The Evangelical sky is falling. Or something.

  • If you don’t get out in the blo­gos­phere much any­more, you might be miss­ing it, but there’s a bit of a hul­lab­ul­loo going on about a new Amer­i­can Reli­gious Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sur­vey (ARIS) came out. The num­bers aren’t good for any Chris­t­ian, but they’re prob­a­bly the most depress­ing for Evan­gel­i­cals. For instance(*):

    Since 1990, the last time the sur­vey was con­ducted, the num­ber of peo­ple who claim no reli­gion at all has risen from 8% to 15%. In con­trast, all of the main­line denom­i­na­tions have seen a sig­nif­i­cant decline in the num­ber of peo­ple who describe them­selves as par­tic­i­pants. Accord­ing to the sur­vey, the num­ber of Bap­tist declined from 19.3% to 15.8%. Methodists dropped from 8% to 5%…

    I couldn’t find the orig­i­nal sur­vey online, but there’s cov­er­age HERE and HERE and HERE, just to name a few.

    But the guy that upset the apple cart was  “post-evangelical” blog­ger Michael Spencer — HERE – that went for the big guns:

    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.

    Boy, now that’s the way to get every­body talk­ing. (If you have time, peruse the 200+ com­ments on Spencer’s blog HERE or the 100+ on newly-Orthodox Rod Dreher’s blog HERE to get an idea of the aftershocks.)

    And Spencer’s prog­no­sis has an intrigu­ing scrap for us non-Protestants:

    Two of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries will be the Roman Catholic and Ortho­dox com­mu­nions. Evan­gel­i­cals have been enter­ing these churches in recent decades and that trend will con­tinue, with more efforts aimed at the “con­ver­sion” of Evan­gel­i­cals to the Catholic and Ortho­dox traditions.

    Well, that part might be good, even if it sounds far-fetched right now. But I’ve got two ques­tions about Spencer’s idea that the Evan­gel­i­cal churches are done for:

    1. Isn’t this all a lit­tle sud­den? I love a good death-knell-prediction as much as the next per­son, but it’s one sur­vey. I don’t know much about the evan­gel­i­cal churches, so maybe this sur­vey is just giv­ing proof to what every­one sus­pected. All the same, I hate to see peo­ple set such a stock in sur­veys, which seem rife with the poten­tial for misinformation.
    2. Wrong mea­sur­ing rod? — In his sec­tion on why this will have hap­pened, Spencer uses the world’s cul­ture as the met­ric by which these churches will be found want­ing:

      Evan­gel­i­cals have iden­ti­fied their move­ment with the cul­ture war and with polit­i­cal con­ser­vatism. … The invest­ment of evan­gel­i­cals in the cul­ture war will prove out to be one of the most costly mis­takes in our his­tory. The com­ing evan­gel­i­cal col­lapse will come about, largely, because our invest­ment in moral, social and polit­i­cal issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses.

      This just sounds like the same fear that mod­ernist Chris­tians have had for 50 years — that (lower case ‘o’) ortho­dox Chris­tian­ity doesn’t meet the world’s stan­dards for progress. Per­son­ally, I can’t see that it’ll mat­ter. The world cul­ture that Spencer thinks will be judg­ing us for not being all for gay mar­riage, abor­tion and the rest is hav­ing its own set of break­downs, panic attacks and internecine war­fare. Just like reli­gious peo­ple, sec­u­lar peo­ple have a lot harder time believ­ing in things than they used to. In their case, the “old reli­gion” was the human­ist one that said that sec­u­lar progress would always lead to a bet­ter world. Or have we not noticed that the world’s cul­ture is nearly bank­rupt right now?

    I’m think­ing we all need pray­ing for right now. At least the Chris­tians know Who they’re pray­ing to.


    Related posts:

    1. N-C-C ya later!
    2. MTV finds out what makes kids happy …
    3. Reli­gion, pol­i­tics and spin
    4. Think athe­ists don’t believe in the Easter Bunny?
    5. Is Ortho­dox con­ver­sion on the rise?

    March 14th, 2009 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Nicode­mus 03.14.2009

    I am always sur­prised to hear the slam against Protes­tants and how shal­low they are. Granted, one of the perks of I con­vert­ing to Ortho­doxy is that it is a deeper and richer expres­sion of the Faith, and so much more! But, I have a lot of Protes­tant friends who I con­sider deep, com­mit­ted, sin­cere fol­low­ers of Jesus Christ. I think partly what is true is that each of us are heav­ily influ­enced by our cul­ture, Ortho­dox included. How­ever, it also seems that the Protes­tant camp allows that cul­tural influ­ence to enter the door­ways of their churches in order to use turn it around for the good. In other words, rock music came on the scene and was an influ­ence of sin­ful things. Protes­tants took that music and turned it around to be an influ­ence of right­eous­ness. How­ever, it really just gave Chris­tians an alter­na­tive to the sec­u­lar music and allowed them to lis­ten to their own ver­sion of rock guilt free.

    I think Mar­shall McLuhan said it best when he said “the medium is the mes­sage”. In other words, it doesn’t make any dif­fer­ence what the lyrics or intent may be of either the sec­u­lar or Chris­t­ian ver­sion of rock music, it is the form itself — the medium of dis­torted gui­tars and bang­ing drums. What mes­sage does that send apart from any lyri­cal con­tent? Does that mes­sage ever change — is it a neu­tral mes­sage, or does that medium drive a con­sis­tent mes­sage that can either be labeled as harm­ful or helpful?

    I digressed a bit from the topic, and really just wanted to express that I have a big heart for my Protes­tant friends. I still share some­thing with them that I hope never fades, and that is: 1. A zeal for God; 2. A love of the Bible; 3. A pas­sion for the lost; and 4. A defense of the truth. If in fact the bot­tom does fall out for them, I want them to know I am here for them, that I share their grief over any com­pro­mise of the Faith, and that Ortho­doxy will ful­fill every imag­in­able facet of the Faith for them they think may have been lost or stolen by their decay­ing Amer­i­can culture.

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required