The South/religion: A Born -Again Faith

"I have always believed in the Bible," says John Wright, 52, president of Chattanooga's 20-branch American National Bank. "I have always believed that Jesus was the Son of God." For a dozen years, in fact, Wright has been an elder of Lookout Mountain Presbyterian Church. But not until last year did he fully accept Jesus as a "personal Saviour." His decision came at a special series of "renewal" services at his church, where he heard a St. Louis minister preach on the famous text from the Gospel of St. John, in which Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be "born again" to gain eternal life. "The sermon turned my life around," recalls Wright. Now he rises at 5:30 a.m. to read the Bible and pray. He joins fellow Christians in discussion groups and prayer sessions, including one he holds at his bank headquarters before work every Tuesday morning. Once reticent about his faith, he now talks freely about Christ to people he meets. "The Lord has blessed me," explains Wright, "and I want to share what has happened."

Abyss of Sin. Like many a Christian before him, John Wright has been touched by the "good news" of Jesus' life, teachings and atoning death—the redemptive message that Anglo-Saxons dubbed the godspel and early Greek Christians called the euangelion. Among modern American Protestants, enthusiasts like Wright are identified as evangelicals because they give an urgent priority to spreading the gospel announcement. They want every human being to experience the truth that Jesus died to redeem him from the abyss of sin; they preach that faith in Jesus as Lord and Saviour is necessary for salvation, that the Bible is the one unimpeachable guidebook to faith and life. Those who accept the invitation of the good news are converted or "regenerated"—simply a Latinism for born again.

Evangelicals flourish in many parts of the country, but nowhere are they more identified with the prevailing religious culture than in the South. Perhaps 20 million of the South's 32 million Protestants are evangelicals,* as opposed to 5.5 million Roman Catholics and only 500,000 Jews.

Evangelicals cut across racial and sectarian lines, dominating some bodies like the Southern Baptists and the Churches of Christ, acting as a counterweight in others, like the Methodists and Presbyterians. Southerners are the most churchgoing people in the nation, and from camp meeting through riverside baptisms to huge urban congregations, the tone and temper of Southern Protestantism is evangelical.

That is a historical irony. Before the rise of Protestant liberalism in the 19th century, when scholars began to question such keystone doctrines as the deity of Jesus and his resurrection, U.S. Protestantism was generally evangelical. Then came the Civil War and in its wake, the growth of Northern cities and the drift of Northern Protestantism into a more liberal camp.