Barns."

By the time of the Reformation, theologians began to embrace the term evangelical as referring to "gospel truth". Martin Luther referred to the evangelische Kirche or evangelical church to distinguish Protestants from Catholics in the Roman Catholic Church. In Germany, Switzerland and Denmark, especially among Lutherans, the term has continued to be used in a broad sense. This can be seen in the names of certain Lutheran denominations or national organizations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and the Evangelical Church in Germany.

In the English-speaking world, however, the modern usage usually connotes the religious movements and denominations that sprung forth from a series of revivals that swept the North Atlantic Anglo-American world in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Key figures associated with these revivals include the itinerant English evangelist George Whitefield (1715-1770); the founder of Methodism, John Wesley (1703-1791); and American philosopher and theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). These revivals were particularly responsible for the rise of the Baptists and Methodists from obscure sects to their traditional position as America's two largest Protestant denominational families.

Indeed, by the 1820s, evangelical Protestantism was by far the dominant expression of Christianity in the United States. The concept of evangelism - revival-codified, streamlined, and routinized by evangelists like Charles G. Finney (1792-1875) - became "revivalism" as evangelicals set out to convert the nation. By the decades prior to the War Between the States, a largely-evangelical "Benevolent Empire" (in historian Martin Marty's words) was actively attempting to reshape American society through such reforms as temperance, the early women's movement, various benevolent and betterment societies, and - most controversial of all - the abolition movement.

In the Church of England, there have been a number of Archbishops of Canterbury who have been evangelical including Donald Coggan and, more recently, George Carey. Modern day evangelical Anglicans will read works by J.C. Ryle, the 19th century Bishop of Liverpool. Other outstanding Evangelicals of the 20th Century include John R.W. Stott, J.I. Packer, Alister McGrath and Michael Green, to name but a few.

After the Civil War, the changes in American society wrought by such powerful forces as urbanization and industrialization, along with new intellectual and theological developments, began to weaken the power of evangelicalism within American culture.

Present

Much of modern Evangelicalism in North America has, in recent years, fallen on hard times because of the blur with Fundamentalism. Mainline Protestant denominations are, for the most part, liberal in ethos and theology with only sub sections of evangelicals remaining within these major denominations.

Most of North America's major denominations like The Episcopal Church, (TEC) the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) and The Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) have succumbed to the siren call of pansexual activism, forcing pastors of those churches to exit, many without their properties, resulting in the largest transfer of ecclesial property ownership since the Reformation.

Within the Episcopal Church itself evangelicals are a diminishing minority. They are also a mixed bag. Most evangelicals in TEC are Evangelical Catholic. Classic evangelicals include Bishop John W. Howe of Central Florida, Jim Stanton of Dallas and former bishops like C. FitzSimons Allison of South Carolina and Terence Kelshaw of the Rio Grande and seminary leaders like Dr. Peter C. Moore and Dr. Justyn Terry. It would also include the faculty of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, that describes itself as an Evangelical seminary in the Anglican tradition.

Other more traditionalist bishops like Keith Ackerman and John-David Schofield would self describe themselves as catholic, evangelical and charismatic. Many evangelicals, both in and out of the Episcopal Church, are charismatic, combining evangelical proclamation with a belief that the New Testament gifts of the Spirit are still operable today.

Both evangelical and Anglican catholic priests alike have left the Episcopal Church over doctrine and morals, but in some dioceses like Pittsburgh, evangelicals can be found in both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Future

The question is, what is the future and shape of Anglican evangelicalism in North America? The birth of The Anglican Mission in America (AMIA), CANA and subsequently ACNA with its two cousins in Canada, the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) and the Anglican Coalition in Canada (ACiC) mark an evangelical awakening and a new Anglican reformation that won't be stopped.

From small beginnings, growth is not only anticipated, but expected. God is pouring new wine into new wineskins even as the old wineskins of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada wither and die. Within two decades, many predict that the new Anglicanism of North America will surpass TEC in total numbers. With the average age of Episcopalians being in their mid sixties and with congregations having fewer than 70 members and with no evangelical fervor to reach the lost, the old denominations are dying out.

Evangelicals, however, face an increasingly hostile secular world with changing cultural values, the relativization of morals, and the inroads of post-modernism into everyday life. It will be harder to make converts in the future as the demands of Christian discipleship will butt heads with a culture more given to feelings and emotions and less to objective truth.

Jesus said he will build his church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Evangelical Anglicans in North America hold onto that even as they face fierce opposition from a dying Western Pan Anglican pansexual liberalism. They believe with all their hearts that though the battle is fierce, God is on their side and they will prevail if they do not weaken or fall.

This article appeared as editorial in the May-June, 2011 issue of Forward in Christ, Forward in Faith North America's bi-monthly magazine, http://forwardinchrist.org.