Have you ever been part of, let’s say, a committee assigned with a specific task? You go to committee meetings, week after week, maybe month after month; you work with the committee to complete the task, but something else happens.
You learn. Specifically, you learn the obvious things that people on the committee never say. The questions they never ask; the obvious problems they never point out; the solutions that can’t be brought up without controversy.
Perhaps you learn to live with this situation. You accept the unmentionables and you play along. You don’t want to be the source of an explosion. You prefer to see the job get done, even if the same problems are overlooked and the same obvious solutions are avoided. We’re in the people business here, you tell yourself. Relationships are important.
Now imagine you are an evangelical Christian, like myself. You’ve been on “the committee” for a long time. You’ve been around the block, heard all the speeches and seen all the angles. The evangelical church experience has all the surprise of a professional wrestling match.
And along the way, you’ve learned. You’ve learned what not to say. You’ve painfully learned, and now you’re smart enough to keep your mouth shut and your observations to yourself. (A seminary trained Wal-Mart greeter isn’t how you want to end your career.)
But one of the things you’ve learned in this pragmatic vow of silence is how the code of silence works. You’ve learned what happens to people who ask the wrong questions or make the wrong observations.
If you say the evangelical emperor has no clothes, you’ll be “exhorted” until you figure out that your integrity is actually at stake in turning off your brain and zipping shut your mouth.
Then you happen to read a book by someone who’s already left the circus. Someone who’s left and is talking.
You know the drill. You know all the things you’re supposed to say. You know what you’d tell someone who came to you “troubled” or “disturbed” by what they’d read. You know how to get the train back on the tracks; how to get that wandering mind back thinking good thoughts.
But this book has intersected you on one of the days in your life when it doesn’t really seem worth it to slam the door shut and start repeating the mantras.
So, Internet Monk readers, I give you a small list of the insights, claims and observations of Christine Wicker in The Fall of the Evangelical Nation. I’ve done the summarizing, but it’s her unmentionables.
You can start chanting. You can put your fingers in your ears. You can refute with facts. You can say “that’s what I’ve always thought.” You can consider it and get back to us.
But I think we need to think about these things:
1) Evangelicals aren’t 55 million strong. They are, perhaps, 15 million. Like almost everything else about them, the numbers are inflated.
2) Evangelical clout is almost entirely the result of media spin. A mainstream media focus on the conservative evangelicals for the past 25 years has given everyone the impression that they are a vast force in America. They’re not. They are a minority compared to other kinds of Christians.
3) Evangelical megachurches are not going to be able to replace their founding pastors. If the Reveal study is correct,they are not going to be able to hold their own core members. Thousands of people leave megachurches every week, never to return. The growth of megachurches is almost entirely from the previously converted. Many megachurch attenders will never join and will leave at the first opportunity.
4) Evangelicals have almost stopped meaningful personal evangelism. Most evangelicals share as low a regard for classic evangelistic techniques as their unbelieving friends. Only 18 percent of Southern Baptists- perhaps the most evangelistic church in American- ever witness to anyone.
5) Part of the loss of evangelistic fervor is a loss in the belief that Christ is the only salvation from a literal hell. Many evangelicals do not believe in either in any form resembling classic, historic orthodoxy. They pay lip service to these ideas, but do not hold to them with any tenaciousness.
6) In fact, evangelicals in general are far more doctrinally “soft” than we are ever led to believe by the public face of evangelical worship, preaching and political involvement. Millions of evangelicals have left the movement because of crises of faith, often involving the inerrancy of the Bible, exclusive salvation, God’s involvement in their own experiences and the “success principles” of family/marriage.
7) Evangelicals are declining in baptisms across the board, in every age group except very young children. Many baptisms are rebaptisms or baptisms of the already converted. Among Southern Baptists, the only age group experiencing a growth in baptisms are children 5 and under.
8. Evangelicals that are refusing to embrace fundamentalism are usually making serious accommodations to the contemporary world in areas- especially in regards to science, gender roles and raising children- that previously drew great distinctions between Christians and unbelievers. Many evangelicals have tossed out any loyalty to beliefs and practices that previously defined them as serious Christians.
9) An examination of the morals and decisions of typical evangelicals and other people will reveal that evangelicals pretty much live like everyone else. This includes areas such as abortion, premarital sex, entertainment and lifestyle issues. Only about 20% of evangelicals are serious enough about their faith to make real sacrifices in these areas.
10) Evangelical parents are doing a good job with their children, but the difference in parenting styles among evangelicals in the last 50 years almost insures that the majority of these children will likely not continue in evangelicalism. The critical thinking skills and more liberal allowance of behavior and social activities will insure that these young people will be exposed to a more convincing answer to their important questions. Evangelicals will be fortunate if 5% of their young people continue in the faith after college. Those who do will likely not be in a church.
So there you are. The Unmentionables, courtesy of Christine Wicker. I’ve got more to say on this subject, but I’ll save that for another time.
So here’s the challenge. If you want to take down the whole list and say things are great at your church so I’m nuts to think this woman is on target….this isn’t the discussion for you.
But if you want to interact, critically or positively, with Whitmer’s claims as I’ve summarized them, let’s hear what you have to say. Please don’t devotionalize or preach. Keep the responses to the point and of a manageable size.
Talk amongst yourselves.
The Internet Monk Archives 
iMonk,
You are my dream reader. What a great job you did on your ten points. I might quibble a little but not much. I posted a link to you on my site (www.christinewicker.com) There’s so much here I’d like to comment on.
But I’ll answer just one question. Why am I interested in this?
I’m a journalist. I’ve covered religion for a long time. I set out to write about the great power of megachurches, but evangelicals kept telling me that I was missing the bigger story. “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation” started as storytelling with some investigative elements and then turned into a much more investigative book.
The subject matters for many reasons.
One is that as the word evangelical has come to mean more and more different things to practitioners, it has been defined more and more narrowly in the public and especially the political square. As it has been tied with politics, it has seemed angrier, meaner, narrower and less reasoning. At the same time, many, many evangelicals who are not part of the Religious Right have been going in the other direction.
I think the public square definition of evangelical faith as identical to Religious Right political positions has damaged American Christianity enormously.
Why do I care? Just for starters, Christians contribute enormously to the health and welfare of American life. Losing them would not be a good thing, in my opinion.
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This is totally the position of the fundamentalists in charge of the SBC, and it’s the style of pastoring in all the SBC’s superchurches. — IMonk
Like fighting the Battle of the Booze and making Young Earth Creationism ex cathedra dogma while everything melts down around them?
That’s like what happened at my first job back around 1980. The company was melting down into bankruptcy and the pointy-haired top management started ruthlessly enforcing DRESS CODES! We had vice-presidents doing surprise inspections (even with rulers to measure Approved hair length) while the company was fast-tracking its way to Chapter 13!
Talk about displacement behavior…
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Skerrib,
I can testify to that as well. At my last Baptist church, I was concerned about the lack of visition to visitors and new members. I called the pastor and offered to go visit them, but I needed a partner and a list of names. (I was even willing to say that I would say or do nothing to discourage them from the church, because he might have known that I was on my way out.)
The response that I got was a suggestion that I do visits to the sick.
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On #11…our pastor was talking about that just a couple weeks ago. He does indeed seem to prefer not to do any visiting. In all fairness they may have provisions for pastoral care and all that (we’re brand new to town). But I had no idea it was an overall trend among pastors.
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I totally skipped a major item:
11. Pastors are inaccessible to most of their members, especially women. Many won’t make appointments or have any personal conversations with their members.
People don’t like this, but it is very common. And a lot of younger pastors like this model a lot. Study, don’t visit.
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Wicker likely is close to target about the changing evangelical influence in America. But the change is possibly a ‘purging’ of a seemingly weakened Christian group. The ‘loudness’ over the past decade….has generally come from evangelicals with agendas needing met through political means e.g. vouchers for private Christian schools and universities. But all of America’s denominational groups are less effective. Are we seeing the final ‘great falling away’ which will usher in prophetic events of the last days. The good news is that in other countries e.g. China, the underground church has grown to 300,000, is adding thousands daily, is healing the sick, casting out devils, and RAISING THE DEAD. If America doesn’t want to play, God will send others into the game.
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Michael Bell:
Most megachurches don’t have members, so I don’t know who they are talking to.
Also, I think we have to take one thing as a strong possibility: I think evangelicals routinely answer surveys in ways that portray their ideal selves, not their real experience.
I’d like to see a survey of 5,000 people who attended a mega in the last 5 years.
Also, I think the Baylor study needs to meet Willow Creek’s self study, which says that a third of Willow Creek’s members are ready to walk.
peace
ms
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The pastor had a sermon (Why I read it, I don’t know.) where he said — no joke, no exaggeration, nothing out of context — that he was the spiritual authority in the congregation and therefore, they should listen to him, anyone else he specifically said they could read or listen to, and no one else. — Bob Sacramento
Question, Bob: How does that differ from a cult leader with delusions of godhood? Or at least a sense of Absolute Rule by Divine Right?
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kcillini77,
I can meet you halfway with the mega churches. I guess I could agree that the pastors don’t load the people down with a whole lot of stuff that they have to believe (which, in a twisted way, might be a problem in and of itself, but anyway …) But, in my time in a mega church, what the pastor and senior staff did was never criticized or questioned publicly — no matter how mildly or charitably — by anyone at all.
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Michael,
There was a recent study at Baylor University reported here that seems to contradict what you are saying here.
Among the findings:
1. “Congregants find megachurches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches”
2. “members were twice as likely to have friends in the congregation than members of small churches.”
3. “They also displayed a higher level of personal commitment to the church — attending services and tithing more often than small-church members.”
4. “megachurches tend to be more evangelical than small churches.”…”megachurch members said they shared their faith with strangers in the past month and more than 80 percent witness to friends — far more than those who attend small churches.”
5. Theologically more conservative. “Ninety-two percent of megachurch members believe that hell “absolutely exists,” compared with just over three-quarters of small-church members”, the survey found. And eight in 10 megachurch worshipers believe that the Rapture — when followers of Jesus Christ believe they will be taken to heaven — will “absolutely” take place, compared with less than half of those who attend small churches.”
6. More small group discipleship. “To achieve a less impersonal environment, researchers said, megachurches consciously break down the congregation into smaller groups that meet regularly.”
Like any size church, there are going to be good churches and bad churches. The mega churches that I have personal experience with have no problem preaching the gospel plainly and clearly.
Are Christians gathering together? Is the good news of Jesus Christ being shared?
As the saying goes “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then chances are we have a species of the family Anatidae on our hands.” 🙂
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Bob said: Unless their senior pastor really, completely, publicly screws up, his word is law.
iMonk said: This is totally the position of the fundamentalists in charge of the SBC, and it’s the style of pastoring in all the SBC’s superchurches.
I’m a bit confused about your statement, iMonk. Bob was talking about pastors dictating what members can read or listen to. I go to what could be classified as an SBC megachurch (about 5,000 people, multiple video campuses) and we just hosted the Kansas-Nebraska SBC convention. But for all the complaints I have, and I have many, our church goes out of its way to NOT tell the congregation what to do or think, especially in terms of politics and personal liberty. In fact, I’ve been extremely surprised that I and others have been allowed to write devotionals on the church’s website with no pastoral oversight.
Now, in terms of direction of the church from the business perspective, I would agree that the lead pastor has a lot of power, but I question your assertion that all of the SBC’s superchurches are run by mind control.
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Michael Bell,
The student ministry does start at grade 6, when the kids enter middle school.
We also have a young adults ministry, that apart from having their Sunday School group, also has their own Saturday night modern worship service — but don’t think they’re separated, most of them are also in the corporate gathering on Sunday’s, and many of them serve in the church (nursery, children’s SS classes, etc.) The Saturday service just lets them have a service in their own style too, with a coffee house fellowship feel.
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This is why both books say the megachurch is doomed as church. They may become concert venues (and that is happening all over) and rec centers, etc. but the designation church is getting hard to apply.
Is Willow Creek a church? Seriously? Really? Looks like a business with huge profits and an educational/service organization.
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In my experience in our church, criticism is useless because no matter what kind of rational argument you bring, nothing changes. I think our congregation has a small core of orthodox believers and a huge crowd of marginally believing people. I think those of us in the smaller crowd pull our hair out at the appeal to the masses. The church is aimed squarely at appealing to the largest group. We’ve been told that the Sunday service is a gift to the unbeliever or guest. We’ve been told to feed ourselves. We’ve been told not to expect expository sermons and to attend a class instead. Is this the norm across the evangelical spectrum? I love my church and the people there and that is why I stay. I am just appalled that they can shove us aside.
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Brian,
Totally cool!
The only thing I would add is if your Church is losing them in High School as many are, you need to start earlier. Like grade six or seven.
This was the experience of a friend of mine, who was hired as a youth Pastor of a medium sized church that had never had a youth pastor before. The High School group was non-existant and the kids weren’t interested. So my friend started working with the Junior high. The junior high went because they had to, and by the time they hit high school they wanted to go.
The other thing to consider is a “College and Career” group. Something that they can naturally graduate too from the high school group. My experience has been that leaders of a C & C group soon are seen as future leaders of the church.
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Bob:
This is totally the position of the fundamentalists in charge of the SBC, and it’s the style of pastoring in all the SBC’s superchurches.
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Aliasmoi,
“Fundamentalist pastoral infallibilityâ€
When did evangelicals ever believe that? Seriously.
I don’t know if I would say it is as prevalent as Michael would say it is. But it happens. I ran across a web site of a fundamentalist church a while back. The pastor had a sermon (Why I read it, I don’t know.) where he said — no joke, no exaggeration, nothing out of context — that he was the spiritual authority in the congregation and therefore, they should listen to him, anyone else he specifically said they could read or listen to, and no one else. Seriously. In his mind, they weren’t even allowed to go home to the TV and turn on TBN.
In a more implicit way, this is a really bad problem at the mega churches. Unless their senior pastor really, completely, publicly screws up, his word is law.
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Bill:
This is a good question.
I believe the default position of conservative evangelicals is that the pastor is authoritative and infallible. Indy Baptists and Indy Charismatics very much go for this. The SBC loves this in all its big, growing, super churches. But in the ordinary churches, if a pastor is normal, human, flawed, he will be eaten for dinner and put out the door in 4 or less.
Authoritative pastors are what most SBC churches want to insure growth and to make the machine go. But as congregationalists, they can still toss a pastor that doesn’t produce results.
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Regarding “Fundamentalist pastoral infallibility†– I admit, this one made me go “huh?”
Jake wrote: “Not infalliable but unapproachable. Emperor has no clothes on. Not open to critique. Criticism has no place in our church.”
What church is that? My experience is in the SBC. The church I go to is relatively healthy, I believe, but we’ve all heard the jokes “What is the meal every family eats for Sunday lunch? Roast pastor”
Seriously, Pastors are criticized beyond belief in the evangelical world. Sometimes correctly (although hardly ever with the correct, respectful, private-first method).
I would agree that many pastors in very large churches are unapproachable. But uncriticized? Call me a skeptic but I’ve never seen a pastor of an evangelical church of any size at all that didn’t have to spend a significant amount of his time dealing with criticisms. I know ours do. Again, some is needful (although churches need to teach their members better how to biblically have conflict) but most is just people complaining.
Complaining about the pastor is a grand tradition in the evangelical church. So I think that either I’m misunderstanding that point, or Ms. Wicker doesn’t know what she’s talking about 🙂
Brian. Thank you! Your church is doing the right thing by its students. That’s so encouraging!
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On number 10, the church I attend had heard all the surveys that 80% or more of kids who went through high school in church were no longer actively attending church one year after graduation. They did some studies and found out that the percentage more-or-less held for our church. And they weren’t willing to let things keep going that way.
They totally restructured the student ministry. In addition to the paid staff student pastor, each graduating class, from those who are seniors this year to those coming into middle school (6th grade) have a pair of “class pastors” assigned to them (often a married couple, sometimes an unrelated man and woman, but always a male/female team so the boys and girls both have someone they can talk to in confidence about the issues affecting their own gender). These class pastors move up with their class and stay with them until one year after graduation as they move into the young adult ministry. This allows for building intimate, long-term mentoring relationships that would be impossible for the staff youth pastor to do alone (over 300 kids in junior/senior high).
Each year, all ninth graders go through a doctrine and beliefs class that would be similar to a catechism. The senior pastor of the church speaks to the youth in their Wednesday night service on a regular basis, as well as being their main speaker at their retreat each summer. And every year they cover 12 realities of the Christian life, one each month. So a kid that comes into the student ministry at the start of middle school in 6th grade will hear the same core beliefs repeated 7 times before graduation — with different messages each year, of course, but tackling the same major areas of the Christian life and spiritual disciplines (have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, spend time daily with God in prayer and Bible reading, hwo to make wise decisions, staying sexually pure, building healthy relationships, sharing your faith, focusing on others, finding your ministry, becoming a leader who influences others for God).
It’s still too new to know long-term results, because the class graduating in 2009 is only like the 3rd year to have class pastors, but the initial outcomes when following up with kids after their freshman year in college shows promise for reducing drop-outs.
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For anything to have staying power, there usually must be two things supporting it: 1) a movement, and 2) an institution.
Think of fire in a fireplace. The “movement†is the heart and soul of a specific set of ideas. The institution (the fire place) takes the ideas and energy of the movement (the fire) and puts it t use (i.e. safely heats the home).
The institution does not have absolute authority over the movement, but instead derives its power from the respect the movement has for it. This respect allows the institution to clarify the doctrines of the movement, preserve those doctrines over time, and be an internal policing mechanism to prevent bad ideas from spreading. ( Think Council of Nicaea).
Evangelicalism is (or was?) a movement, but it lacks an institution to police it. Although its doctrines have been preserved, people attending Joel Olsteen’s mega church aren’t interested in reading books, confessions, etc . The only authority (not “A”uthority) they recognize is Mr. Olsteen, and he’s not changing his tune anytime soon.
Christian leaders can call out the heresy of the prosperity gospel. Mega churches can fail. Baptisms and conversions can fall. Christian Morality can cease. However, there will be no “Vatican II-Style” reform of evangelicalism because there is simply no institution respected enough to reign evangelicalism in.
In other words, the fire has escaped the fireplace.
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I have just started a four part series on The Unresolved Tensions of Evangelicalism.
1. Biblical Worldview
2. Christian experience
3. Community
4. Commitment
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Michael you really had me on your dialog that introduced this piece, somewhat like a porch light to a moth. It reminded me of your post a couple of months ago about “What you can’t say in church†that drew well over 100 responses. However, when you got to Ms Wicker’s list, my interest faded. The reason is, while the state of health of Evangelicalism is important to many . . . including Ms Wicker . . . it is hardly on the radar screen in my reality. Again, as some have said, maybe it is a good thing.
However, if I were to list the things I want to scream at an elder’s meeting . . . but cannot without causing a huge church melt-down . . . it would not be about the demise of Evangelicalism, at least directly.
My screaming would be about the dysfunctional way that we all (including your’s truely) bring our baggage to church (call it emotional, personality or sin baggage) but we have to burry it under a façade of pretending to be the ideal Christian. So we never deal with the real issues of the elder or pastor who is emotionally abusing his family . . . in the name of God. We never deal with the honest doubts of people, or some of us who become clincally depressed at times and I could go on and on. We never talk about the secret alcoholism within the walls of our good chruch (not comdemming them but giving them help)
But I’m a little surprised that not only the state of health of Evangelicalism as a whole is important to Ms Wicker but to many others, so I must be the odd man out.
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Being an evangelical or not being an evangelical should be decided on whether or not there is a good case to be made one way or the other. A well-written book by an atheist might sway me away from my course. A survey? Never.
For several years I did not identify as evangelical, but recently have gone back to so identifying, having read what the official pollsters meant by the term. (I participate in the Zogby polls.)
I’d hate to make decisions about what is best on the basis of statistics. They do say something troubling about masses of people. But I know they shouldn’t change our minds about what we do or don’t do in our congregations. Either what we do is worth doing or it isn’t. If it is worth doing, then it is worth doing even if it fails.
I think the marketing tools probably got many churches into the mess they’re in, so I don’t expect them to be any help in getting them out. I see the failing churches as dot com companies. Of course they’re going to fail. There’s nothing there. But massive failure among dot coms didn’t mean that real businesses didn’t have a chance. (Though the dot com hype made many businesses question the wisdom of sober business models.) Likewise here. I think that churches that do what they’re about well will hold members.
#10 is interesting. “The critical thinking skills and more liberal allowance of behavior and social activities will insure that these young people will be exposed to a more convincing answer to their important questions.” Pragmatic answers usually are more convincing. But whose questions are being answered? If the question being asked is “What will make me feel better?” then I’m not surprised if the non-Christian answer is more convincing. That isn’t the Biblical question, however. We may be several generations out from the Biblical question, even if we’re only now seeing the answer rejected.
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Not infalliable but unapproachable. Emperor has no clothes on. Not open to critique. Criticism has no place in our church. Maybe I am messed up but am I the only one that sees the errors? everyone else just nods their heads in mindless agreement. Not heretical just not gospel. Like chewing on those syrup filled wax candy bottles. Tastes sweet but has nothing besides.
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“Fundamentalist pastoral infallibility”
When did evangelicals ever believe that? Seriously. I’ve always been taught – even in that seriously messed up church of my youth – that if a pastor tries to set himself as infallible that is the mark of a cult, and you should run and run fast. Isn’t the fact that we don’t believe the pope is infallible one of the reasons we broke from the Catholic church?
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It seems the gift of truth-telling (prophecy) is not valued in the church any more. Conflict is not encouraged because in our tradition, the pastor is just under Jesus and don’t go messing with God’s annointed and his (the pastor’s) vision. Some days I want to stand up in the middle of the service and shout, “seriously?! This is the good news? This is what you spent the entire week on?”. I am too chicken to do it and I would be ushered out so quickly. Maybe a collapse is necessary, that way I won’t have to confront anyone(jn).
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This post is scary as H%11 to me because I identify with a lot of what Wicker is saying.
not sure if this goes against the rules:
I think the other side of the evangelical coin is atheism. The two systems draw from the same demographic and argue in the same style. Care about the same issues passionately, even if it is from diametrically opposed points.
So…when wicker says that critical thinking skills leas children, or people in general, away from evangelical christianity I would have to agree. There is such a lack of critical thinking employed in evangelicalism, that when one applies it, things start to fall apart. This doesn’t mean that Christianity is untrue, or that it’s impossible to have faith. It means that when evangelicals attempt to argue their beliefs from a purely rational, logical perspective, they are bound to fail.
I used to think that Evangelicals were logical….now I wonder what I was thinking. Much of evangelicalism is not logical, but motivated by emotion and the desire to persuade others.
In and of itself that’s not a problem. But when we portray an image of what we think we are and it is the opposite of what we really are, that creates cognitive dissonance that must be dealt with.
How ironic that these past two weeks I’ve been reading up on Annihillationism, and questioning whether there really is a literal hell where billions will be consciously tortured for all eternity.
Wicker has been reading my mail.
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Really off topic – But what if the career ended being a seminary trained WalMart greeter? I know many men and women who have taken that course in life rather than live with the craziness of keeping your mouth shut and your brain turned off. At least at WalMart you might actually know people who don’t know Jesus yet.
Again, Michael I know this is not what you are saying but I hope at least someone might rethink this as being the most terrible thing that could happen.
Blessings
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Sorry, one more thought.
Acceptance of others in a relativistic sense should not be confused with critical thinking; it is neither critical, nor is it thinking; it is mere slouching.
Here’s a hopefully appropriate quote from Chesterton’s introduction to the book of Job:
“The modern habit of saying ‘This is my opinion, but I may be wrong’ is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying ‘Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me’ – the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.”
This is no defense of evangelicalism; in fact it points out its main weakness: the tendency to fit Christianity into a rational box, when it was meant to fill the universe.
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I think some of Wicker’s observations show some good things and some show some very bad things.
For example, the lack of baptisms is evidence that there aren’t as many people getting saved. That’s definitely a bad thing and dovetailes with the loss of evangelism in Evangelicalism.
On the other hand, the lack of success in the megachurch movement, the decline of fundamentalist ideas and worldview, and the aknowledgement that the media has inflated Evangelicalism may not be so bad. I don’t think megachurches are healthy for Christianity. They’re the McDonald’s of the faith. While some aspects of fundamentalism are good, the inability to think critically and see any other point of view are toxic.
As far as the media bias is concerned, I’ll have to agree with something I heard Glenn Beck say: the MSM just doesn’t get religion or people of faith. They simply don’t understand it. If Evangelicalism can get away from the inflation, bias, etc. of the MSM, it’ll be stronger for it.
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IMonk said:
“Your children won’t believe what you do, you disagree with a lot of what you hear in evangelicalism, you’ve made peace with things like R-rated movies, living together before marriage, gay marriage, etc.”
Bob Sacamento then asked:
“Please tell me there’s a difference between going on a date with my girlfriend (now wife) to see The Patriot and then moving in with her without marriage!”
One thing our pastors did which I totally agreed with was to ignore calls to boycott all movies with a rating over (pick your choice). I think “The Patriot”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “Gladiator”, “The Shawshank Redemption”, and “Basic Instinct” all had R ratings. I’d say for adults that only 1 should be avoided. But for kids under 8 maybe all. And for those in between it would depend on the person and the reason for going. I think that’s the point of the R rated movies comment.
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“I can’t believe the media — apart from Fox News — would do anything to spin up the influence of evangelicals. If you mean they have spent so much time trying to portray us as boogeymen that they have actually given us more influence than we other wise would have had, hmmm, maybe. But I think that’s a stretch.”
Doesn’t mater if the “press” on evangelicals is good or bad. Lots of press will inflate the perception of the strength of any group.
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P.S.: an abbreviated view of Jesus will lead to an abbreviated view of humanity. Who wants that?
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Michael,
You mentioned evangelicalism as the ‘disease,’ rather than the patient. Who is the patient, then, and what do you think the way forward for it is? Is the patient conservative protestantism? Orthodox faith (a la Tim Keller)?
Do you think the two streams of response to this problem at present, that is, the neo-reformed and the emerging church, will create a completely different grouping of conservative protestantism, or merely stay within its husk and rejuvenate it?
Wicker’s statements are refreshingly direct, although I’m not sure she’s completely right–although she is obviously going in the right direction.
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imonk: “Wicker has abandoned Christianity as far as I could tell, ”
Why did she write the book? Is this a call for action or just lamenting about her previous efforts? If she truly has abandoned Christianity, then what is her motivation for pointing out these issues? (trying not to discredit anyone).
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Your children won’t believe what you do, you disagree with a lot of what you hear in evangelicalism, you’ve made peace with things like R-rated movies, living together before marriage, gay marriage, etc.
Please tell me there’s a difference between going on a date with my girlfriend (now wife) to see The Patriot and then moving in with her without marriage!
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I think we are living in a Benedict moment.
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Rachel asked:
“I’m a bit lost on #10. I found that people who were not taught critical thinking skills growing up were more likely to leave the faith or have a very shallow faith b/c they simply didn’t know (or care) to sift through all the different messages they received.”
In my current but not for long church we got into it with the pastors in charge of the youth with many topics, YEC, extras you had to believe to be a Christian, etc… But in many ways it boiled down to they were teaching teens, 16 years old or older, to listen and learn the “truth”. Hard questions aren’t allowed. And those that persist will be asked to leave the class. As I bluntly said to another parent who thought this was good because he felt asking hard questions was disrespectful, at what age do they get to start thinking, asking, and getting answers? Somewhere between the 1st grade and the 12th this mode of teaching becomes really bad for them staying in the church. 18 year olds in a class like this might be in Iraq, on a factory line, or who knows in a few months. How is their unquestioning faith going to serve them there when they run into one or more things that just don’t add up?
And the sad part is there are people who want to be told the answer to everything from someone who they think has some authority. Those folks re-inforce the sit and listen but never ask learning style. They more and more become who is sitting in the pews.
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“On parenting, Wicker says that its the teaching of critical thinking and acceptance of others that move our children toward abandoning evangelicalism.”
Seriously? I wonder if what Wicker meant is that the way evangelicals model the faith to kids is so devoid of reason (a la “Jesus Camp”) that once they are exposed to an environment where they are taught to think (not necessarily from a Theistic World View) or are forced to think for the first time, they feel like their religious upbringing was a giant con job.
That is not to say that faith can be proven, or that Paul was wrong concerning God choosing the foolish things to shame the wise. It goes back to the ironies of ironies of evangelicalism, particularly the pro-life side, which claims to have such a high value for human life, but then demonstrates such a screwed up view of anthropology. They seem to believe that God gave us heads on our shoulders so that preachers had something to beat on with their bibles. God made us with a spirit, a mind, a soul, a body. When evangelicals ignore this and always go for the gut (emotional/fear-driven response), yeah, I would believe most people would step to the other side of the curb to avoid walking by a church. People need to think. They need beauty. They need compassion. They need a sense of mystery, of transcendence. They don’t need yet another worship-fomercial sales pitch. They don’t want the universe boiled down into ten easy principles; how condescending!
I found this last night. It sort of elaborates my point. Compared to what Steve Bell describes in this clip, evangelicalism tastes so stale.
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Just a thought on the earliest posts concerning young adults leaving the church. For what it is worth, my personal experience in a church, observing the youth pastor and the young adults entering that age is that there was a real gap between the prodigal son types and the elder brother types that seems very wide. Leaving the church is to become the younger brother and pursue that lifestyle, stay in the church is to become an elder brother and try to have a permanent halo on your head. Given this choice, the younger brother is set up for failure to stay in church when he is becoming an adult and can make that choice. Being permanently “good” or being given a “great life” through christianity are seen as things that make a person either a fake or eventually very disappointed and/or disillusioned.
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Dang! Now it doesn’t do it. In my original, my 8 followed by a parenthesis showed up as a “cool” smile. 8)
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BTW, your software misinterpreted my “8” followed by a parenthesis as a 8).
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Ummm, I usually don’t go to bat for modern day evangelicalism, but, yes, it’s in bad shape, but it think it’s a smidgen better than Wicker makes it out to be (which still might very well mean it’s going down the drain fast).
1) I think this number is much smaller than the recent Pew survey found. If Wicker’s or “Reveal’s” or whosever methodology is superior, fine. And I haven’t read Wicker’s book. But a bald assertion like this flies in the face of other good and contradictory work.
2) I can’t believe the media — apart from Fox News — would do anything to spin up the influence of evangelicals. If you mean they have spent so much time trying to portray us as boogeymen that they have actually given us more influence than we other wise would have had, hmmm, maybe. But I think that’s a stretch.
3) Prestonwood Baptist replaced their founding paster several years ago and their growth continued — and exploded. Dare I mention the Osteen “dynasty”? But: “The growth of megachurches is almost entirely from the previously converted.” I really don’t think the megas will last, but it won’t be for lack of ministers.
4)I would guess that the Ev. Frees and the Bible churches are actually a good bit more evangelistic than the SBC, to tell the truth.
8) If I understand your point, I think this is the problem with evangelicalism now: The center no longer holds. If you don’t want to be a fundamentalist, you run to liberalism. If you can’t be a Calvinist, you run to the Emergents. The plain vanilla Billy Graham-type evangelical is rarer and rarer.
9) I would have to see the stats. Either my evangelical friends are all living double lives, or there is a big difference between them and their secular counterparts. Not that we are nearly what we ought to be ….
10) Less than half, I can believe. But only five per cent???? maybe I have to read Wicker’s book, but I just don’t see where that could possibly come from.
OK, you wanted to write a provocative post, and this is what you get in return. 😀 Whether I agree with the specifics or not, I agree that evangelicalism needs a wake up call, if it’s not already to late.
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Jared: That list was responding the request for what issues USED TO define evangelicalism.
I have a 4 post series coming. The first will be up in a couple of hours: “Evangelicalism’s Unresolved Tensions: The Biblical Worldview.”
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Wicker has abandoned Christianity as far as I could tell, but she is deeply in touch with its beliefs and internal experience. She’s a former SBCer/Ky Baptist. So this shook me out pretty good.
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My wife and I grew up in an Evangelical denomination. We left when the church we were attending dissolved. We tried many other evangelical churches. If we were not already Christians, any of them would have been bad enough to make us not want to try attending church again.
None of them seem to be about following Jesus and bringing Him and His love to a lost culture. They’re about politics, pretty buildings, salaries, positions of power and authority, etc, etc. Now we’re part of a little group that is doing its own thing working with the urban poor.
When the book “Unchristian” came out last year, I heard several Evangelicals assailing it, saying that the perceptions it says the culture, especially 16-29 year olds, has of the church (hypocritical, anti-gay, too political, sheltered, etc.) are misconceptions. Having seen the situation from the inside, in positions of leadership, I’d say they’re on the mark. If these people had seen what I’d seen, the list would be longer.
I tend to agree with graceshaker that the current evangelical church will probably have to die to be resurrected.
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As a Catholic running a catechetical program for youth I see trends on this side of the Tiber as well. The overall issue for most of Christianity in the United States is that people are walking away from the faith. They may still have a desire to be spiritual people, but on their own terms, a spiritualism that allows materialism and secularism to play a role.
I have watched how Mass attendance continues to drop. Ten to fifteen percent of my 300+ students attend mass regularly, another 10% attend occationallly and most not at all. Their parents were given the lattitude of continuing to go to Mass or not when they got older and they fell away, and yet they send their kids to be taught and be prepared for the sacraments. The next generation will probably opt out of that as well since there is no foundation being built – just a general spirituality that says ‘God would want to see me happy’.
Reading through the Old Testament it’s kind of like the cycle the Hebrews kept perpetuating in their relationship with God – when times are good the faith lapses and drifts to the worship of other gods (money, materialism etc.), when crisis occurs we reach out to God for help. Except that there hasn’t been a real sustained crisis to pull us into reality.
In summary, these issues are happening to all of Christianity, with those of us who cling to structure, orthodoxy, and authority seeing it erode at an even faster rate.
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so what we need is balance to avoid both extremes – and it does seem like our modern day church currently has Pat Robertson making intellectually indefensible doctrinal claims with absolutely no sense as to feelings or PR on the one end, and your latte-sipping, emergent girly man who just wants to dialogue about feelings in order to be relevant and doctrine free on the other. No wonder people are leaving the church.
And again, it’s possible to say that “relationships” shouldn’t be valued more than doctrine et al, without saying that doctrine should be valued more than relationships. And I’d suggest we defer to IMonk’s common sense. Point being – when IMonk gets exhorted for asking the wrong common sense questions, some priorities are being overvalued at the expense of others. And thus explains the claim that you have to turn off your brain in church.
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I suppose I need to read her book to see where she’s going with all this information. Her stats seem fairly solid, but this list of 10 observations seems to me a mixture of dangerous things (loss of belief in salvation through Christ alone and a belief in literal hell), things that are to be expected (we sin despite salvation), and good things (critical thinking skills being encouraged). The list gives me concern in some areas and hope in others.
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J.P.,
Or alternatively perhaps it is the strict, uncritical adherence to doctrinal claims at the expense of care for our fellow human beings that is driving people from the evangelical church . . not my thoughts necessarily, but another side to the coin maybe.
I’m not sure why effiency and common sense should outweigh relationships or harmony. Arguably the bible is VERY strong on both harmony and relationsips. Arguably, relationship is the whole purpose of the cross.
And by “common sense”, whose common sense do we defer to?
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4) Evangelicals have almost stopped meaningful personal evangelism.
This one crushes me. It speaks to the integrity of all of us. Shouldn’t we be the same at home, with friends, at work, and at church? Christ is personal for all of us.
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sonja,
lamenting the increased feminization of our culture and church is not to say that women can’t think critically, nor is it to say there is anything wrong with the feminine. What is wrong is feminine men. What is also wrong is an overemphasis on effeminate values to the loss of masculine values within Christianity.
Valuing relationships, feelings and harmony as more important than doctrinal truth, efficiency, and plain common sense is a product of a more feminized church. Men and women are equally to blame for this. This was all in regards to IMonk’s example of having to keep quiet and turn your brain off all for the sake of avoiding divisiveness. If we value good feelings and relationships more than propositional claims to doctrinal truth, then this is what we get.
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Another question: 🙂
Is “leaving the faith” really the same thing as “leaving evangelicalism”?
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In fact, Wicker pretty much says that if you aren’t a fundamentalist in mindset, you’re probably contributing to the demise of evangelicalism… On parenting, Wicker says that its the teaching of critical thinking and acceptance of others that move our children toward abandoning evangelicalism.
Realizing these are Wicker’s ideas–and not having a denominational dog in the fight–I ask, is this such a bad thing?
iMonk, I look forward to your post on this.
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This is not a point by point response to the question, but one aimed at the question of “WHAT IF” we just tried to be the church as opposed to all the other things we get preoccupied with.
I’m obsessed with things relating to the Jews and took the opportunity to go to the Florida Holocaust Museum while I was in Tampa recently. My wife was attending a gifted teacher conference there and I got to tag along. As I studied the displays and read the personal stories of the people who lived through those horrors, over and over again the failure of the church to respond well hit me hard. I think about times like these and wonder how we would respond in a similar crisis. Granted, I’m a depressive, but I don’t think it is negative to be positive toward the idea that the church should prepare the body to become people who are ready and able to follow Christ to the cross.
I’m sure we would all have very different ideas about what something like this would look like. I’m keeping my comments brief, so I’ll not give my views on what I think about it. My question is simply this; what would we look like if this how we defined our purpose and were preparing our people accordingly?
The Vietnam War was ongoing when I was drafted into the Army. My drill sergeant did the standard yelling and getting in your face sorts of things, but I liked him. I saw through his bluster and into a soft and concerned heart. He knew he had but eight weeks to get a bunch of stupid kids, most of us only a year or so out of high school, weak and undisciplined beyond imagination, into a condition where we had at least a chance of surviving a year of jungle, bullets, and devastating losses, and possibly even winning the battle.
I think this is how Jesus saw his role during his three years of active duty. He had to prepare a few average, uneducated, and inadequate men to go into the trenches and have the resources to train others to do the same after they were gone.
What if this is how we saw our purpose as leaders in the church, and prepared our people accordingly? If we had already been doing this, would we even be talking about the ten points at the beginning of this thread?
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I don’t get what she means by #8. Is she saying, “Be a fundamentalist or it’s a slippery slope?”
If so, that’s kinda where we part ways. I’m not a fundamentalist because I want to be more deeply ensconced in the Christian faith.
As for the other points *nods*
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Dear Rev., Brother, Mr. Monk,
Being a fellow Kentuckian all I can say she appears to be right but I ain’t fer all the division in the body of Christ as a matter of fact I’m agin it. I got questions like everybody else…I’m dying for some answers as to the solution. Great post as usual, well most of the time or maybe sometime. I just don’t know anymore. But I do read your stuff eveyday and find an anwser sometimes. Thanks.
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Hello Michael
What is really troubling is how many children from evangelical homes are leaving the faith. Both of my sisters and their families are still pretty hardcore evangelicals and my experience as a relatively orthodox mainline Anglican for the last 15 years is so idiosyncratic I can’t really extrapolate anything from it. Both your kids are still in the faith. What did you and your wife as well as my folks do right that so many evangelicals are missing? What about your collages at OBI how may of there kids are still living healthy Christian lives? What about the kids of prominate e evangelical leaders? I have mostly lost touch with my vary plain vanilla “Evangellyfish†youth group but as far as I know all but two of the dozen or so kids I used to hang out with in high school are still in the church and at least four of them are leaders (a few elders, Sunday school teachers and one youth pastor). I never thought my home church was that great but they seem to have been doing something right. This would seem to be a good subject for an open tread.
God Bless
Steve in Toronto
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Hitting on a few of the items from the post.
2) The term Evangelical means so many things to so many people that you wind up with a very wide breadth of cultural and political ideals by those who would identify themselves with that term. It’s difficult to achieve clout when you can’t come together to agree on much of anything.
4) I live in a city where Baptists of various styles make up the majority of believers. I have only been witnessed to once and that was a door-to-door walk through being done at the apartment complex I lived in at the time. I have only once ever overheard anyone having a conversation that sounded anything remotely like an evangelical outreach. I completely believe this statistic.
5) I would suggest that another reason outreach doesn’t occur is than no one is being taught how to do it. Despite growing up in various conservative evangelical churches I have only heard one sermon which addressed to how to perform personal evangelism and that sermon directed the congregation to resort to cheap, manipulative tactics to get the job done. Some good instruction on how to do outreach would go a long way towards getting more people to do it.
7) I don’t doubt this statistic for an instant. Since I moved over into one of the mainline churches I have seen far more baptisms (both infant and adult) than I ever saw in any evangelical church I was ever in.
8) Many of the distinctions that are supposed to set evangelicals apart from everyone else ought to be gotten rid of anyway.
10) I have no idea about what the numbers are on how many evangelicals will remain in the faith after college. Precious few of the evangelicals that I grew up with exhibited critical thinking skills in any area at all and so I really question the number of people that are supposedly thinking their way out of evangelicalism.
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I’m puzzled by your question.
I get ya. I was misreading your short response (to Bill?) as a list of “problems.” It is a list of problems, I see now, but not in the “All of these are bad” sense.
I know better than to think you’re not a fan of the exclusivity of Jesus. Which is why I asked if you’d expand. 🙂
Peace
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“Evangelicalism has some problems when it comes to teaching a non-fundamentalist, critical thinking model. And I am exhibit “A†in that one.”
This would be a major post I would be keenly interested in. This is what I run up against time and time again with my students.
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Look at all the people emotionally hurt and worse, turned from God and His Truth by religion. Authors who take such pride in wringing out a “distinctive” not seen in the last thousand years or so. Seminaries “more Godly” because they ,more so than others, have a grip on the Mysteries of God tighter than those “other outfits.
There will come a time when denominationalism will be revealed as “factions” and our distinctives will be revealed as pride.
The Bride is a dysfunctional multi-personality schizophrenic. The argument for cure is a symptom more than a hope.
We are told by some that if we do not believe Genesis literally we just can’t believe in Jesus, and told by others if we believe a bit of it even in a metaphorical sense we are hopelessly deranged.
So the simple minded of us in different styles under differing or absent banners pray “Come Lord Jesus come, do not tarry longer!” and the intelligentsia say,”ah, the simpletons.”
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On parenting, Wicker says that its the teaching of critical thinking and acceptance of others that move our children toward abandoning evangelicalism.
I just pulled this quote, but there are others as well, which lead me to wonder if Wickers is coming from a perspective that evangelicalism is the only true path to righteousness/salvation?
I was brought into the evangelical church and then driven away from it as a critical thinker. Could it be that the institution (such as it is) is changing and moving away from its own roots?
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If I can get back to it, I have at least one more major post on this subject. Evangelicalism has some problems when it comes to teaching a non-fundamentalist, critical thinking model. And I am exhibit “A” in that one.
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David,
Thanks for your critique. You tend toward another extreme at parts in your stereotype, but overall I am appreciative of what you said.
“Evangelicals are waning because most people are turned off by the focus on the blood and gore, the self righteousness, the judgment, hostility, and meanness, the intransigent clinging to nonsense in the face of science, the anti-intellectualism, the holier-than-thou attitude, the opposition to human and civil rights, and the fervent certitude of evangelicals. Most people don’t like being evangelized because they instinctively know that they are being sold horseshit. When Sarah Palin is the model, you’ve definitely got some problems.”
It breaks my heart that this is what you (and many others) think of when you think of evangelicals. Of course, your stereotype is partially media-created and not reality, but your evaluation is also dead-on at parts. Unfortunately evangelicals have done plenty to enforce this stereotype. It’s a shame that evangelicalism was created as a response to the fundamentalists who often more adequately represented your description of evangelicals. In the earliest days, it was rigorously opposed to many of the adjectives you mention (anti-intellectual, holier-than-thou, opposed to civil rights, etc.). I think in the greater world of evangelicalism (i.e. outside of the US) your stereotype wouldn’t be fair, but my experience in American evangelicalism often resonates with your critique and makes me ashamed.
I pray that globo-evangelicals and post-evangelicals, who are very much interested in real science, increased education, social justice, fighting oppression, and are opposed to anti-intellectualism, false certitude, etc. will be able to right the ship before evangelicalism sinks completely in America.
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ALL POSTERS:
1) Shorten the long posts or I will edit them.
2) There will not be an atheist-Christian debate on this thread.
Jared:
I’m puzzled by your question. She’s suggesting that when push comes to shove and a typical “evangelical” is being honest, they don’t believe salvation is exclusively through Jesus. They believe sincere Jews and Mormons, etc are saved as well.
It’s one of a package of formerly distinctive beliefs that she believes are now mostly articulated by the few who believe them while the rest nod, but actually believe otherwise, though they will rarely honestly say so.
But it affects evangelism, etc.
In fact, Wicker pretty much says that if you aren’t a fundamentalist in mindset, you’re probably contributing to the demise of evangelicalism. Your children won’t believe what you do, you disagree with a lot of what you hear in evangelicalism, you’ve made peace with things like R-rated movies, living together before marriage, gay marriage, etc. Even if you’re afraid to say so.
On parenting, Wicker says that its the teaching of critical thinking and acceptance of others that move our children toward abandoning evangelicalism.
BTW, I’m not reading Wicker as saying all evangelicals are going to be atheists. They are just not going to be hard line believers in what they say they believe. They are going to leave churches at the first opportunity. They are generationally going to compromise on all kinds of cultural issues. Many have made their peace with modern science, gender issues, etc.
Wicker says what you are hearing in evangelicalism is about 5-6 million true believers. Hard core. Zealous. Making a lot of noise through their own media and the MSM (which decided to pay attention to them and pretty much ignore all other religions the last 20 years.)
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I think I need to read the book, because some of those points were confusing to me … others resonated.
I was one of the people who spoke when I shouldn’t, was exhorted til I realized my integrity was at stake and left.
JP, please be very careful in your use of the word “effeminate.” It looks as though you are saying that only masculine cultures can think critically, and I certainly hope you are not being that divisive. I daresay that many effete women are just as capable of thinking quite critically, logically and powerfully. Many masculine men just use their brawn to steam roll. So, please be a bit more careful in your arguments. Thank you.
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[MODERATOR EDITED]
Evangelicals are waning because most people are turned off by the focus on the blood and gore, the self righteousness, the judgment, hostility, and meanness, the intransigent clinging to nonsense in the face of science, the anti-intellectualism, the holier-than-thou attitude, the opposition to human and civil rights, and the fervent certitude of evangelicals. Most people don’t like being evangelized because they instinctively know that they are being sold horseshit. When Sarah Palin is the model, you’ve definitely got some problems.
I am always intrigued that the most zealous advocates of rigid dogma (as god has revealed to them but not people who disagree with them) conveniently forget that Jesus’ strongest words were reserved for the religious zealots of his day – those quickest to cast a stone at someone else. Those zealots also had a very old tradition, and all the trappings of a church hierarchy. Yet Jesus called them a den of snakes.
By implicitly questioning the integrity of the faith and values of others, are you not casting the first stone? Cast a stone at poverty, disease and war. Love is the greatest commandment. Is your rejection of the abbreviated Jesus rooted in love or self righteousness?
Claims to being guided by the spirit appear to be little more than self-aggrandizing hubris.
I argue with progressive Christians about faith. I always seem to enjoy the argument more than they. But we can generally agree on the importance of doubt and mystery. And I know they are motivated by love and compassion and a passion for justice. And they seem genuinely happy. There is an inner peace and joy and love that I always found absent from true believers (in the Eric Hoffer sense of the term). Not saying the true believers can’t be happy. But in my experience they are a sad, angry and bitter lot, projecting their own insecurities onto others, ever waiting to encounter someone more flawed so they can feel better about themselves, and more holy and righteous. Someone who is doing it wrong. Someone who abbreviates Jesus. Someone not quite crazy for god.
I challenge these friends that they can be just as loving and kind without the Jesus bit (or Buddha, karma, Allah, g-d, Gaia, etc.) and profess a faith in the radical possibility of lovingkindness, community, compassion, generosity, and restorative justice. But I guess the Jesus bit – with hell, and Satan and eternal torment, and the walking on the water, and putting demons in pigs, and cursing fig trees, and magically reattaching ears, and the reanimator scenes – I guess all that’s a lot to give up. Especially when entire communities are created around the identity of collective belief in a bizarre mythology. See Bill Maher’s “Religulous.”
“The Tao which can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name which can be names is not the eternal name. Naming is the origin of all particular things. The unnameable is eternally real. Free from desire you realize the mystery. Caught in desire you see only manifestation. Mystery and manifestation arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness: the gateway to all understanding.”
– Lao Tzu
“Now through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”
– Paul the Apostle
“Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love […] and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however Godlike, is not God.”
– Anonymous, “The Cloud of Unknowing.”
PS – By the way, if the apology was sincere, it is appreciated more than you will ever know or understand.
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I don’t worry or fret over the Evangelical Church. Christian movements have come and gone, and will continue to do so.
Wineskins and all that . . .
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Jared Wilson said,
Exclusive salvation via Jesus.
iMonk, can you expand? Are you saying this view is harmful to evangelicalism?
What am I missing?
Nope, I think he was listing beliefs which traditionally set Christians apart from the world around them and which are increasingly being jettisoned by today’s Evangelicals.
Someone asked Michael to expand on the last sentence in Point 8 of the post, and this was part of his answer.
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perhaps if the church in america is to truly follow jesus it will have to die and be resurrected just as he was.
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Arguing “what do you mean by” or that the numbers & percentages are wrong is pointless here. I also refuse to just say “oh, this is about evangelicalism, not my traditional mainline denomination – so good riddance!”.
These are problems that are tearing up the average American church. And the younger generation (my generation) is leaving the church (I’m watching it happen with my friends). We haven’t been taught critical thinking, or why we ought to believe in Christianity – and for as popular as C.S. Lewis is today, I’m afraid he’s popular for the Narnia movies and the title of his book Mere Christianity. “That’s cool – I’m a ‘mere’ Christian too.” God forbid anyone’s actually read his logical arguments for why Christianity is true. An increasingly effeminate culture leaking into an effeminate Christianity is part of the problem here too.
It’s definately time to do something about this. Count me in for the action (and I don’t mean dialoguing in coffee houses). It’s time to stop playing along. It’s time to stop avoiding the right and sometimes dividing questions. It’s time to man up to the fact that “cultivating relationships” (yawn) is not our goal in church. I’m trying to rock the boat at my church – it’s not always appreciated but it makes things more lively.
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Michael,
I had also blogged on this topic this evening. As you may recall, I have shown that evangelicals in Canada are doing quite well and have grown about 50% over the last twenty years. I had always assumed that the data for the U.S. would be quite similar.
Well I finally found the statistics I was looking for and they show a significant decline in Evangelicals in the U.S. from 1990-2000. (1980-1990 was in fact a time of growth.)
I show the graphs of the data in my post entitled: “The Decline of American Evangelicals”. I think your readers will find the difference in the two graphs quite stunning.
So why are the Canadian and U.S. numbers looking so different? I believe that one of the key factors has been that Canadian Evangelicals have largely not participated in the culture wars, but have instead focused their energy on things like Church planting. I hope to blog a little more on this this weekend.
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Chiming in with my own question, what do you mean by “fundamentalist pastoral infallibility”? That sounds as if it means the pastor is infallible on matters of doctrine, but I imagine I must be interpreting it wrongly? ‘Cos if it is, then hey – we guys already have a Pope, you know 😉
I actually understand what you mean by “exclusive salvation via Jesus” – the notion that it is too exclusive and intolerant to say that only Jesus Christ is the Saviour, since that means we are asking all those nice Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and agnostics and atheists who may be perfectly good people living perfectly decent lives to convert to Christianity; worse than that, we are saying that being a decent human being isn’t enough to get you to Heaven. How dare we “put God into a very small box*” (as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church expressed it) like that? 🙂
(*Her actual words, in her 2006 Time magazine interview, were: “Q. Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven? A. We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.”)
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Confusion reigns. I just went back to the monkatory and reread some evangelical based stuff. Still confused. what pushed me over the edge of understanding is #4.
How can a group that doesn’t evangelize be called Evangelical? That is like calling things that do not fly airplanes. There has got to be a better term. If it doesn’t go in the water let us not call it a swimmer. Rename this group, will ya?
5 a. Can you be a Christian if you do not believe what He said? Honest query, can you? pt.b If so, how?
6 Isn’t life about a crisis of faith? Is it just me or do we all struggle with the very concept of God in this mess of a world. Every faith group member has crisis’s of faith. That is how we grow.
9 “Live like every body else.” What does that mean? Stop for a beer on Friday? Have marital trouble? seriously, what does that mean? Non-separatist?
10. Doing a good job,yet not passing the faith on to next gen , hmmmm what’s that?
Honest I have papers some where to prove I’m not too stupid, and I really want to understand. Dumb this down for me to a “you just might be an evangelical if you”….or. “here’s your sign”.. level.
Thanks.
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I read this, and I want to weep. One might quibble with some of the numbers, but the trends are unquestionably true. I’m seeing this in my own church. We have a solid core group of young adults, and our new youth minister is also responsible for young adults. In that area, we’re stable – barely.
One of our young adults and I are in seminary together. I’m there because at the core of who I am and who I believe God wants me to be, I have to be there, but I’m afraid. I don’t want to go into ministry just to go into professional ministry. But if it’s possible, I would like to be able to devote as much time as possible there, and that means some kind of paid position, even if part time. Yet I go, and may God help me.
About a year ago, I read Rainer’s “Simple Church.” Now, I’m reading his latest, “Essential Church.” He’s pointing out many of the same issues. I think you’re right on when you say evangelicalism is the disease, not the patient.
Even with all this, there are lights out there in the wasteland. This site is one. Steve McCoy and Joe Thorn are doing cool stuff. Jared Wilson is in the thick of it. Guys like the Rainers get it. Maybe it’s about time to let the hulking wreck of evangelicalism die like the current economy – no bailouts. God’s people will find ways to keep meeting together. It may be an uncomfortable transition, but we need to go there. Who’s up for reforming the Reformation?
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I’m a bit lost on #10. I found that people who were not taught critical thinking skills growing up were more likely to leave the faith or have a very shallow faith b/c they simply didn’t know (or care) to sift through all the different messages they received.
I’m having a hard time figuring out how to understand the list given – are we supposed to equate the things on the list with being Orthodox Christian and thus view them all as terrible calamities?
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Great diagnosis, what is the cure?
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Michael,
Many of those ideas are fairly common (and should be) outside of evangelicalism…so I’m not sure what you’re saying in your comment above.
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Great minds think alike? 🙂
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Exclusive salvation via Jesus.
iMonk, can you expand? Are you saying this view is harmful to evangelicalism?
What am I missing?
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Ranger, interesting, and that matches more closely my experience.
iMonk – what do you mean by “Exclusive salvation via Jesus”?
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My own take on the future of evangelicalism (and my hope, honestly) is that its energies will shift from trying to maintain a non-denominational dimension and that many evangelicals will divert their attentions instead to the historic, mainline denominations. In those traditions, there is something with a serious staying power (liturgy, creed, tradition, etc.) that is being subtly revitalized by an evangelical minority but could be even more revitalized by an infustion of humble, honest non-denominational or lower church evangelicals returning to the mainline.
In my opinion, this is preferable to the emergent church or post-evangelical option.
It could be one of the great re-unifications of the ecumenical age, healing a split that was driven by the fundamentalist – liberal conflicts of the past two centuries.
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Michael,
Sorry if this comment is too long. You can edit it to make it shorter if you so choose.
1. When polled probably 55 million would claim to be evangelical. I think this is why the polls are skewed, but when you talk about the ones who are actually in church on Sundays, know what they believe, etc. then the list drops drastically (ala 10-15 million). The question then is are the percentages at the end based on the 55 million or on the 15 million. Furthermore, does the 15 million include those in Lutheran and more mainline denominations (even Catholic) that are truly evangelical in belief? Francis Beckwith (and others) is making a case that evangelical Catholic is a valid category.
2. When I worked with youth and college students in a Southern Baptist setting (up until three years ago), I simply didn’t find the 5% stat to be true…or even close to true. Possibly it’s the wording. Does it mean that they will continue in “their parents'” faith, or that they will continue to follow Christ? The latter is simply not true by any stretch.
If the former, then this is certainly a possibility, but still seems skewed. Over a five year stretch and about 1500 or so college students later, I’d split the “results” into various groups:
1. Probably 10% of the students intentionally quit the faith and become Mormon, Buddhist, Bahai, intentionally agnostic or atheist (probably well under 1% to these latter two groups as most stay “spiritual” in some way). Many of these students had fundamentalist parents so I often expected that the change would come. Some have since returned to Christianity, but many of this group have built up a wall against Christianity and Christians so high that its going to take a miraculous work of the Spirit to bring the walls down. I think this more often than not had to do with fundamentalist upbringings at home.
2. Many (probably 30-50%) became practically agnostic in college and stopped regular church attendance, etc. They would go occasionally, send me the occasional e-mail with questions, etc. but were practically agnostics (basically they’ve become like most Americans).
3. Many more than 5% stayed active, but switched denominations. Some are now charismatic, a few became Luthern, some non-denominational evangelical, some mainline and some Catholic or Orthodox.
4. A few joined the house church movement and emerging congregations. To be honest, most have since left feeling that they were too free with little substance. As someone who has worshipped in a house church for two years (in China), I disagree with their conclusion.
5. A small percentage are still active in a Southern Baptist church either near their college or at the place they are beginning their careers.
So if the statistic is saying only 5% of evangelical youth will still call themselves Christians after five years, then the stat is radically skewed or simply dishonest. If it is saying that only 5% will be active in a church setting, then I think it’s still significantly skewed and that the number is probably 30-40%. If the stat is saying that only 5% will keep their parents’ form of faith, then I would say that it’s probably accurate as I saw about 5-10% stay Southern Baptist in and after college.
But just as things change after high school, they change again after college, and again after marriage/children, and again after retirement, etc. and I don’t think these polls ever deal with that.
Of course we can’t predict the current generation, but it seems with many of my friends (28-33 year olds), we left our churches in college, tried new forms of spirituality or left the faith completely. After college, we got jobs and families and stopped rebelling for the sake of rebelling. It was at this point that we started asking honest spiritual questions again.
Many of my friends who would have been agnostic (practically or actively) ten years ago are now active in the Christian faith. Many are in the house church movement (which is still radically growing by every estimate I’ve seen), some are still evangelical (but few are Southern Baptist), a smaller few are now mainline, but a good portion are now Catholic or Orthodox.
To be honest, I’d say the vast majority of my deeper thinking friends who were agnostic ten years ago are now either in a house church or Catholic. That’s why I asked about studies on the growth of the Catholic church among 20-30 year olds in the previous post on this topic.
So from my personal perspective, I’ve gotta disagree with the statement that only 5% keep the faith. Whereas probably 70-80% of us left the faith during college, most of us have returned…it just looks different than it did back then…even for those of us who still call ourselves evangelical (but are truly post-evangelical).
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Biblical inerrancy. Fundamentalist pastoral infallibility. Exclusive salvation via Jesus. “God Answers Prayer.” Hell. Church 2-3 times a week. Tithing. Denominational loyalty. Church membership.
I don’t want to see evangelicalism die, but the thing that is evangelicalism today is the disease, not the patient.
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Thanks
Since I haven’t read the book, I’m curious about other non-evangelical but Christian students. What is their “rate of fall”?
If the 95% statistic is both a) close to reality and b) permanent, the evangelical churches will by definition be gone within a generation (as you can’t replace at a 3 or 4% rate and hope to survive.
Is there hope for other, non-evangelical Christian students? Do they have a similar rate of failure, or is it a more successful percentage?
The implications, of course, are staggering. If the rate of failure is across the board, Christianity in the U.S. will be gone in a generation.
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A couple of comments:
i) I questions whether or not evangelicalism needs to survive at all. Not trying to be snarky, but why not let it die?
ii) Many evangelicals have tossed out any loyalty to beliefs and practices that previously defined them as serious Christians.
I wonder what beliefs and practices are being talked about, here, and if they truly define one as a follower of Jesus (assuming that is what “serious Christian” means–maybe that is a bad assumption). Maybe this idea needs to die, too?
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Does it line up with my experience 5 years after high school (assuming they are involved in a youth group?)
Absolutely.
Now there are churches that beat this curve during particular phases, but overall I would say that we entirely overestimate three things:
1) the extent to which youth will reproduce their parent’s doctrinal faith (or the faith their parents claim to profess)
2) the extent to which youth are de-churched within a few years (even if they have a general Christian self-identification)
3) the extent to which Wicker’s observation about parenting is true.
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iMonk
I’m a bit confused on number 10. Would like to hear your thoughts on it. I’ve heard the “95% will leave the faith” statistic and have enough anecdotal evidence to agree that a lot (perhaps not 95%, but a lot) of students at least temporarily jettison their faith in College. I do believe the number is low – if it wasn’t, by definition, we’d have almost no one in our churches (because I’ve been hearing that number for many years yet our churches still have a number of younger adults in them, and (I realize anecdotes aren’t what we’re after here, my apologies) anecdotally I know quite a number of young adults that I knew as students who still are in church. Again, I believe the number is distressingly low. But the tenth point basically gets the number to less than 5% (perhaps as low as 2 or 3%) still in church. I’m not sure I believe that.
You’ve worked with students for quite some time. Does this line up with your experience?
Again – I apologize for the anecdotal nature of my response. I don’t doubt her research is sound, just wondering at the interpretation. I have a great deal of interest in this subject.
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I’m thrilled about the first 7. I thought at first the little glasses dude was on purpose! I’m excited because it shows that I’m not the only one out here taking steps in the opposite direction than that of a “faithful Christian.”
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