In America, the term evangelical refers to a Christian who takes a conservative view of the Bible and Christian morality. Like fundamentalists (see 333), evangelicals believe in the overall historical reliability of the Bible, accepting Jesus’ resurrection, miracles, etc.
Like fundamentalists, they try to base a lifestyle on the New Testament’s moral teachings, and both groups emphasize the need to be “born again.” One can, in fact, be both an evangelical and a fundamentalist.
But beginning in the 1950s, some Christians began to call themselves “evangelicals,” represented by magazines such as Christianity Today and the Billy Graham Association—conservative in teaching, but also intellectually respectable and socially concerned.
Because of the candidacy of Jimmy Carter, Time magazine called 1976 the “year of the evangelical.”
