Who is an Evangelical?

On the news this weekend I heard Father Richard John Neuhaus referred to as an "evangelical" by a news correspondent commenting on contemporary American politics. Well. . .Father Neuhaus is obviously a Roman Catholic, although at one time he was a Lutheran. Have Roman Catholics suddenly become Evangelicals? Will I be hearing references to Father Jerry Falwell? I will admit terms like evangelical, fundamentalist, charismatic, and pentecostal are somewhat slippery, but I assumed an evangelical would not emphasize the importance of church tradition vis-a-vis Holy Scripture and of course most evangelicals, at least those I know and have read, are not ready to accept the Immanculate Conception or the doctrine of papal infallibility. And I assume most Roman Catholics are not ready to accept sola scriptura, sola fide, or sola gratia. Well, who is an evangelical? Is it any Christian who voted for or supports George W. Bush and his programs? However, I know a number evangelicals who did not vote for Dubya or have ever even supported most of his programs (most polls put the figure in the 20% range). Maybe Religio-Con would be a better way to lump those Christians from a variety of denominations or religious belief systems who appear to vote along more conservative, Republican lines.

However, I am not even sure self-identified evangelical, fundamentalist, charismatic, and pentecostal Christians always understand their own distinctives, since many of the past battles between these groups no longer seem to be part of contemporary religious life or as strident as they used to be. Few contemporary evangelicals are going to make as big an issue of glossolalia as they might have 30 years ago and pentecostals seem to have made peace with their more free-living, pink-shirt wearing, hair-dyeing charismatic brothers and sisters. Maybe there is a place for a broader term that shows the unity among more conservative Christians irrespective of church and belief system identification, but I am not sure it should be the word evangelical. After all if I call myself an evangelische Christian in Germany, I am just seen as a generic Protestant which does nothing to clarify the distinctives of those Protestant Christians in Germany who would hold a more literal view of Scripture.

I still like some of those old definitions when life was simpler--such as an evangelical is a fundamentalist with a christian college education or that a charismatic is a pentecostal who has joined the country club. I am not sure the media would understand these nuances. . .