R&P: Your co-editor David Bebbington famously defined evangelicalism according to four theological tenets--conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism--that most of the subsequent historical work has responded to in some way, including several chapters in this book. Why has it been so influential?

MN: The "Bebbington Quadrilateral" identifies four characteristics--and I want to emphasize that he is very serious about calling these characteristics rather than pitching them as an a priori definition--that gave structure to his 1989 book, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain. I think the reason why the fourfold characteristics became so important is that there is a considerable body of historical literature and--particularly since the rise of the Christian Right in the United States--a considerable body of media attention that together have called out for a definition that is relatively simple and transportable for different purposes. As someone who appreciates with some dissent the characteristics, that is in part a good thing, but the negative effect may be to over-simplify evangelicalism and to ease out some of the real complexities that come with its study, either historically or in the contemporary world. So, in short, I think Bebbington provided a straightforward, direct, exportable language that could be used in many different discussions--more, I think, than he originally intended in his book.

R&P: One potential critique that arises throughout the text--in Darren Dochuk's essay, for instance--states that evangelicalism is not merely a theological category, but that it is profoundly shaped by the times and places in which it operates. To what extent can we think of evangelicalism as a situated cultural product rather than a precise set of religious beliefs?

MN: That's an excellent question that gets at the nub of the definitional difficulties. I try to explain in the introduction to the book that, considered abstractly as a certain kind of Protestant Christianity, evangelicalism appears relatively simple and makes a lot of sense. Dochuk's observation, however, is that many strange phenomena inhabit the history of evangelical groups. One of these from our own time is that some people who are regarded as evangelicals use that word to describe themselves, and some others don't. Another is that political pundits often use the term in very different ways than religious historians do. Several of our essays point out that, when it comes to affirmations of belief and practice, or to theological orientation, the most evangelical demographic in the United States is African American churchgoers. And, as all political observers know, African American churchgoers have been strongly Democratic in their electoral preferences. That reality makes complete sense if you are trying to label the group based on the characteristics that Bebbington outlined, but it makes no sense if you are trying to label them based on the practical alliances, networks, and grids of communication that link groups together, or how these are discussed in our media. Dochuk's comment is the kind commonly made by an empirical historian--one who is interested in splitting rather than lumping--in reference to -ism terms like evangelicalism.

R&P: While trying to explain evangelical support for Donald Trump, Michael S. Hamilton proposes what he calls the "white evangelical political quadrilateral," comprised of "Christian nationalism, Christian tribalism, political moralism, and antistatism." Has this mix of conservative political priorities displaced theology among self-identified white evangelicals in the United States?

MN: You happen to be calling me one day after Christianity Today published an editorial by its editor saying that the time has come to remove Donald Trump from office. Predictably, there has been a great deal of negative reaction, as well as some positive reaction, to that piece. Both reactions speak to your question because of the way in which the American media have equated "evangelical" with a certain white political constituency. Hamilton's essay is shrewd in tracking what Dochuk would call one of the "networks" that have used the term for themselves and have been so identified by others.

I'm not sure if the question is answerable since those evangelicals who embrace Trump, those who prefer Trump to alternatives, and those who dislike Trump cannot, in any sense, make up a coherent political constituency. From the outside, from the world of political punditry, it seems obvious that evangelical Trump supporters make sense as a demographic, and that they have a certain degree of clout in the contemporary political landscape. But whether that reality says anything about evangelicalism as a whole, or evangelical history, or how evangelicalism operates around the world, I think, is a very different question.

The observation of a political landscape requires identifiable subgroups. It used to be the case that you could identify "labor" as a Democratic constituency, or you would hear about Lutherans in Minnesota and know that those are Republicans. All of that is quite legitimate up to a point. But in the same way that being strongly in support of labor was not the same thing as being simply Democratic, so being strongly in favor of evangelical religion is not the same thing as being an enthusiast for Trump. Perhaps I have been too confused in my own thinking. But the Hamilton analysis does characterize a certain group of Americans who are willing to call themselves evangelicals and are often called evangelicals by outsiders. The difficulty with that ascription is that it reduces the use of the term in a way that is not strongly connected to the diversity of the faith and is only loosely connected to American history.