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Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in the 17th century and became an organized movement with the emergence around 1730 of the Methodists in England and the Pietists among Lutherans in Germany and Scandinavia. The movement became even more important—drawing far more members than in Europe—in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century. It continues to draw adherents globally in the 21st century, especially in the poor nations of the Third World.

It is a religious movement that de-emphasizes ritual and emphasizes the pietism of the individual, requiring him or her to meet certain active commitments, including:

• The need for personal conversion (or being "born again");
• A high regard for biblical authority;
• An emphasis on teachings that proclaim the saving death and resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ;^[1]
• Actively expressing and sharing the gospel.

David Bebbington has termed these four distinctive aspects conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism noting, "Together they form a quadrilateral of priorities that is the basis of Evangelicalism."^[2]

Usage[link]

The term evangelical has its etymological roots in the Greek word for "gospel" or "good news": ευαγγελιον (evangelion), from eu- "good" and angelion "message". In that sense, to be an evangelical would mean to be a believer of the Gospel, that is the message of Jesus Christ.

By the English Middle Ages the term had been expanded to include not only the message, but also the New Testament which contained the message, as well as more specifically the four books of the Bible in which the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are portrayed.^[3] The first published use of the term "evangelical" in English was in 1531 by William Tyndale, who wrote "He exhorteth them to proceed constantly in the evangelical truth."^[4] One year later, the earliest recorded use in reference to a theological distinction was by Sir Thomas More, who spoke of "Tyndale [and] his evangelical brother Barns".^[4]

By the time of the Protestant Reformation, Protestant theologians began to embrace the term evangelical as referring to "gospel truth". Martin Luther referred to the evangelische Kirche or evangelical church to distinguish Protestants from Catholics in the Roman Catholic Church.^[5][6] In Germany, Switzerland and Denmark, and especially among Lutherans, the term has continued to be used in a broad sense.^[7] This can be seen in the names of certain Lutheran denominations or national organizations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, and the Evangelical Church in Germany.

Current usage[link]

While the main usage is religious, the term is also used to characterize a movement that uses active missionary work to convert others to its political position. For example, the Times Literary Supplement refers to "the rise and fall of evangelical fervor within the Socialist movement".^[8]

The contemporary North American usage of the term is influenced by the evangelical/fundamentalist controversy of the early 20th century. Evangelicalism may sometimes be perceived as the middle ground between the theological liberalism of the mainline denominations and the cultural separatism of fundamentalism.^[9] Evangelicalism has therefore been described as "the third of the leading strands in American Protestantism, straddl[ing] the divide between fundamentalists and liberals".^[10] According to Christianity Today, "The emerging movement is a protest against much of evangelicalism as currently practiced. The emerging church movement is post-evangelical in the way that neo-evangelicalism (in the 1950s) was post-fundamentalist. It would not be unfair to call it^{[clarification needed]} postmodern evangelicalism."^[11]

While the North American perception is important to understand the usage of the term, it by no means dominates a wider global view, where the fundamentalist debate was not so influential.

In the first half of the 20th century, evangelicalism in America was largely synonymous with fundamentalism. George Marsden in Reforming Fundamentalism says, "There was not a practical distinction between fundamentalist and evangelical: the words were interchangeable" (p. 48). When the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) was formed in 1942, for example, participants included such fundamentalist leaders as Bob Jones, Sr., John R. Rice, Charles Woodbridge, Harry Ironside, and David Otis Fuller.

— D.W. Cloud^[12]

By the mid-1950s, largely due to the ecumenical evangelism of Billy Graham, the terms evangelicalism and fundamentalism began to refer to two different approaches. Fundamentalism aggressively attacked its liberal enemies; Evangelicalism downplayed liberalism and emphasized outreach and conversion of new members^[13]

While some conservative evangelicals^[which?] believe the label has broadened too much beyond its more limiting traditional distinctives, this trend is nonetheless strong enough to create significant ambiguity in the term.^[14] As a result, the dichotomy between "evangelical" and "mainline" denominations is increasingly complex, particularly with such innovations as the "emergent church" movement.

John C. Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, used polling data to separate evangelicals into three camps which he labels as traditionalist, centrist and modernist.^[9]

• The traditionalists, characterized by high affinity for certain Protestant beliefs, (especially penal substitutionary atonement, justification by faith, the authority of scripture, priesthood of all believers, etc.) which, when fused with the highly political milieu of Western culture (esp. American), has resulted in the political disposition that has been labeled the Christian right, whose most visible spokesmen have been figures like Jerry Falwell and the television evangelist Pat Robertson.
• Centrist evangelicals are described as socially conservative, mostly avoiding politics, who still support much of traditional Christian theology.
• Modernist evangelicals are a small minority in the movement, have low levels of church attendance, and "have much more diversity in their beliefs".^[9]

History[link]

17th century[link]

The work of the Pietists Philipp Jakob Spener and August Hermann Francke is the theological and practical beginning of Evangelicalism. The Francke Foundations in Halle became the education place for many priests of the New World, above all for the United States. The personal experience of enlightenment is the central reason to find the way to good. The spreading of the faith is pursued by the individually piety.^[15]

18th century[link]

Evangelical movements first emerged between 1730 and 1790 and Pietism in Germany and the Netherlands, and Methodism in England and America. They featured revivals and an emphasis on personal salvation and piety, while downplaying rituals and traditions. In the American colonies the First Great Awakening of the 1740s greatly expanded the movement; it was based on revivals led by Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards and Methodist George Whitefield.^[3] In England John Wesley led the Methodist movement inside the Church of England.

19th century[link]

The start of the 19th century saw an increase in missionary work and many of the major missionary societies were founded around this time (see Timeline of Christian missions).

The Second Great Awakening (which actually began in 1790) was primarily an American revivalist movement and resulted in substantial growth of the Methodist and Baptist churches. Charles Grandison Finney was an important preacher of this period.

Evangelicals were also concerned with social reform during this period—in England the Clapham Sect included figures such as William Wilberforce who successfully campaigned for the abolition of slavery.

John Nelson Darby was a 19th century English minister considered to be the father of modern Dispensationalism, an innovative Protestant movement significant in the development of modern evangelicalism.^[16] Cyrus Scofield further promoted the influence of this theology through his Scofield Reference Bible.

Other notable figures of the latter half of the 19th century include Charles Spurgeon and Dwight L. Moody.

In Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre, Mr Brocklehurst illustrates the dangers and hypocrisies that Charlotte Brontë perceived in the nineteenth-century Evangelical movement.

20th century[link]

Evangelicalism in the early part of the 20th century was dominated by the fundamentalist movement, which rejected liberal theology and focused on separation from the world.

Following the Welsh Revival, the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 began the spread of Pentecostalism in North America.

In the post–World War II period, a split developed amongst evangelicals, as they disagreed among themselves about how a Christian ought to respond to an unbelieving world. The evangelicals urged that Christians must engage the culture directly and constructively,^[17] and they began to express reservations about being known to the world as fundamentalists. As Kenneth Kantzer put it at the time, the name fundamentalist had become "an embarrassment instead of a badge of honor".^[18]

The term neo-evangelicalism was coined by Harold Ockenga in 1947 to identify a distinct movement within self-identified fundamentalist Christianity at the time, especially in the English-speaking world. It described the mood of positivism and non-militancy that characterized that generation. The new generation of evangelicals set as their goals to abandon a militant Bible stance. Instead, they would pursue dialogue, intellectualism, non-judgmentalism, and appeasement. They further called for an increased application of the gospel to the sociological, political, and economic areas. Not all conservatives are pleased with the new direction. One author has termed it "the apostasy within evangelicalism".^[12]

The self-identified fundamentalists also cooperated in separating their opponents from the fundamentalist name, by increasingly seeking to distinguish themselves from the more open group, whom they often characterized derogatorily, by Ockenga's term, "neo-evangelical" or just evangelical.

The fundamentalists saw the evangelicals as often being too concerned about social acceptance and intellectual respectability, and being too accommodating to a perverse generation that needed correction. In addition, they saw the efforts of evangelist Billy Graham, who worked with non-evangelical denominations, such as the Roman Catholics (which they claimed to be heretical), as a mistake.^{[citation needed]}

The post-war period also saw growth of the ecumenical movement and the founding of the World Council of Churches, which was generally regarded with suspicion by the evangelical community.^{[citation needed]}

In England, John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones emerged as key leaders in evangelical Christianity.

The charismatic movement began in the 1960s and resulted in Pentecostal theology and practice being introduced into many mainline denominations. New charismatic groups such as the Association of Vineyard Churches and Newfrontiers trace their roots to this period (see also British New Church Movement).

The closing years of the 20th century saw controversial postmodern influences entering some parts of evangelicalism, particularly with the emerging church movement.

21st century[link]

This section requires expansion.

Meaning of Evangelicalism[link]

The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals states:

There are three senses in which the term "evangelical" is used today at the beginning of the 21st-century. The first is to view "evangelical" as all Christians who affirm a few key doctrines and practical emphases. British historian David Bebbington approaches evangelicalism from this direction and notes four specific hallmarks of evangelical religion: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

A second sense is to look at evangelicalism as an organic group of movements and religious tradition. Within this context "evangelical" denotes a style as much as a set of beliefs. As a result, groups as disparate as black Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, Mennonites and Pentecostals, Catholic charismatics and Southern Baptists all come under the evangelical umbrella, thus demonstrating just how diverse the movement really is.

A third sense of the term is as the self-ascribed label for a coalition that arose during the Second World War. This group came into being as a reaction against the perceived anti-intellectual, separatist, belligerent nature of the fundamentalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Importantly, its core personalities (like Harold John Ockenga and Billy Graham), institutions (for instance, Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton College), and organizations (such as the National Association of Evangelicals and Youth for Christ) have played a pivotal role in giving the wider movement a sense of cohesion that extends beyond these "card-carrying" evangelicals.^[19]

Adherents[link]

This section requires expansion.

The movement is highly diverse and encompasses a vast number of people. Because the group is diverse, not all of them use the same terminology for beliefs. For instance, several recent studies and surveys by sociologists and political scientists that utilize more complex definitional parameters have estimated the number of evangelicals in the U.S. at about 25–30% of the population, or roughly between 70 and 80 million people.^[20]

From the late 20th century onwards, such conservative Protestant Christians, and their churches and social movements, have often been called evangelical to distinguish them from other Protestants.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]}

Since the Iraq War, evangelicalism has begun to make inroads in Iraq, capitalizing on a new openness to Western missionaries following the US-led invasion of the country, although the vast majority of converts are from other sects of Christianity present in Iraq.^[21][22]

Contemporary North American perspective[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

Evangelicals held the view that the modernist and liberal parties in the Protestant churches had surrendered their heritage as evangelicals by accommodating the views and values of "the world". At the same time, they criticized fundamentalists for their separatism and their rejection of the social gospel as it had been developed by Protestant activists of the previous century. They charged the modernists with having lost their identity as evangelicals and the fundamentalists with having lost the Christ-like heart of evangelicalism. They argued that the gospel needed to be reassessed to distinguish it from the innovations of the liberals as well as the fundamentalists.

Today, evangelicals are often concerned with their own failure to live up to Christian standards in contrast to the world. Christianity Today author Mark Galli says "It's now pretty much agreed that the evangelical church mirrors the dysfunctions of secular society, from premarital sex stats to divorce rates to buying habits. Much to our dismay, we are hardly a light to the world, nor an icon of the abundant, transformed life."^[23]

As part of this renewal of evangelicalism, the new evangelicals sought to engage the modern world and the liberal Christians in a positive way, remaining separate from worldliness but not from the world — a middle way between modernism and the separating variety of fundamentalism. They sought allies in denominational churches and liturgical traditions, disregarding views of eschatology and other "non-essentials", and joined also with Trinitarian varieties of Pentecostalism. They believed that in doing so, they were simply re-acquainting Protestantism with its own recent tradition. The movement's aim at the outset was to reclaim the evangelical heritage in their respective churches, not to begin something new; and for this reason, following their separation from fundamentalists, the same movement has been better known merely as "evangelicalism". By the end of the 20th century, this was the most influential development in American Protestant Christianity.^[24]

Global demographics[link]

On a worldwide scale evangelical churches (together with Pentecostals) claim to be the most rapidly growing Christian churches. The two often overlap, in a movement sometimes called transformationalism.^{[citation needed]} Churches in Africa exhibit rapid growth and great diversity in part because they are not dependent on European and North American evangelical sources. An example of this can be seen in the African Initiated Churches.

The World Evangelical Alliance is "a network of churches in 128 nations that have each formed an evangelical alliance and over 100 international organizations joining together to give a worldwide identity, voice and platform" to an estimated more than 600 million evangelical Christians.^[25] The Alliance was formed in 1951 by evangelicals from 21 countries. It has worked to support its members to work together globally.

In Britain, according to a 2005 study conducted by the Assemblies of God, evangelicals give 7.5% of their income to their churches and a further 3% to Christian charities.^[26]

Types of evangelicalism[link]

Conservative evangelicalism[link]

Chinese evangelical church in Madrid, Spain

Toward the end of the 20th century, some have tended to confuse evangelicalism and fundamentalism, but as noted above they are not the same. The labels represent very distinct differences of approach that both groups are diligent to maintain, although because of fundamentalism's dramatically smaller size it often gets classified simply as an ultra-conservative branch of evangelicalism.

Both groups seek to maintain an identity as theological conservatives; evangelicals, however, seek to distance themselves from stereotypical perceptions of the "fundamentalist" posture of antagonism toward the larger society and advocate involvement in the surrounding community rather than separation from it. However, despite the differences, some people, particularly those with a non-denominational background, may consider themselves both evangelical and fundamentalist because they believe in the engaging practices of evangelicalism and take a fundamental view of the Bible.

On the American political spectrum, evangelicals traditionally fall under socially conservative. Based on the view that marriage is only between one man and one woman, they oppose state recognition of same-sex marriage. Since the 1970s they have also opposed abortion. (See below for more details).

Open evangelicalism[link]

Open Evangelical refers to a particular Christian school of thought or Churchmanship, primarily in the United Kingdom (especially in the Church of England). Open evangelicals describe their position as combining a traditional evangelical emphasis on the nature of scriptural authority, the teaching of the ecumenical creeds and other traditional doctrinal teachings, with an approach towards culture and other theological points of view which tends to be more inclusive than that taken by other evangelicals. Some open evangelicals aim to take a middle position between conservative and charismatic evangelicals, while others would combine conservative theological emphases with more liberal social positions.^[27]

Post-evangelicalism[link]

British author Dave Tomlinson characterizes post-evangelicalism as a movement comprising various trends of dissatisfaction among evangelicals. The term is used by others with comparable intent, often to distinguish evangelicals in the so-called emerging church movement from post-evangelicals and anti-evangelicals. Tomlinson argues that "linguistically, the distinction [between evangelical and post-evangelical] is similar to the one that sociologists make between the modern and postmodern eras".^[28]

There persists considerable and inevitable confusion as to how best to classify the non-traditional/non-conservative forms of evangelicalism. Some call the emerging church movement a version or manifestation of post-evangelicalism, whereas others distinguish both under the broader umbrella of the "evangelical left" movement. As such developments are still relatively new, it remains to be seen how the categories and semantics will settle.

Evangelicalism in the United States[link]

Demographics[link]

An event at Gateway Church's 114 Southlake Campus

The 2004 survey of religion and politics in the United States identified the evangelical percentage of the population at 26.3 percent while Roman Catholics are 22 percent and mainline Protestants make up 16 percent.^[29] In the 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States, the figures for these same groups are 28.6 percent (evangelical), 24.5 percent (Roman Catholic), and 13.9 percent (mainline Protestant.) The latter figures are based on a 2001 study of the self-described religious identification of the adult population for 1990 and 2001 from the Graduate School and University Center at the City University of New York.^[30] A 2008 study showed that in the year 2000 about 9 percent of Americans attended an evangelical service on any given Sunday.^[31] The Economist estimated in May 2012 that "over one-third of Americans, more than 100m, can be considered evangelical".^[32]

The National Association of Evangelicals is a U.S. agency which coordinates cooperative ministry for its member denominations.

Politics[link]

Christian right in politics[link]

Evangelical political influence in America was first evident in the 1830s with movements such as abolition of slavery and the prohibition movement, which closed saloons and taverns in state after state until it succeeded nationally in 1919.^[33] The Christian right is a coalition of numerous groups of traditionalist and observant church-goers of every kind: especially Catholics on issues such as birth control and abortion, Southern Baptists, Missouri Synod Lutherans,and others.^[34]

Evangelical political activists are not all on the right. There is a small group of liberal white evangelicals.^[35] Most blacks belong to Baptist, Methodist or other denominations that share evangelical beliefs; they are firmly in the Democratic coalition and (except for gay and abortion issues) are generally liberal in politics.^[36]

Abortion[link]

Since 1970 a central issue motivating conservative evangelicals' political activism is abortion. Theologically they argue abortion is the taking of an innocent life. Pro-choice advocates oppose the evangelicals on abortion and argue that any legal restrictions based on such a religious worldview amount to imposing religion. Abortion was not a crime under English and American common law at least until the "quickening" of the fetus. Physicians—not religious leaders—were responsible for enacting the 19th century laws against abortion in the name of protecting the mother. The 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court said women have a right to choose abortion; with some modifications, that remains the law. It proved decisive in bringing together Catholics (who had opposed abortion since the 1890s) and evangelicals in a political coalition in the 1970s, which became known as the Religious Right when it successfully mobilized its voters behind presidential candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980.^[37]

School prayer[link]

In the United States, Supreme Court decisions that outlawed organized prayer in school and restricted church-related schools also played a role in mobilizing the Religious Right.^[38] In addition, questions of sexual morality and homosexuality have been energizing factors—and above all, the fear that "elites" are pushing America into secularism.

Other issues[link]

According to recent reports in the New York Times, some evangelicals have sought to expand their movement's social agenda to include poverty, combating AIDS in the Third World, and protecting the environment.^[39] This is highly contentious within the evangelical community, since more conservative evangelicals believe that this trend is compromising important issues and prioritizing popularity and consensus too highly. Personifying this division were the evangelical leaders James Dobson and Rick Warren, the former who warned of the dangers of a Barack Obama victory in 2008 from his point of view,^[40] in contrast with the latter who declined to endorse either major candidate on the grounds that he wanted the church to be less politically divisive and that he agreed substantially with both men.^[41] Indeed many are not sure how to characterize Rick Warren on the evangelical spectrum; despite his avowed centrism he recently supported California's controversial Proposition 8 (2008), which is regarded by critics as a right-wing position.

Christian nation[link]

Some opponents have argued that the evangelicals actually want a Christian America—that is a nation in which Christianity is given a privileged position.^[42] Survey data shows that 60–75% of evangelicals reject proposals for a Christian America.^[43] Evangelical leaders retort they merely seek freedom from the imposition by national elites of an equally subjective secular worldview, and feel that it is their opponents who are violating their rights.^[44]

Christian left[link]

Typically, members of the evangelical left affirm the primary tenets of evangelical theology, such as the doctrines of Incarnation, atonement, and resurrection, and also see the Bible as a primary authority for the church. A major theological difference, however, which in turn leads to many of the social/political differences, is the issue of how strictly to interpret the Bible, as well as what particular values and principles predominantly constitute the "biblical worldview" believed to be binding upon all followers. Inevitably, battles over how to characterize each other and themselves ensue, with the evangelical left and right often hyperbolically regarding each other as "mainline/non-evangelical" and "fundamentalist" respectively.

Unlike conservative evangelicals, the evangelical left is generally opposed to capital punishment and supportive of gun control. In many cases, evangelical leftists are pacifistic. Some promote the legalization of same-sex marriage or protection of access to abortion for the society at large without necessarily endorsing the practice themselves. There is considerable dispute over how to even characterize the various segments of the evangelical theological and political spectra, and whether a singular discernible rift between "right" and "left" is oversimplified. However, to the extent that some simplifications are necessary to discuss any complex issue, it is recognized that modern trends like focusing on non-contentious issues (like poverty) and downplaying hot-button social issues (like abortion) tend to be key distinctives of the modern "evangelical left" or "emergent church" movement.

Evangelical environmentalism[link]

Evangelical environmentalism is an environmental movement in the United States in which some Evangelicals have emphasized biblical mandates concerning humanity's role as steward and subsequent responsibility for the caretaking of Creation. While the movement has focused on different environmental issues, it is best known for its focus of addressing climate action from a biblically grounded theological perspective. The Evangelical Climate Initiative argues that human-induced climate change will have severe consequences and impact the poor the hardest, and that God's mandate to Adam to care for the Garden of Eden also applies to Christians today, and that it is therefore a moral obligation to work to mitigate climate impacts and support communities in adapting to change.^[45]

See also[link]

Publications[link]

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

• Randall Herbert Balmer. Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press; 2002. ISBN 978-0-664-22409-7.
• Balmer, Randall. (2010) The Making of Evangelicalism: From Revivalism to Politics and Beyond. ISBN 978-1-60258-243-9.
• Balmer, Randall. (2000) Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America
• Beale, David O. (1986) In Pursuit of Purity: American Fundamentalism Since 1850. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University (Unusual Publications). ISBN 0-89084-350-3.
• Bebbington, D. W. (1989), Evangelicals in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, London: Unwin .
• Carpenter, Joel A. (1980), "Fundamentalist Institutions and the Rise of Evangelical Protestantism, 1929–1942", Church History 49: 62–75 .
• Carpenter, Joel A. (1999). Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-512907-5.
• Dudley, Jonathan (2011) "Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics." New York: Crown.
• Freston, Paul (2004), Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-60429-X 
• Hindmarsh, Bruce, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005).
• Marsden, George M. Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (1991) excerpt and text search
• Marsden, George M. (1987), Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans .
• Noll, Mark (1992). A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada.. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 311–389. ISBN 0-8028-0651-1.
• Noll, Mark A., David W. Bebbington and George A. Rawlyk eds. Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles and Beyond, 1700–1990. (1994)
• Pierard, Richard V. (1979), "The Quest For the Historical Evangelicalism: A Bibliographical Excursus", Fides et Historia 11 (2): 60–72 .
• Price, Robert M. (1986), "Neo-Evangelicals and Scripture: A Forgotten Period of Ferment", Christian Scholars Review 15 (4): 315–330 .
• Rawlyk, George A., and Mark A. Noll, eds. Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States (1993).
• Schafer, Axel R. Countercultural Conservatives: American Evangelicalism From the Postwar Revival to the New Christian Right (University of Wisconsin Press; 2011). 225 pages; covers evangelical politics from the 1940s to the 1990s that examines how a diverse, politically pluralistic movement became, largely, the Christian Right.
• Stackhouse, John G. Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century (1993)
• Utzinger, J. Michael (2006) Yet Saints Their Watch Are Keeping: Fundamentalists, Modernists, and the Development of Evangelical Ecclesiology, 1887–1937, Macon: Mercer University Press, ISBN 0-86554-902-8
• Ward, W. R. Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006).
• Kidd, Thomas S. "God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution" (Basic Books, 2010) ISBN 0-465-00235-8

External links[link]

Look up evangelist, evangelical, or evangelicalism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Institute for the Study of American Evangelicalism – Wheaton College
• The Coming Evangelical Collapse by Michael Spencer, The Christian Science Monitor, March 10, 2009
• Modern Evangelical African Theologians: A Primer
• American Evangelicalism and Islam: From the Antichrist to the Mahdi

Scot McKnight is an American New Testament scholar, historian of early Christianity, theologian, speaker, and author who has written widely on the historical Jesus, early Christianity, the emerging church and missional church movements, spiritual formation and Christian living. He is currently the Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University. Prior to joining the NPU faculty in 1994, he was a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In the Fall of 2012 McKnight will join the faculty at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary.^[1] McKnight considers himself an Anabaptist and has also written frequently on issues in modern Anabaptism.^[2][3]

Childhood and education[link]

McKnight was born in Illinois and raised in Freeport, Illinois. He earned his B.A. degree from Grand Rapids Baptist College (now known as Cornerstone University), an M.A. from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham in 1986.

Career[link]

McNight is a prolific author, with more than twenty books to his credit. One of McKnight's more popular books, The Jesus Creed, won the Christianity Today book award for 2004 in the area of Christian living and has spawned a number of popular small group studies and a DVD series.^[4]

McKnight's blog, Jesus Creed, which was formerly hosted by Beliefnet and is now hosted by Patheos, is currently one of the most popular Evangelical blogs online.^[5]

McKnight is a popular author and speaker on issues related to the emerging church, with his blog being named the most popular blog online related to the movement.^[6][7][8] He has generally been a proponent of the movement and supported many of the movement's aims. However, in recent years he has expressed some concern about the direction of the movement, particularly regarding the "emergent" stream within the emerging church and some of the work by his friend Brian McLaren.^[9] Yet McKnight does continue to support much of what the movement symbolizes, including much of McLaren's work.^[10]

He has also been identified with the New Perspective on Paul.^[11][12][13]

Personal Life[link]

He and his wife, Kristen, who is a psychologist, live in Libertyville, Illinois and have two children.^[14]

Publications[link]

• One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow (Zondervan, 2010)
• The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible (Zondervan, 2008)
• A Community Called Atonement (Abingdon, 2007)
• The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus (Paraclete, 2006)
• Praying with the Church: Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today (Paraclete, 2006)
• The Story of the Christ, with Philip Law (Baker, 2005)
• Jesus And His Death: Historiography, the Historical Jesus, And Atonement Theory (Baylor, 2005)
• The Historical Jesus in Current Study, ed. with James Dunn (Eisenbraun’s, 2005)
• Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us (Paraclete, 2005)
• The Face of New Testament Studies, ed. with Grant Osborne (Baker, 2004)
• The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others (Paraclete, 2004)
• Turning to Jesus: The Sociology of Conversion in the Gospels (Westminster John Knox, 2002)
• The Synoptic Gospels: An Annotated Bibliography, with Matthew Williams (Baker, 2000)
• A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Eerdmans, 1999)
• 1 Peter, NIV Application Commentary (Zondervan, 1996)
• Galatians, NIV Application Commentary (Zondervan, 1993)
• Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. with Joel Green & I. Howard Marshall, (IVP, 1992)
• A Light among the Gentiles (Fortress, 1992)
• Introducing New Testament Interpretation (Baker, 1989)
• Interpreting the Synoptic Gospels (Baker, 1988)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Jesus Creed -- Scot McKnight's personal blog
• Indepth Interview with Scot McKnight -- "Beyond Evangelical"
• Scot McKnight biography from Theopedia
• North Park University
• A Review of McKnight's FASTING
• Review of McKnight's The Blue Parakeet
• Off The Map Episode 4 Scot McKnight Talk from Missional Matrix in 2007

Charles Darwin
Darwin, aged 45 in 1854, by then working towards publication of On the Origin of Species
Born	Charles Robert Darwin (1809-02-12)12 February 1809 Mount House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England
Died	19 April 1882(1882-04-19) (aged 73) Down House, Downe, Kent, England
Residence	England
Citizenship	British
Nationality	British
Fields	Naturalist
Institutions	Geological Society of London
Alma mater	(tertiary education): University of Edinburgh (medicine) University of Cambridge (ordinary Bachelor of Arts)
Academic advisors	John Stevens Henslow Adam Sedgwick
Known for	The Voyage of the Beagle On the Origin of Species evolution by natural selection, common descent
Influences	Alexander von Humboldt John Herschel Charles Lyell
Influenced	Joseph Dalton Hooker Thomas Henry Huxley George Romanes Ernst Haeckel Sir John Lubbock
Notable awards	Royal Medal (1853) Wollaston Medal (1859) Copley Medal (1864)
Spouse	Emma Darwin (1839-1896)
Signature

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Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist.^[I] He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors,^[1] and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.^[2]

Darwin published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species.^[3][4] By the 1870s the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.^[5][6] In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.^[7][8]

Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science.^[9] His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.^[10]

Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection.^[11] Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority.^[12] He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.^[13] Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.^[5] In 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.^[14]

In recognition of Darwin's pre-eminence as a scientist, he was honoured by a major ceremonial funeral in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.^[15] Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.^[16][17]

Life[link]

Childhood and education[link]

The seven-year-old Charles Darwin in 1816.

Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809 at his family home, the Mount.^[18] He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin, and Susannah Darwin (née Wedgwood). He was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's side. Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin, himself quietly a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in the Anglican Church, but Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for natural history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died. From September 1818 he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder.^[19]

Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the University of Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. He found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest, and often sat with this "very pleasant and intelligent man".^[20]

In Darwin's second year he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural history group whose debates strayed into radical materialism. He assisted Robert Edmond Grant's investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth, and on 27 March 1827 presented at the Plinian his own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. One day, Grant praised Lamarck's evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished, but had recently read the similar ideas of his grandfather Erasmus and remained indifferent.^[21] Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jameson's natural history course which covered geology including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe at the time.^[22]

This neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who shrewdly sent him to Christ's College, Cambridge, for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican parson. As Darwin was unqualified for the Tripos, he joined the ordinary degree course in January 1828.^[23] He preferred riding and shooting to studying. His cousin William Darwin Fox introduced him to the popular craze for beetle collecting which Darwin pursued zealously, getting some of his finds published in Stevens' Illustrations of British entomology. He became a close friend and follower of botany professor John Stevens Henslow and met other leading naturalists who saw scientific work as religious natural theology, becoming known to these dons as "the man who walks with Henslow". When his own exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paley's Evidences of Christianity.^[24] In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming tenth out of 178 candidates for the ordinary degree.^[25]

Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June. He studied Paley's Natural Theology which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature.^[26] He read John Herschel's new book which described the highest aim of natural philosophy as understanding such laws through inductive reasoning based on observation, and Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative of scientific travels. Inspired with "a burning zeal" to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics. In preparation, he joined Adam Sedgwick's geology course, then went with him in the summer for a fortnight to map strata in Wales.^[27] After a week with student friends at Barmouth, he returned home to find a letter from Henslow proposing Darwin as a suitable (if unfinished) gentleman naturalist for a self-funded place with captain Robert FitzRoy, more as a companion than a mere collector, on HMS Beagle which was to leave in four weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America.^[28] His father objected to the planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, to agree to his son's participation.^[29]

[edit] Voyage of the Beagle

The voyage of the Beagle

Beginning on 27 December 1831, the voyage lasted almost five years and, as FitzRoy had intended, Darwin spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections, while the Beagle surveyed and charted coasts.^[5][30] He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge together with letters including a copy of his journal for his family.^[31] He had some expertise in geology, beetle collecting and dissecting marine invertebrates, but in all other areas was a novice and ably collected specimens for expert appraisal.^[32] Despite suffering badly from seasickness, Darwin wrote copious notes while on board the ship. Most of his zoology notes are about marine invertebrates, starting with plankton collected in a calm spell.^[30][33]

On their first stop ashore at St. Jago, Darwin found that a white band high in the volcanic rock cliffs included seashells. FitzRoy had given him the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology which set out uniformitarian concepts of land slowly rising or falling over immense periods,^[II] and Darwin saw things Lyell's way, theorising and thinking of writing a book on geology.^[34] In Brazil Darwin was delighted by the tropical forest,^[35] but detested the sight of slavery.^[36]

At Punta Alta in Patagonia he made a major find of fossil bones of huge extinct mammals in cliffs beside modern seashells, indicating recent extinction with no signs of change in climate or catastrophe. He identified the little known Megatherium by a tooth and its association with bony armour which had at first seemed to him like a giant version of the armour on local armadillos. The finds brought great interest when they reached England.^[37][38] On rides with gauchos into the interior to explore geology and collect more fossils he gained social, political and anthropological insights into both native and colonial people at a time of revolution, and learnt that two types of rhea had separate but overlapping territories.^[39][40] Further south he saw stepped plains of shingle and seashells as raised beaches showing a series of elevations. He read Lyell's second volume and accepted its view of "centres of creation" of species, but his discoveries and theorising challenged Lyell's ideas of smooth continuity and of extinction of species.^[41][42]

As HMS Beagle surveyed the coasts of South America, Darwin theorised about geology and extinction of giant mammals.

Three Fuegians on board, who had been seized during the first Beagle voyage and had spent a year in England, were taken back to Tierra del Fuego as missionaries. Darwin found them friendly and civilised, yet their relatives seemed "miserable, degraded savages", as different as wild from domesticated animals.^[43] To Darwin the difference showed cultural advances, not racial inferiority. Unlike his scientist friends, he now thought there was no unbridgeable gap between humans and animals.^[44] A year on, the mission had been abandoned. The Fuegian they had named Jemmy Button lived like the other natives, had a wife, and had no wish to return to England.^[45]

Darwin experienced an earthquake in Chile and saw signs that the land had just been raised, including mussel-beds stranded above high tide. High in the Andes he saw seashells, and several fossil trees that had grown on a sand beach. He theorised that as the land rose, oceanic islands sank, and coral reefs round them grew to form atolls.^[46][47]

On the geologically new Galápagos Islands Darwin looked for evidence attaching wildlife to an older "centre of creation", and found mockingbirds allied to those in Chile but differing from island to island. He heard that slight variations in the shape of tortoise shells showed which island they came from, but failed to collect them, even after eating tortoises taken on board as food.^[48][49] In Australia the marsupial rat-kangaroo and the platypus seemed so unusual that Darwin thought it was almost as though two distinct Creators had been at work.^[50] He found the Aborigines "good-humoured & pleasant", and noted their depletion by European settlement.^[51]

The Beagle investigated how the atolls of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands had formed, and the survey supported Darwin's theorising.^[47] FitzRoy began writing the official Narrative of the Beagle voyages, and after reading Darwin's diary he proposed incorporating it into the account.^[52] Darwin's Journal was eventually rewritten as a separate third volume, on natural history.^[53]

In Cape Town Darwin and FitzRoy met John Herschel, who had recently written to Lyell praising his uniformitarianism as opening bold speculation on "that mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by others" as "a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process".^[54] When organising his notes as the ship sailed home, Darwin wrote that if his growing suspicions about the mockingbirds, the tortoises and the Falkland Islands Fox were correct, "such facts undermine the stability of Species", then cautiously added "would" before "undermine".^[55] He later wrote that such facts "seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species".^[56]

Inception of Darwin's evolutionary theory[link]

While still a young man, Charles Darwin joined the scientific elite

When the Beagle reached Falmouth, Cornwall, on 2 October 1836, Darwin was already a celebrity in scientific circles as in December 1835 Henslow had fostered his former pupil's reputation by giving selected naturalists a pamphlet of Darwin's geological letters.^[57] Darwin visited his home in Shrewsbury and saw relatives, then hurried to Cambridge to see Henslow, who advised on finding naturalists available to catalogue the collections and agreed to take on the botanical specimens. Darwin's father organised investments, enabling his son to be a self-funded gentleman scientist, and an excited Darwin went round the London institutions being fêted and seeking experts to describe the collections. Zoologists had a huge backlog of work, and there was a danger of specimens just being left in storage.^[58]

Charles Lyell eagerly met Darwin for the first time on 29 October and soon introduced him to the up-and-coming anatomist Richard Owen, who had the facilities of the Royal College of Surgeons to work on the fossil bones collected by Darwin. Owen's surprising results included other gigantic extinct ground sloths as well as the Megatherium, a near complete skeleton of the unknown Scelidotherium and a hippopotamus-sized rodent-like skull named Toxodon resembling a giant capybara. The armour fragments were actually from Glyptodon, a huge armadillo-like creature as Darwin had initially thought.^[59][38] These extinct creatures were related to living species in South America.^[60]

In mid-December Darwin took lodgings in Cambridge to organise work on his collections and rewrite his Journal.^[61] He wrote his first paper, showing that the South American landmass was slowly rising, and with Lyell's enthusiastic backing read it to the Geological Society of London on 4 January 1837. On the same day, he presented his mammal and bird specimens to the Zoological Society. The ornithologist John Gould soon announced that the Galapagos birds that Darwin had thought a mixture of blackbirds, "gros-beaks" and finches, were, in fact, twelve separate species of finches. On 17 February Darwin was elected to the Council of the Geological Society, and Lyell's presidential address presented Owen's findings on Darwin's fossils, stressing geographical continuity of species as supporting his uniformitarian ideas.^[62]

Early in March, Darwin moved to London to be near this work, joining Lyell's social circle of scientists and experts such as Charles Babbage,^[63] who described God as a programmer of laws. Darwin stayed with his freethinking brother Erasmus, part of this Whig circle and close friend of writer Harriet Martineau who promoted Malthusianism underlying the controversial Whig Poor Law reforms to stop welfare from causing overpopulation and more poverty. As a Unitarian she welcomed the radical implications of transmutation of species, promoted by Grant and younger surgeons influenced by Geoffroy. Transmutation was anathema to Anglicans defending social order,^[64] but reputable scientists openly discussed the subject and there was wide interest in John Herschel's letter praising Lyell's approach as a way to find a natural cause of the origin of new species.^[54]

Gould met Darwin and told him that the Galápagos mockingbirds from different islands were separate species, not just varieties, and what Darwin had thought was a "wren" was also in the finch group. Darwin had not labelled the finches by island, but from the notes of others on the Beagle, including FitzRoy, he allocated species to islands.^[65] The two rheas were also distinct species, and on 14 March Darwin announced how their distribution changed going southwards.^[66]

In mid-July 1837 Darwin started his "B" notebook on Transmutation of Species, and on page 36 wrote "I think" above his first evolutionary tree.

By mid-March, Darwin was speculating in his Red Notebook on the possibility that "one species does change into another" to explain the geographical distribution of living species such as the rheas, and extinct ones such as the strange Macrauchenia which resembled a giant guanaco. His thoughts on lifespan, asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction developed in his "B" notebook around mid-July on to variation in offspring "to adapt & alter the race to changing world" explaining the Galápagos tortoises, mockingbirds and rheas. He sketched branching descent, then a genealogical branching of a single evolutionary tree, in which "It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another", discarding Lamarck's independent lineages progressing to higher forms.^[67]

Overwork, illness, and marriage[link]

While developing this intensive study of transmutation, Darwin became mired in more work. Still rewriting his Journal, he took on editing and publishing the expert reports on his collections, and with Henslow's help obtained a Treasury grant of £1,000 to sponsor this multi-volume Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, a sum equivalent to about £75,000 in 2010.^[68] He stretched the funding to include his planned books on geology, and agreed unrealistic dates with the publisher.^[69] As the Victorian era began, Darwin pressed on with writing his Journal, and in August 1837 began correcting printer's proofs.^[70]

Darwin's health suffered from the pressure. On 20 September he had "an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart", so his doctors urged him to "knock off all work" and live in the country for a few weeks. After visiting Shrewsbury he joined his Wedgwood relatives at Maer Hall, Staffordshire, but found them too eager for tales of his travels to give him much rest. His charming, intelligent, and cultured cousin Emma Wedgwood, nine months older than Darwin, was nursing his invalid aunt. His uncle Jos pointed out an area of ground where cinders had disappeared under loam and suggested that this might have been the work of earthworms, inspiring "a new & important theory" on their role in soil formation which Darwin presented at the Geological Society on 1 November.^[71]

William Whewell pushed Darwin to take on the duties of Secretary of the Geological Society. After initially declining the work, he accepted the post in March 1838.^[72] Despite the grind of writing and editing the Beagle reports, Darwin made remarkable progress on transmutation, taking every opportunity to question expert naturalists and, unconventionally, people with practical experience such as farmers and pigeon fanciers.^[5][73] Over time his research drew on information from his relatives and children, the family butler, neighbours, colonists and former shipmates.^[74] He included mankind in his speculations from the outset, and on seeing an orangutan in the zoo on 28 March 1838 noted its child-like behaviour.^[75]

The strain took a toll, and by June he was being laid up for days on end with stomach problems, headaches and heart symptoms. For the rest of his life, he was repeatedly incapacitated with episodes of stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, palpitations, trembling and other symptoms, particularly during times of stress such as attending meetings or making social visits. The cause of Darwin's illness remained unknown, and attempts at treatment had little success.^[76]

On 23 June he took a break and went "geologising" in Scotland. He visited Glen Roy in glorious weather to see the parallel "roads" cut into the hillsides at three heights. He later published his view that these were marine raised beaches, but then had to accept that they were shorelines of a proglacial lake.^[77]

Darwin chose to marry his cousin, Emma Wedgwood.

Fully recuperated, he returned to Shrewsbury in July. Used to jotting down daily notes on animal breeding, he scrawled rambling thoughts about career and prospects on two scraps of paper, one with columns headed "Marry" and "Not Marry". Advantages included "constant companion and a friend in old age ... better than a dog anyhow", against points such as "less money for books" and "terrible loss of time."^[78] Having decided in favour, he discussed it with his father, then went to visit Emma on 29 July. He did not get around to proposing, but against his father's advice he mentioned his ideas on transmutation.^[79]

Continuing his research in London, Darwin's wide reading now included the sixth edition of Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population –

"In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work..."^[80]

Malthus asserted that unless human population is kept in check, it increases in a geometric progression and soon exceeds food supply in what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe.^[5] Darwin was well prepared to see at once that this also applied to de Candolle's "warring of the species" of plants and the struggle for existence among wildlife, explaining how numbers of a species kept roughly stable. As species always breed beyond available resources, favourable variations would make organisms better at surviving and passing the variations on to their offspring, while unfavourable variations would be lost. This would result in the formation of new species.^[5][81] On 28 September 1838 he noted this insight, describing it as a kind of wedging, forcing adapted structures into gaps in the economy of nature as weaker structures were thrust out.^[5] By mid December he saw a similarity between farmers picking the best breeding stock and a Malthusian Nature selecting from chance variants so that "every part of newly acquired structure is fully practical and perfected",^[82] thinking this comparison "a beautiful part of my theory".^[83]

On 11 November, he returned to Maer and proposed to Emma, once more telling her his ideas. She accepted, then in exchanges of loving letters she showed how she valued his openness in sharing their differences, also expressing her strong Unitarian beliefs and concerns that his honest doubts might separate them in the afterlife.^[84] While he was house-hunting in London, bouts of illness continued and Emma wrote urging him to get some rest, almost prophetically remarking "So don't be ill any more my dear Charley till I can be with you to nurse you." He found what they called "Macaw Cottage" (because of its gaudy interiors) in Gower Street, then moved his "museum" in over Christmas. On 24 January 1839 Darwin was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.^[85]

On 29 January Darwin and Emma Wedgwood were married at Maer in an Anglican ceremony arranged to suit the Unitarians, then immediately caught the train to London and their new home.^[86]

Preparing the theory of natural selection for publication[link]

Darwin in 1842 with his eldest son, William Erasmus Darwin

Darwin now had the framework of his theory of natural selection "by which to work",^[87] as his "prime hobby".^[88] His research included animal husbandry and extensive experiments with plants, finding evidence that species were not fixed and investigating many detailed ideas to refine and substantiate his theory.^[5] For fifteen years this work was in the background to his main occupation of writing on geology and publishing expert reports on the Beagle collections.^[89]

When FitzRoy's Narrative was published in May 1839, Darwin's Journal and Remarks was such a success as the third volume that later that year it was published on its own.^[90] Early in 1842, Darwin wrote about his ideas to Charles Lyell, who noted that his ally "denies seeing a beginning to each crop of species".^[91]

Darwin's book The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs on his theory of atoll formation was published in May 1842 after more than three years of work, and he then wrote his first "pencil sketch" of his theory of natural selection.^[92] To escape the pressures of London, the family moved to rural Down House in September.^[93] On 11 January 1844 Darwin mentioned his theorising to the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, writing with melodramatic humour "it is like confessing a murder".^[94][95] Hooker replied "There may in my opinion have been a series of productions on different spots, & also a gradual change of species. I shall be delighted to hear how you think that this change may have taken place, as no presently conceived opinions satisfy me on the subject."^[96]

Darwin's "sandwalk" at Down House was his usual "Thinking Path".^[97]

By July, Darwin had expanded his "sketch" into a 230-page "Essay", to be expanded with his research results if he died prematurely.^[98] In November the anonymously published sensational best-seller Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation brought wide interest in transmutation. Darwin scorned its amateurish geology and zoology, but carefully reviewed his own arguments. Controversy erupted, and it continued to sell well despite contemptuous dismissal by scientists.^[99][100]

Darwin completed his third geological book in 1846. He now renewed a fascination and expertise in marine invertebrates, dating back to his student days with Grant, by dissecting and classifying the barnacles he had collected on the voyage, enjoying observing beautiful structures and thinking about comparisons with allied structures.^[101] In 1847, Hooker read the "Essay" and sent notes that provided Darwin with the calm critical feedback that he needed, but would not commit himself and questioned Darwin's opposition to continuing acts of creation.^[102]

In an attempt to improve his chronic ill health, Darwin went in 1849 to Dr. James Gully's Malvern spa and was surprised to find some benefit from hydrotherapy.^[103] Then in 1851 his treasured daughter Annie fell ill, reawakening his fears that his illness might be hereditary, and after a long series of crises she died.^[104]

In eight years of work on barnacles (Cirripedia), Darwin's theory helped him to find "homologies" showing that slightly changed body parts served different functions to meet new conditions, and in some genera he found minute males parasitic on hermaphrodites, showing an intermediate stage in evolution of distinct sexes.^[105] In 1853 it earned him the Royal Society's Royal Medal, and it made his reputation as a biologist.^[106] He resumed work on his theory of species in 1854, and in November realised that divergence in the character of descendants could be explained by them becoming adapted to "diversified places in the economy of nature".^[107]

Publication of the theory of natural selection[link]

Charles Darwin, aged 46 in 1855, by then working towards publication of his theory of natural selection. He wrote to Hooker about this portrait, "if I really have as bad an expression, as my photograph gives me, how I can have one single friend is surprising."^[108]

By the start of 1856, Darwin was investigating whether eggs and seeds could survive travel across seawater to spread species across oceans. Hooker increasingly doubted the traditional view that species were fixed, but their young friend Thomas Henry Huxley was firmly against evolution. Lyell was intrigued by Darwin's speculations without realising their extent. When he read a paper by Alfred Russel Wallace, "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species", he saw similarities with Darwin's thoughts and urged him to publish to establish precedence. Though Darwin saw no threat, he began work on a short paper. Finding answers to difficult questions held him up repeatedly, and he expanded his plans to a "big book on species" titled Natural Selection. He continued his researches, obtaining information and specimens from naturalists worldwide including Wallace who was working in Borneo. The American botanist Asa Gray showed similar interests, and on 5 September 1857 Darwin sent Gray a detailed outline of his ideas including an abstract of Natural Selection. In December, Darwin received a letter from Wallace asking if the book would examine human origins. He responded that he would avoid that subject, "so surrounded with prejudices", while encouraging Wallace's theorising and adding that "I go much further than you."^[109]

Darwin's book was only partly written when, on 18 June 1858, he received a paper from Wallace describing natural selection. Shocked that he had been "forestalled", Darwin sent it on that day to Lyell, as requested by Wallace ^[110][111] , and although Wallace had not asked for publication, Darwin suggested he would send it to any journal that Wallace chose. His family was in crisis with children in the village dying of scarlet fever, and he put matters in the hands of Lyell and Hooker. After some discussion, they decided on a joint presentation at the Linnean Society on 1 July of On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection; however, Darwin's baby son died of the scarlet fever and he was too distraught to attend.^[112]