Evangelical
/ˌiːvænˈdʒɛlɪkəl/adjective
Belonging to the Protestant tradition that stresses scripture, personal conversion and preaching.
The Greek roots
Literally: “of the good news”
The story of the word
In the 1530s the word meant no more than according to the gospel, and it was what the German and Swiss reformers called themselves against Rome. Evangelisch is still the ordinary German word for Lutheran, which is why an American headline about evangelicals reads oddly in Berlin. English narrowed the term after the eighteenth-century revivals to a particular kind of Protestant, then American usage narrowed it again into a voting bloc. Underneath all of it is a messenger with good news.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Church Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1530s
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
She was raised evangelical and can still quote most of Romans.
The evangelical vote decided three states.