"As Mark Noll explains in the next chapter, the word “evangelical” goes back to the Greek noun evangelion, which means “glad tidings”, “good news” or “gospel”, the last of which goes back to an Old English word for “God talk.” Three times the New Testament says that someone who proclaims the gospel of Christ dying for our sins is an evangelistes (evangelist). Evangelicalism has always proclaimed this salvation that comes from Christ’s death with a peculiar intensity. Noll shows the origins of the movement in Pietism, the eighteenth-century awakenings, and the Enlightenment. He unpacks David Bebbington’s widely accepted fourfold definition-a movement marked by conversionism, Biblicism, activism, and cruci-centrism. Evangelical theology on the other hand, is something of a different animal. While evangelical theologians would not reject any of Bebbington’s marks as inaccurate, they typically speak with more theological specificity. Most would endorse Karl Barth’s definition of the word (though Barth was not an evangelical in the American or British sense of the word): “Evangelical means informed by gospel of Jesus Christ , as head afresh in the 16th-century Reformation by a direct return to Holy Scripture.” Some important evangelical thinkers such as N.T. Wright and Thomas Oden are now questioning the primacy of the Reformation. But all would agree with the following six evangelical “fundamental convictions,” first proposed by Alister McGrath: 1. The majesty of Jesus Christ, both as incarnate God and Lord and as Savior of sinful humanity; 2. The lordship of the Holy Spirit, who is necessary for the application of the presence and work of Christ; 3. The supreme authority of Scripture, recognizing that the language of Scripture is culturally conditioned but that through it God has nevertheless conveyed the eternal, unconditioned Word. Scripture is to be interpreted with the help of reason and the best tools of scholarship, with attention to differing genres; 4. The need for personal conversion. This is not necessarily an emotional experience but at least involves personal repentance and trust in the person and work of Christ, not simply intellectual adherence to doctrine. 5. Commitment to evangelism and missions. 6. The importance of religious community for spiritual nourishment, fellowship and growth. Every one of the above distinctive is shared by most other Christians. What makes this list evangelical, however, is the degree of emphasis which evangelical theology places on the six marks, and the forms which they take. For example, all Christians say evangelism is important at one level or another, but not all regard it with the urgency evangelicals often show. Some regard social service as evangelism, and others do not consider conversion to faith in Christ to be necessary. When Billy Graham conducted his first crusade in New York City, some Protestant mainline leaders ridiculed his efforts-not only because he did not emphasize structural social reform but also because theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr regarded personal evangelism as theologically wrong-headed. Some of those same churches today speak of personal evangelism as essential to the growth of the church in the world, but they send out fewer missionaries and do less to train their members for the task of evangelism than their evangelical counterparts typically do. While all Christians speak of the need to turn from the world to Christ, evangelicals have placed more emphasis on conversion because of the Puritan and Pietist legacies from which Edward, Whitefield, and Wesley learned."