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'David W. Bebbington' (Ph.D. Cambridge) is professor of history at the University of Stirling in Scotland and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Dr. Bebbington joined the department of history at Stirling in 1976 and was appointed to a Personal Chair in 1999. His principal research interests are in the history of politics, religion and society in Great Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and in the history of the global evangelical movement.
His books include ''Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s'' (1989), ''Victorian Nonconformity'' (1992), ''William Ewart Gladstone: Faith and Politics in Victorian Britain'' (1993), ''Holiness in Nineteenth-Century England'' (2000), ''The Mind of Gladstone: Religion. Homer and Politics'' (2004) and ''The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody'' (2005).
He is widely known for his definition of evangelicalism, referred to as the Bebbington quadrilateral, which was first provided in his 1989 classic study ''Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s''. Bebbington identifies four main qualities which are to be used in defining evangelical convictions and attitudes:

★ biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible (e.g. all spiritual truth is to be found in its pages)

★ crucicentrism, a focus on the atoning work of Christ on the cross

★ conversionism, the belief that human beings need to be converted

★ activism, the belief that the gospel needs to be expressed in effort ^[1]
David Bebbington, along with Mark Noll and others, has exerted a large amount of effort in placing evangelicalism on the world map of religious history. Through their efforts they have made it quite difficult for scholars to ignore the influence of evangelicals in the world since the movement’s inception in the eighteenth century.^[2]

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References

1. David W. Bebbington, ''Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s'' (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 2-17. See also Mark A. Noll, ''The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys'' (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 19.
2. In ''Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s'', Bebbington argues that evangelicalism began, as it is described in his quadrilateral, as a result of the Enlightenment. For more discussion on this see Kenneth J. Stewart, “Did evangelicalism predate the eighteenth century? An examination of David Bebbington's thesis.” ''Evangelical Quarterly'', Apr2005, Vol. 77 Issue 2, p135-153. See also Crawford Gribben, Michael Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (eds), ''Continuities in Evangelical History: Interactions with David Bebbington'' (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, forthcoming).

External links

★ Book Review of ''The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody'' (2005) http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/006/17.17.html

★ University of Stirling Department of History http://www.history.stir.ac.uk/staff/DavidBebbingtonHistoryStirlingStaffInformation.php