Writing in today's Christian Science Monitor, Michael Spencer, an Evangelical, foresees an imminent collapse of Evangelical Christianity in the US. Excerpt:
We are on the verge - within 10 years - of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.
This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.
Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.
Why will this happen? He lists a number of reasons, but basically, it comes down to a lack of cultural and theological mooring sufficient to withstand the powerful currents of secular modernity. Here are a couple of Spencer's points:
1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.
2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
It's really, really worth reading the whole thing. I simply don't know enough about Evangelical Christianity to say whether or not Spencer is onto something, and I look forward to reading the analyses of Evangelical readers, and those who are in a better position to understand the points Spencer makes.
Spencer does say that more Evangelicals will move into the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches, presumably looking for a more stable tradition. I greet that prospect with caution. Of course I am excited by the prospect of anyone moving into communion with one of the ancient churches, still more by the prospect of them coming into my own church, the Orthodox. It is certainly true that the tradition there is far, far more stable than Evangelicalism's. That said, the same cultural forces tearing at the foundation of Evangelicalism are also at work in Catholicism and Orthodoxy. I don't have enough experience with Orthodoxy to say for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had the same problem as American Catholicism does, which is to say the same problem that contemporary Evangelicalism does: it has by and large failed to communicate the doctrinal substance of the faith to younger generations, and has not developed a strategy to keep the faith alive, with integrity, under conditions of modern American life. Cultural Orthodoxy, like cultural Catholicism, will not endure.
UPDATE: On her new Catholic blog on Beliefnet, Amy Welborn looks at that big survey I blogged about yesterday, and says that the dramatic loss in the native-born US Catholic population (versus immigrants) should make Catholics think long and hard about what they're not doing right.
UPDATE.2: An Evangelical journalist friend e-mails:
Although Michael Spencer refers to we, us, and our when writing of evangelicals, describing himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality" is not going to help him be heard or heeded, except by disenchanted evangelicals.I find this paragraph hysterical:
Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.I think Spencer's greatest weakness is in treating evangelicalism too much as a smattering of mostly independent churches, rather than a movement that crosses nearly all church boundaries.
And yet, I see in my own parish mothers and fathers who are passionate about the Orthodox Christian faith, and deeply engaged with it. They know what they believe, and why they believe it. You can find people like this in Catholic and Protestant churches, though likely a distinct minority. The Catholic and Orthodox traditions offer more resources, I believe, for holding onto the faith in a time of persecution, active or passive, if only because they've both been tested by time and fire. But I believe all of us Christians are going to undergo a purification, and that what will emerge is a much smaller church, but one that's more committed. Pope Benedict predicts this, and he's right. Perhaps then we can be, as Benedict foresees, the "creative minority" the culture needs for its authentic renewal.
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"Your Name," what dismays me is the number of people who identify as "Evangelical Christian," but who cannot reliably identify or quote from the Bible. It never ceases to astound me that someone who identifies as an Evangelical Christian cannot work with and defend Biblical positions. I mean, if you're anti-abortion, how do you reconcile your beliefs with Numbers 5:24? If you firmly believe that the Gospel is for everyone, how do you reconcile that belief with Jesus's words is Mark 7:24?
Most of them can't, and I'm utterly dismayed by the number of people who have adopted the label "Christian" for its tribal association, and not for any spiritual succor beyond belonging to a power structure.
I've read the comments here and recognized the sincerity of some contributors. But really, the issue isn't that complicated... Evangelical religion is accommodating of materialism, ignorance and the urge to judge. Plus, the only significant thing it expects from the "believer" is money. As long as there's a middle class (and savvy corpogarchs, such as GWB), Evangelical religion will flourish.
quote: "The difference between fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam is negligible. If you doubt me, look at Luke 19:27 and its context. The Koran, apparently, is not quite so clear."
I appreciate the comments of thoughtful liberals such as Meg. But comments such as this are based either on ignorance or bigotry, or both. They are why I can't take much of the secular left seriously. Do you honestly think that the lives and beliefs of say a Baptist woman in rural Alabama and a Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia or Iran are that similar? Do you really think that the Bible's teachings on love and forgiveness are the same as the Koran's? If you do, I'd say you have no room to make fun of people who believe that the world is 6,000 years old. Your beliefs are just as outlandish if not more so. You are entitled to your own opinion about fundamentalist Christians. But you aren't entitled to your own facts. If you are serious about your comments above, you aren't anywhere near basic, easily observable facts on this matter.
rr
Interesting piece and thoughts involved. Scripture says in the last days there will be a great falling away with the love of many growing cold. Which seems to fit.
Still, the Lord also said that heaven and earth may pass away, but 'my word shall never pass away', so we already know the end of the story. He wins!
We stubborn believers who hold onto the outrageous core claims of our religion --created in six days by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, descended from David, God among us, crucified who died for our sins, and rose on the third day now sitting on the right side of God the father coming to judge the live and the dead--will perhaps find solace in our smaller numbers and we must be prepared for the persecution that will inevitably follow.
Scripture also says the church in the last days would look like a church but deny its power. Its leaders would be chosen to itch the ears of people who want to do what is right in their own eyes.
So we must be careful not to fall into the 'we're small but wise' trap as well as we enter into a post-Christian secular culture where all values are deemed to be relative.
Dangerous and glorious times ahead.
My brother is an evangelical minister, my parents and other siblings attend the closest thing to a megachurch that their region's population can support (complete with bad "rock" music)... I grew up in the bible belt and have experienced evangelical christiandom firsthand. I've seen offices in my church destroyed by others in the church who disagreed over how their office should be arranged... I've seen young mothers in tears in church parking lots because rather than being welcomed in their time of need they had garbage thrown at them for being sinners... I've seen teachers stand back and watch as a gay boy was literally beaten with bibles at my highschool... I've seen ministers eject families from their church because their 4 month old child was crying... I've witnessed an appalling case where a minister took up a collection from his church for a satellite dish so that he could better witness the evils of the world... I've listened to ministers scream from their pulpit that not all christians were going to heaven, that not even all baptists, not even all southern baptists, but only those attending that very church were truly saved... I've seen men get drunk and beat their wives and children every saturday, showing up every sunday with the tell-tale bruises where they are forgiven for their sins because the devil took control of them... I've counseled the victims of molestation whose cries for help were ignored because the offender was a "fine upstanding christian" and could never have done such a thing... I have even felt that devastation firsthand.
That's just the small community I grew up in, and as I've moved away into larger and larger cities I've learned that my community in central Kentucky was not as unique as I'd hoped it would be. I've encountered nothing but a culture of hate and judgment, of self serving hypocrisy, of turning a blind eye to willfully induced suffering.
The sooner that culture burns on its own cross, the better off humanity will be.
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