The Encyclopedia of World Religions

evil S 139

University Press, 1997); Amy Johnson Frykholm, Rapture Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Mark A. Noll, American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001). Eve From the Hebrew Hawwah, perhaps related to the word for “living”; the name of the mother of all human beings in J UDAISM and in religions it has inspired. In the B IBLE Eve appears in the second and third chapters of Genesis. There she is created from the rib of A DAM as a companion for him. It is she who first listens to the serpent and violates G OD ’s command not to eat from the tree of knowledge. In punishment, she must bear children in pain ( see F ALL , THE ). Ancient Christians sometimes looked on M ARY , J ESUS ’ mother, as a second Eve, just as they looked on Jesus as a second Adam. They also justified the subordinate position of women by recalling that Eve was created from Adam and led him into SIN (see 1 Timothy 2.11–15). Another ancient religious complex, G NOSTICISM , used the figure of Eve differently. Gnostics often inverted relations in Jewish stories. That happens with Eve in, for example, an ancient book “On the Origin of the World.” ( Nag Hammadi Codices 2.5). In that book, Adam is the lifeless creation of EVIL , dark demigods. Eve is a representative from the world of light and life. She sees Adam, pities him, gives him life, instructs him, and lays the founda tion for future SALVATION . evil That which is bad, yet is. Perhaps the most difficult problem in religion is the problem of evil. If G OD or ultimate reality is good, why is there evil? Evil is serious suffering in mind or body, especially when the pain is seen as unjust and undeserved. It is that which is not as we believe it was meant to be and should be: the innocent child upon whom cruel tortures are imposed, the horrors of war and plague, any being unable to fulfill the life for which it was born. Evil seems to be deeply ingrained in our world, yet because religion wants to look at

movement that swept through the British colonies in North America in the middle 1700s. Until the middle 1800s all major branches of P ROTESTANTISM in the United States—Methodists, Baptists, Con gregationalists, and Presbyterians—were evangeli cal. They often stressed patriotism and opposed Catholicism. By the late 1800s Evangelical Christianity had gone from the dominant religion to a religion on the outside. Many members of churches that were once Evangelical became attracted to modern ways of looking at the world. In response, Evangelicals insisted that they could tolerate no compromise with the world. It was in this climate that funda mentalism was born. Apart from fundamentalism, Evangelical Chris tianity remained relatively quiet until after World War Two. At that point evangelical thinkers like the American theologian, Carl F. H. Henry (1913– 2003), tried to formulate a version of evangelical ism that was conservative but not fundamentalist. The popular American preacher, Billy Graham, is often seen as part of this movement. The strictest fundamentalists rejected him because he agreed to associate with more liberal Christians. By the middle of the 1970s Evangelical Chris tianity was again a major force in American life. Liberal churches were losing members, but con servative churches were growing. “A born-again Christian,” Jimmy Carter, was elected president. Other Protestant churches, such as the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Christian Reformed Church, were moving in an Evangelical direction. At the end of the century Evangelical Chris tianity became a force in American politics. Its members often, but not always, supported conser vative causes. See also FUNDAMENTALISM , C HRISTIAN . Further reading: Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (New York: Knopf, 2000); Randall Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory; A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, 3d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Joel A. Carpenter. Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford