In his Patheos blog, Roger Olson, a prominent "post-conservative" evangelical who often provides an Arminian alternative to the Reformed voices within evangelicalism, has recently mused about the differences between an evangelical “ethos” and the evangelical “movement.” Olson distinguishes between a historic ethos that is based around the “Bebbington quadrilateral” (Biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, activist) and the more recent evangelical movement that is often associated with the culture wars, the Christian Right, and “neo-fundamentalism.” This distinction also helps to make sense of the broad spectrum of folks who somehow fit within the evangelical label. For the most part I think this is helpful. It allows people such as Olson, as well as myself, to identify with a historic evangelical ethos even if they are uneasy with much of the evangelical movement as it exists today. (Olson also lists several new books on evangelicalism, including the Activist Impulse). You can find it here. Evangelicalism: an Ethos or a Movement?
In his Patheos blog, Roger Olson, a prominent "post-conservative" evangelical who often provides an Arminian alternative to the Reformed voices within evangelicalism, has recently mused about the differences between an evangelical “ethos” and the evangelical “movement.” Olson distinguishes between a historic ethos that is based around the “Bebbington quadrilateral” (Biblicism, conversionism, crucicentrism, activist) and the more recent evangelical movement that is often associated with the culture wars, the Christian Right, and “neo-fundamentalism.” This distinction also helps to make sense of the broad spectrum of folks who somehow fit within the evangelical label. For the most part I think this is helpful. It allows people such as Olson, as well as myself, to identify with a historic evangelical ethos even if they are uneasy with much of the evangelical movement as it exists today. (Olson also lists several new books on evangelicalism, including the Activist Impulse). You can find it here. 
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I find it interesting the wide diversity within the label evangelicalism. Further, I found Bebbington’s four-fold essentials to be help, as Hankins outlined in American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Movement (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, Inc., 2008), 1-3. I also appreciate the distinction made here between ethos and movement. I am also somewhat uncomfortable with much of the present day evangelical movement. I will definitely have to read Roger Olson’s blog.
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