A.Word.A.Day --evangelical

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Sep 8, 2025

This week’s theme
Words relating to religion

This week’s words
evangelical

Saint John the Evangelist, c. 1605

Art: El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos)

Previous week’s theme
Words made with combining forms

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Last month when I featured a quotation by Robert Green Ingersoll:

The hands that help are better far
Than lips that pray.
Love is the ever gleaming star
That leads the way,
That shines, not on vague worlds of bliss,
But on a paradise in this.

A reader replied: “Today’s thought presents a false alternative. Hands that serve and lips that pray go wonderfully well together.”

Sure, you could do both. Or add more. Hands that serve, lips that pray, feet that dance go wonderfully well together. A proper trinity.

Still, it’s healthy to test our assumptions now and then. We’re taught things as kids and we continue to profess them without a second thought.

That’s where thought experiments come in, my favorite kinds of experiments. (Einstein was famous for them. He left it to others to prove his theories.) No NSF grants needed (As if they’re available anymore anyway. Who needs research?). No Institutional Review Board approval required. No animal cruelty inflicted.

Here’s one: You arrive in the ER bleeding profusely. The doctor approaches. Which do you want them to do first, clasp their hands in prayer or perform first aid?

The nice thing about thought experiments is you don’t have to share your answers. They’re private stress tests for the mind, clearing away unquestioned habits.

I’m evangelical for science, for evidence, for reality. Because it works. That said, millennia of religion has left an imprint on language. This week we’ll feature terms with religious connections but also used in the secular world.

evangelical

PRONUNCIATION:

(ee-van-JEL-i-kuhl)

MEANING:

adjective:	1. Extremely enthusiastic about a cause.
	2. Relating to Christian churches emphasizing the Bible’s authority and a personal relationship with Jesus.
noun:	A member of an evangelical church.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin evangelicus, from Greek euangélion (good news), from eu- (good) + angelos (messenger). Earliest documented use: 1527.

NOTES:

Originally, to be evangelical was strictly about spreading the good news of the gospel. Over time, it broadened to describe anyone with near-religious zeal for their cause, from politics to Peloton to the life-changing magic of their air fryer. See also gospel.

USAGE:

“President George W. Bush’s response to the assault on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was to launch two wars of choice against Afghanistan and Iraq, a pugnacious unilateralism at the expense of alliances and international law, and a near evangelical promotion of liberal democracy in the Middle East. His administration’s hard-edged policies fractured alliances in Europe and triggered a sharp fall in America’s standing abroad.”
Lionel Barber; The End of Hegemony; Financial Times (London, UK); Sep 6, 2011.

See more usage examples of evangelical in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world. -Claude Pepper, senator and representative (8 Sep 1900-1989)

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