Evangelicalism: a British inheritance
Evangelical Christianity in Britain goes back to the eighteenth-century revival under John Wesley and George Whitefield, and it has never been confined to one denomination. It shaped the Clapham Sect and William Wilberforce's campaign against the slave trade, filled Victorian chapels, and founded the Evangelical Alliance in London in 1846, a body that still represents some two million British evangelicals. Today the label covers Anglicans at All Souls Langham Place, Baptists, Pentecostals, independent congregations affiliated to the FIEC, and a great many evangelical churches in between.
The most widely used definition comes, fittingly, from the British historian David Bebbington. His quadrilateral names four marks of evangelical religion:
- Biblicism: the Bible as the supreme authority for belief and life
- Crucicentrism: the cross of Christ at the centre of the message
- Conversionism: the conviction that lives need to be changed through personal faith
- Activism: the outworking of the gospel in evangelism and practical service
Fundamentalism: a specific twentieth-century movement
Fundamentalism has a datable birth. Between 1910 and 1915 a series of pamphlets called The Fundamentals was published in the United States, defending doctrines their authors judged non-negotiable against liberal theology: the trustworthiness of Scripture, the virgin birth, the atonement, the resurrection and the return of Christ. By the 1920s the word described a combative party fighting for control of the American denominations, and after the Scopes evolution trial of 1925 it became attached to a posture of cultural retreat.
The defining habit of mature fundamentalism was separatism: not merely disagreeing with theological liberals but refusing fellowship with them, and eventually with fellow conservatives who declined to separate. Billy Graham's readiness to work with Christians of many stripes made him, in fundamentalist eyes, a compromiser; that dividing line, engagement against separation, is the clearest boundary between the two movements.
Why the distinction plays differently in Britain
Fundamentalism as an organised movement never took comparable root here. Britain has conservative evangelicals in plenty, but most belong to mixed denominations, notably the Church of England, and work within them rather than separating from them. When the British press calls someone a fundamentalist, it usually means little more than firmly religious, which flattens a real historical distinction. Most British Christians the papers describe that way would call themselves evangelicals, and the difference is not cosmetic: it concerns temper, posture towards culture and learning, and willingness to cooperate across church boundaries.
The differences in brief
- Scope. Evangelicalism is a broad family across many denominations; fundamentalism is a narrower movement defined by separation.
- Posture. Evangelicals typically engage universities, media, politics and the arts; fundamentalists historically withdrew from them.
- Cooperation. Evangelicals work with other Christians through bodies like the Evangelical Alliance; fundamentalists have tended to treat such cooperation as compromise.
- Doctrine. On core convictions about the Bible, the cross and conversion, the two overlap substantially; the split is about how to hold those convictions in public.
Does the label matter when choosing a church?
Less than you might fear. What matters is the actual congregation: how it preaches, how it treats questioners, how it serves its neighbourhood. Visit, listen and ask questions. Our guides to choosing a church and first visits are a good place to start, and the directory lists congregations of every tradition across the UK.