Defining Christian Media

Defining "Evangelical" and "Media"
Quentin J. Schultze

As my coeditor, Robert H. Woods Jr., and I explain in Chapter One of the book Understanding Evangelical Media: The New Face of Christian Communication, the process of understanding "evangelical media" is fraught with problems.

First, who or what are evangelicals? We decided to include in our definition all Christians who call themselves evangelicals. As a result, we include various groups that believe they are evangelicals—not just one group of evangelicals. In other words, evangelicals do not always agree among themselves as to whether or not a particular group is evangelical. Rather than trying to solve that issue, we intentionally cast our net broadly.

Of course we could have defined "evangelical" according to specific, even historical Christian beliefs and practices, such as a view of the Bible as the inspired (some would say "infallible" or even "inerrant") Word of God, the necessity of personal salvation through faith in the sacrificial death and bodily resurecction of Jesus Christ, and holy living as evidence of such faith. Here again, however, evangelicals do not always agree among themselves.

Often some evangelicals will call themselves "Christian" as if they are the only Christians. We generally avoid using the terms "Christian" and "evangelical" synonymously because church history is far more complicated. Certainly there is an evangelical tradition extending back to the early church. The members of this tradition see themselves as rightful bearers of Bible-believing, faith-justifying Christianity, especially the Pauline emphasis on spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ (evangelization or "soul-winning," as some groups put it).

But throughout church history there have been evangelical strands within Christian movements and institutions. These "evangelical" threads are woven through the early Roman Church, medieval monasticism, the Reformation, contemporary Pentecostalism, and so-called fundamentalism (there really are various forms of fundamentalism, too, but that's a different story).

So rather than assuming that one brand of self-defined evangelicalism is the only form, we paint with broad strokes that are bound to frustrate some conservatives and liberals alike as well as raise the ire of scholars who would like more precision in our use of the word. In this book and on this website, we are trying not to embrace one or another form of evangelicalism but instead to capture a greater mosaic even across some of its diversity. As Martin Marty said somewhere, "A fundamentalist is anyone to the right of where you are." By that crude but telling definition we could say that an evangelical is anyone who is to the left of feisty fundamentalists and to the right of Christians who fear that "evangelicals" are too conservative.

How exactly God thinks about all of this Christian "diversity" is beyond me. At times I imagine the triune Christian God as a ringmaster balancing the acts in a three-ringed circus of conservatives, moderates, and liberals—or perhaps Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians. Of course these are historical threads, not circus acts. Yet the history of Christianity is a kind of drama marked by centrifugal and centripetal "acts" of inclusion and exclusion, coming together and splitting apart.

What about the other problem term—"media"? again, Robert H. Woods Jr. and I try to address this in the book's first chapter. In fact, the issue becomes a worthwhile theme throughout the 300-plus pages. The very concept of "mass" media is under fire by scholars and businesses alike. The digitalization (or computerization) of old media (e.g., TV and radio) and new media (e.g., the Internet, satellites, and related technologies) is both "de-massifying" mass media and creating new semi-mass media (e.g., personal e-mail, spam, and Facebook). What about mass-produced PowerPoint templates used in local churches but personalized with specific congregational colors and logos? What about YouTube videos produced by one person and viewed by seventeen friends and six anonymous viewers who find the video serendipitously through Google? Or consider a computer-operated, animated dinosaur in a public museum dedicated to "creationism." Are these mass media or personal media? Or both? Yes!

So here again we did what scholars often do best: we accepted the term "media" if particular groups themselves used the term to describe their own activities. If self-professing evangelicals employ the term "media," we included them in our study regardless of the actual number of people being reached via such media.

So much for some definitional clarifications and disclaimers if not apologies (both in the sense of admitting that we might be wrong and in trying to defend our charitable imprecision). It seems that definitional flexibility is the better route for this kind of book and website since both evangelicalism and the media are in the midst of such mind-boggling, technology-expanding, theology-challenging flux.