From The Christian Post. (Image: Benjamin Brunner/Unsplash)
The question of who qualifies as an Evangelical and how many Evangelicals exist worldwide continues to puzzle scholars, church leaders and mission researchers alike.
That was the central theme of a Sept. 2 webinar hosted by the World Evangelical Alliance and released publicly Sept. 5, featuring two leading voices in global religious demography.
Dr. Gina A. Zurlo, editor of the World Christian Database and a lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, and Jason Mandryk, longtime editor of Operation World, outlined both the difficulties and the necessity of measuring a movement that is increasingly diverse and shifting rapidly toward the Global South.
Both experts agreed that unlike Catholicism, Orthodoxy or even Pentecostalism, evangelicalism has no universally agreed-upon definition. This makes the task of counting adherents unusually complex. Yet, they stressed, reliable figures are crucial for understanding how Christianity is changing worldwide.
Mandryk opened with a blunt assessment: “There is no such thing as the Evangelical.”
The word, he said, carries multiple meanings depending on context. Within churches, it may indicate theological commitments to the authority of Scripture, personal conversion and evangelistic activism. In secular contexts, particularly in Western media and politics, it is often used pejoratively — conjuring images of anti-science attitudes, stubbornness or partisan identity.
“Virtually nobody is using it exactly the same way,” Mandryk said. “And most people aren’t bothering to try to understand how others are using it.”
Zurlo echoed the problem, noting that while “you know what a Catholic is, or a Presbyterian, or a Pentecostal,” the term Evangelical remains “squishy.” For her, this ambiguity is not necessarily a weakness but a sociological reality that demands more descriptive approaches rather than rigid definitions.
Why numbers matter
Both speakers emphasized that counting Evangelicals is not about making eternal judgments on salvation. “We are not God,” Zurlo said. Instead, the aim is to track demographic shifts that profoundly influence the shape of global Christianity.