Patrol Magazine is consistently on top of the current evangelical evolution. David Sessions and the Patrol staff have been doing outstanding journalism for two years now. It’s a young evangelical Rolling Stone, the magazine Relevant would like to be. There’s more to say, but this is a true note amidst the confusion that surrounds us. Expect this editorial to get the “people who criticize the beautiful bride of Christ are pathetic” treatment, but don’t be deterred. Evangelicals have their strong suits, strong churches and worthy messengers, but overall, this is what mainstream evangelicalism is cooking. Add Patrol to your feed and stop in frequently.

(Reprinted with permission from Patrol Magazine)

HOWEVER LONG it may take to relinquish its hold on American culture, evangelicalism in the United States—still probably best defined by the British historian David Bebbington as a movement whose members adhere to conversionism, Biblicism, activism and crucicentrism—faces near-certain extinction. It has been blinded by its symbiotic relationship with the Enlightenment, and has perpetually failed to see beyond its hopelessly Western perceptions. Confined to the paramaters of liberal rationalism, it has mounted no challenge to the present political order and offered no intellectually acceptable explanation for how one is to live and think in the postmodern world. As this magazine has chronicled, its brightest children are throwing up their hands in record numbers, defecting heavy-heartedly to less temporal churches, or to no church at all.

But rather than recognize evangelicalism for the sinking ship it is, its cheerleaders are calling in increasingly desperate tones for a regrouping. Last year, a collection of prominent leaders met in Washington, D.C. to consider an “evangelical manifesto” designed to clear up the theological and political confusion that is intrinsic in the movement. In January, the hard-right Web site WorldNetDaily offered a checklist for identifying “true Christians.” Southern Baptists assume the apocalypse is coming from within, and mobilized this year to draw lines between themselves and cussing drunkards like Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell. (Ironic considering that those same leaders, often perceived as “liberals,” are just as insistent on salvaging the term for themselves.) Most recently, the ecumenical journal First Things launched an evangelicalism-focused blog that devoted its first few days to further pulpifying the dead horse. Evangelicals simply cannot stop talking about who is and who is not an evangelical.

This definitional masturbation is frustrating for those who see many of the values typically associated with evangelicalism as worth preserving. First, it behaves as if evangelicalism were once a unified, coherent tradition to which Protestants can return. On the contrary, with its scatter-shot, authority-averse tendencies, evangelicalism has always been a concept in constant cultural flux, particularly in the democratic United States. Some evangelical denominations have kept a firmer grasp on their senses than others, but the broad sweep of American Christianity is hopelessly fractured, diluted, politicized, ideological, nationalistic, and often plain idiotic. The notion that the term and the culture it represents can be salvaged from this smoldering heap is naïve at best.

The fight to define evangelicalism in its latter days also operates on the mistaken premise that an imagined theological purity or conformance to a “lost” orthodoxy, rather than an emphasis on ethics, spiritual discipline and mystery, will revive the power of the Christian church. It is astonishing that so many intelligent Christians seem to believe there is a deficit in emphasis on evangelism and scriptural literalism, and that, if the hatches are just battened down on a more solid “worldview,” evangelicalism can resume explaining the universe to new generations of believers. In this respect, evangelicalism’s true believers resemble the faction of the Republican Party that asserts with a straight face that returning to “core principles,” and not a radical restructuring of priorities, will bring waves of Americans back to the right wing.

But so many twenty-somethings are not calling themselves “post-evangelical” because they know too little theology or have put too small an effort into synthesizing it with reality. They have come from the most apologetics-obsessed generation of Christians in American history, and have realized that many of their prepared answers are for questions that no one is asking. Adrift in the cultural sea, many turned to traditions and theological systems of the past, only to find those similarly unequipped to address the questions of our time. The only choice has been to begin the messy and at times overwhelming process of drafting something new.

The growing collection of post-evangelicals is what the defensive, definitional evangelical fears the most, and could by itself explain the recent obsession with protecting the label. Surely many of the intelligent professors, students, writers and bloggers rushing to its defense have also felt the naggings of cognitive dissonance and the inkling that the world might make more sense if they abandoned some of their cultural presuppositions. But haggling over the details of theology provides a psuedo-intellectual haven from real-world questions, where evangelicals can exercise their minds without coming to any unsettling conclusions. And thus the cycle of definition and redefinition continues, providing endless diversion as it cuts deeper and deeper ruts into what was once known as the Christian dialogue.

Refusing to align squarely with evangelical shibboleths requires courage, but the sooner it happens on a larger scale the better. All signs point to a near future where religion will play an increasingly climactic role in global culture and politics. Men and women who, as Mark Noll puts it in the final pages of The Evangelical Scandal, “think like a Christian”—by which he means “take seriously the sovereignty of God over the world he created”—should be leading the way on the meta questions that are already besieging society. But as long as they are busy drafting manifestos in their barricaded salons, hubristic rationalism will continue charging unchecked into the 21st century.

(Reprinted with permission from Patrol Magazine.)

This one, from the NAE President Leith Anderson article I’m not responding to.

Everything depends on definitions. My short definition of an evangelical is someone who takes the Bible seriously and believes in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

That pitch. Now excuse me while I take a swing.

By this definition, all Roman Catholics are evangelicals. Francis Beckwith should still be the President of The Evangelical Theological Society. I’m pretty sure the term “evangelical Catholic” was meant to mean exactly this.

Unless you want to get involved in some required confessional theology that will define Jesus, Mormons and several other cults are evangelicals by this definition. Latter Day Saints regularly write me and inform me that’s the case, by the way.

By this definition, all mainline liberal denominations are evangelicals, whether they want to be or not. Bishop Robinson, your phone is ringing.

I would assume that about 70% of the U.S. population would agree that definition describes their religion.

About 40% of Americans- total- make it to any sort of church service on a semi-regular basis. So we have tens of millions of “evangelical” Christians who never show up at any church.

This definition would mean that every evangelical-esque guy who rejects the church entirely is part of evangelicalism because he still identifies with two evangelical beliefs. These are your unbaptized, unchurched, unmembershipped, barely or not-at-all affiliated evangelicals. IOWs, if you aren’t a Muslim, Hindu, Jew or Atheist, this definition pretty much works.

That’s the problem. Today’s evangelicals think we’re all evangelicals now. Conversion is optional, depending on your mood.

And when you’ve turned everyone into an evangelical- baptism or not, church or not, confession or not, membership or not- you’ve pretty much described why I think evangelicalism is headed for a major trip to the ER in the next ten years. It’s turned itself into an audience, a movement, a preference, a consumer niche. It’s deconstructed itself down to almost nothing.

Catholics have a catechism. Evangelicals have Jesus Christ and a mild appreciation for the Bible.

I’m not for requiring every evangelical to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith. But if our faith hasn’t brought us into some sort of formal relationship with a church that actually confesses the evangelical faith in some form, on what basis can we talk about evangelicalism other than self-definition?

NOTE: I don’t agree with Phil Johnson on everything, but we’d all do well to read his talks on What is an Evangelical? and related topics.

Michael Spencer recently republished an article which looked at the problems that wealth creates for discipleship. He writes:

Have you ever thought about this? We are living in the most fabulously wealthy, excessively entertained and unimaginably prosperous nation in the history of the world. We have a standard of living, and a level of comfort, that much of the rest of the world cannot imagine…

The Jesus of the Gospel proclaims the promises of prosperity, real estate and parking places to be empty. If we will listen. Heís just as discomforting now as ever, unless we render him the harmless servant of our desires.

Rather than telling us about your best life now, Jesus talks over and over about persecution, sacrifice, voluntary poverty and laying down the images and symbols of success for the lasting worth and influence of the Kingdom of Jesus.

In the story of the rich young ruler, Matthew 19:21-24, Jesus makes it clear that it is very difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. It is so very true. When people are content in their present circumstances it is very difficult for them to hear the challenges of the gospel, and the demands of the Kingdom of God. This goes for both people with and without faith in God. For those with faith, it is a question of discipleship. For those without faith it is a question of evangelism.

Recession changes all that.

Recession turns peoples lives upside down. It helps them realize that they don’t have a sufficiency unto themselves. Not having a job, not being able to pay the monthly bills, wondering where the grocery money will come from, these are all things that cause even those that are furthest from God to question their own self-sufficiency. They come to a point where they realize that they can’t do it by themselves. And here-in lies the message of the gospel: We can’t do it by ourselves. Jesus had to die for our sins, because in and of ourselves we are unable to meet God’s holy standard. In times of prosperity it is a very hard message to communicate. In recession, your audience has a new appreciation of what that means.

Therefore, recession provides new opportunities for evangelism.

A number of years ago I watched a film about Jim Jones and his People’s Temple cult. One of the things that struck me when watching the film was how they presented themselves as a caring community. When someone came to the church without a job, at the end of the service they were introduced to their new employer. When someone came to church without a place to stay, they were assisted with that. Every week church members wrote hundreds of letters to visitors thanking them for being a part of their service, and what a wonderful church it was.

I can remember people around me shaking their heads and saying how terrible these techniques were. All the time I was thinking to myself, “Are you kidding me? If we did things like this our churches would be bursting at the seams!”

Recession and unemployment do impact our churches, and so one question to be considered is what sort of impact does unemployment have?

The leader in analyzing this has been David Beckworth, Assistant Professor of Economics at Texas State University. His study, published in late 2007, was entitled “Praying for a Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Church Growth.” Unfortunately the study is quite difficult to read for those who do not have a statistics or economics background. However, it was picked up by the New York Times in December of 2008, and subsequently by bloggers like Ed Stetzer. David updated his study in January of 2009, adding additional information and analysis. I wanted to take a further look at it, and pull apart the study a bit more than the Times and others did, hopefully, to explain in fairly simple terms what implications the study has for the church today.

David analyzed three sets of data. The first set was from a survey done by the Pew Charitable Trust in 2001 that looked at weekly attendance. According to the study, the probability of person attending church on any given Sunday was about 42%. It should be noted that surveys where people self report church attendance always trend higher than actual counts of people in church. That being said, it gave a baseline that David could use to look at four groups of people: Employed Evangelical Protestants, Unemployed Evangelical Protestants, Employed Non-Evangelical Protestants, and Unemployed Non-Evangelical Protestants.

According to the survey, an employed evangelical was roughly 20% more likely to attend church than the general population, a number that we should not find that surprising. The interesting number is that unemployed evangelicals were roughly 27 to 29% more likely to attend church than the general population. In other words, evangelicals that were unemployed were 7 to 9% more likely to attend church than their employed fellow church members.

For other Protestants we saw similar results. Those employed Protestants who were not Evangelical were less likely to attend church. Their attendance was roughly 12 to 13% lower than the national average. However, unemployed non-Evangelical Protestants were 12 to 13% more likely to attend church than their employed fellow church members.

So unemployment definitely has a significant positive effect on church attendance, no matter what flavor of Protestant you might happen to be. We might want to ask ourselves, if the unemployed are coming to our churches in greater numbers, what are we doing to help the obvious needs of the unemployed in our midst.

Recession also brings opportunities and by examining historical data we can see what impact recession has had on church growth.

David Beckworth’s data for church membership comes from an annual publication, “The State of Church Giving”. He found that this publication had consistent data on 14 Evangelical denominations and 11 mainline Protestant denominations between the years 1968 and 2004. The graph of the membership in these 25 denominations is reproduced below.

As can be seen from the graph, the trend in memberships in Evangelical denominations is up, and the trend in memberships in mainline Protestant denominations is down. This is true for the entire time span. Close observation will note that growth in the Evangelical denominations is much steeper/faster in the earlier years than it is in the later years. This is a concern for the Evangelical Church that both Michael Spencer and I have noted in previous essays as other data has shown that the Evangelical trend is likely to reverse itself and we will start to see declines. Over the entire time span however, the Evangelical denominations averaged a growth of 1.1% per year, while the mainline denominations averaged a decline of .94% per year. These are the base numbers that David Beckworth uses for his analysis.

When we divide the growth in Evangelical denomination between years in which there was no recession and years in which a recession occurred, we have another interesting observation. Growth for Evangelicals in non recession years was .98%, where as the growth rate for Evangelicals during years of recession was 1.52%. In other words Evangelicals grew 55% faster (1.52 / .98) during years of recession than in years of non-recession.

What is interesting is that mainline denominations did not see this same effect. There was statistically no real difference between recession and non-recession years. Why they did not see the same “bump” as the evangelicals is hard to ascertain. Perhaps it is easier to build on growth, as in the Evangelical case, than it is to reverse decline.

What about other economic shocks?

Beckworth found that for Evangelical Protestants, other economic factors like the unemployment rate, oil prices, real stock prices, and the difference between short and long term bond rates (an economic predictor) all impacted in a significant way on Church growth.

For mainline churches, most other economic factors did not have that much of an impact. The exception to this was stock prices. With stock prices, the effect was the opposite of what you might expect. As stock prices rose, membership rose (or actually declined less), with the converse also being true. This was the opposite effect that stock prices have on Evangelical congregations. Beckworth surmises that this is the case because mainline Christians on average are in a higher socio-economic class and as such are able to benefit more (in terms of available time) from the income and wealth effects that a rising stock market brings.

How long do these impacts last?

From the previous set of data along with 57 years of quarterly data that Beckworth had for the Seventh Day Adventists, he was able to show that the impact of the economic shocks were significant and generally lasted one and a half years beyond the date when the shock had ended. In the case of an increase in the unemployment rate for example, the greatest effect on membership/converts occurs one year after the initial shock and last another six months beyond that. So with the rise that we are now seeing in unemployment rates, our Evangelical churches may see a positive benefit from it until at least the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011 (depending of course when we hit bottom.) From both the data from the Evangelical denominations along with the further data from the Seventh Day Adventists, it can be shown that one third of all church growth can be directly attributable to economic shocks.

So what does it matter?

As we are know in the midst of a full blown recession, there are great opportunities for both Evangelicals and mainline Christians to reach out to those who are hurting. As Michael Spencer said in his original post, “Jesus talks over and over about persecution, sacrifice, voluntary poverty and laying down the images and symbols of success for the lasting worth and influence of the Kingdom of Jesus.” I have heard the expression before that “people want a hand up, not a handout.” A recession is our opportunity to come alongside those in difficulty and show them that not only does Jesus care, but we care too. It is also our opportunity to tell them about about the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus was willing to make for a world that could not help itself.

We talked Coming Evangelical Collapse and lots of other things. I had a great time and it’s one of my favorite discussions.

Here’s the site and it runs on QT.

The Falls Church has a new daughter congregation and is starting more: A story of church planting in the new Anglican communion in Virginia.

This story of a commitment to church planting among the newly freed Anglicans in Virginia makes me very, very happy. This is the antidote to the coming evangelical collapse: church planting and a lot of it.

Listen my confessional, Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, etc brothers and sister: this is what must happen. Church planting that plants churches that plant churches. It will revitalize your church. It will put your priorities right. It will make the process of discipleship and Christian education come into sharp focus. It will keep your leaders from becoming ecclesiastical vegetables. It’s a very good thing. Do it.

What really excites me here is how this is the influence of Keller’s work at Redeemer Church on the newly liberated Anglicans. Do you have any idea what it is like to talk church planting in many mainline and older denominations? I’ve observed it up close and I’ve heard it over and over. When the “we own it all” denominations are given a choice to plant a new church or prop up an older one, they seem to have almost no idea why it is the better thing to act like Christians and plant the new church.

The diversion of leaders, resources and energy to existing churches is only wise when those churches are committed to sending and sustaining. If they want to “soak” up those resources, it’s an installment on a doomed future.

New churches will attract new people. Young churches will have young people. Future oriented churches will have a future. Missional churches will create missional leaders. This isn’t advanced math.

There’s a theory behind church planting. It rejects the idea of trying to fill up existing churches before building new ones. Old churches are often “closed clubs” that don’t attract new residents or young people or “the lost,” says the Rev. Johnny Kurcina, an assistant pastor of The Falls Church. Besides, population increase far exceeds church growth in America. This is especially true in cities.

As an Episcopal Church rector, Mr. Yates began thinking about planting churches 20 years ago. But the bishop of Virginia “wouldn’t allow us to discuss it,” he says, fearing that new Episcopal churches would lure people from older ones. In 2001, he was allowed to plant a church, but only a county away in a distant exurb.

So God bless the Falls Church. May they plant 20 and every plant start 20 more. How great this is for Anglicanism. Ask the AMiA!

Schools are closing, cutting back, combining, going on-line, selling facilities… the situation is serious. Many schools report less than a year of operating expenses on hand.

While I’m interested in what’s happening to these schools, I’m more interested in something else: where are the supporters who once kept these schools going?

That’s the question that evangelicals ought to be asking. Are we seeing a shrinking base of support for ministries? Or are those supporters simply taking a year off to deal with their own financial problems?

I believe that theological education is in for a revolution. Prepare for dozens of new ways of preparing for ministry. And prepare to see the traditional classroom- and the academics that taught there- become a shrinking minority report.

I’m sure some people have laughed at a ministry like James White’s Alpha and Omega Ministries as storefront, shoebox operation. But White is looking toward ways to use the internet to go to churches and create classrooms without ever leaving his studios in Phoenix.

Who’s going to be laughing now? Soon, some of evangelicalism’s best academics and even faculties may be doing the same in order to teach and make a living at the same time.

COMMENTERS: What changes in theological education would most positively impact you?

As I was time limited when taking my first statistical look at “The Coming Evangelical Collapse“, I wanted to follow up with a few more observations about some of Michael Spencer’s statements:

1. Denominations will shrink, even vanish.

Much to my surprise, the decline in evangelicals in the U.S. has already begun. The Association of Religious Data Archives (ARDA) lets you generate maps to visibly see the changes. The maps shown here show the difference in Evangelicals between 1990 and 2000. Note how the colors have lightened over 10 years, particularly in the south-east.

You can visit the ARDA site to create your own maps on a national, regional, and/or denominational level.

When we look at the age composition of churches in the data from the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS), it is clear that those who will be impacted the most will be those denominations who call themselves Baptist. The most significant growth is coming from those Christians who say they have no denominational affiliation. Two thirds of these are under the age of fifty. It is clear from the data that there is and will be a move away from denominational identification.

2. Fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

According to the National Congregations Study 50% of churches in the U.S. now (2006-2007) have a congregation fewer than 75 on a Sunday morning. This is down from a median of 80 in 1998. While these figures are for all churches, and not just evangelical ones, the data from Canada shows that Evangelical Churches have similar attendance ratios to all Protestant churches. The issue is that as Evangelical churches go through the generational horizon that we see is about to happen from the ARIS Data, those churches will become less and less viable.

I read a study a number of years ago that showed that when a church hired a second (associate) pastor, that the related increase in attendance and its accompanying tithing paid for the second pastor on average within 18 months. (I was graduating from seminary at the time, and tried to use the study to get churches to hire me. ) The converse is also true. Once a church starts a slide and is forced to lay off pastoral staff, or go to part-time or lay pastors, it is an extremely hard trend to reverse. Churches are going to have to make some difficult decisions, and for some it is going to mean closing their doors.

3. Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions

According to the ARIS report, Catholics have grown by 24% between 1990 and the present day. This growth was very regionalized and fueled by immigration as the following quotation shows:

Catholic numbers and percentages rose in many states in the South and West mainly due to immigration from Latin America. Catholics increased their share in California and Texas to about one-third of the adult population and in Florida to over one-fourth. In terms of numbers they gained about 8 million adherents in these three states in the past two decades. At the same time the proportion of Catholics was eroded in other parts of the country, mainly in the Northeast Region, where Catholic adherents fell from 43 percent to 36 percent of the adult population. New England had a net loss of one million Catholics. Big losses in both the number of Catholic adherents and their proportion occurred also in Massachusetts, and in Rhode Island, the nation’s most heavily Catholic state where the proportion of Catholics dropped from 62 percent to 46 percent. New York state lost 800,000 Catholics and they dropped from 44% to 37% of the adult population.

The age composition of the Catholic church is virtually identical to the general population meaning that they are not facing a generational horizon. So the Catholics will benefit from the Evangelical collapse in that they should have stable numbers over the next decade and will become a larger proportion of the Christian community, and thus will have a larger voice from within that community. (Please do not get into arguments over the definition of Christian here, as it is really tangential to the purpose of the post.)

The question of whether they will be beneficiaries of the evangelical collapse numerically would still be open to debate. The previous ARIS study of 2001 as reported at ReligiousTolerance.org showed that in the dynamic movement of individuals in and out and between denominations, Catholics lost twice as many adherents as they gained. Unfortunately the question that generated this data was not asked during the current ARIS study, so we do not know if this number has changed.

Orthodox Christians still represent a tiny percentage of overall Christians in the U.S., but the data that has been supplied by ARDA shows some significant growth.

4. Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism

According to ARIS, Pentecostals / Charismatics have grown from 5,647,000 to 7,948,000 over the last 18 years, an increase of 41%. Their growth however has slowed somewhat over the last 7 years and they too are facing a generational horizon. Their horizon however, is not as bad as the Baptists. Numerically they will be hard pressed to be the most significant group in the Evangelical American world in forty years, but they will certainly be much stronger in relation to groups like the Baptists than they are today.

In one sense however, they are already the majority report, and that is in the area of worship. While I do not have the numbers for this, I am sure that most readers have seen that the vast majority of churches in the U.S. have adopted a more “charismatic/contemporary” style of worship. These days you would be hard pressed to differentiate the worship style between many Baptist and Pentecostal churches.

5. Evangelicalism needs a “rescue mission” from the world Christian community.

Michael is not alone in this thought. Consider some of these thoughts and statistics as compiled by the Navigators organization.

According to George Barna: “With its 195 million unchurched people, America has become the new mission field. America has more unchurched people than the entire populations of all but 11 of the world’s 194 nations.”*

According to Lost in America, by Tom Clegg and Warren Bird, 2001: “The unchurched population in the United States is so extensive that, were it a nation, it would be the fifth-largest on the planet. . . . Researchers and analysts describe North America as the world’s third-largest mission field.”

According to Os Guiness, in World Evangelization, Vol. 18, No 65, 1993: “The three strongest national challenges to the Gospel in the modern world are Japan, Western Europe, and the United States.”

According to George Gallup in 1997, only ten years ago: “More than 44% of American adults 18 and over are unchurched; 120 million Americans have no substantial Christian memory.”

Barna affirms Gallup. Consider: “America’s secularization has gone from only 15% in the 1950s up to 40% in 2001; and headed for 60% percent by 2010!” (Secularization means basing the decisions of one’s life on a secular humanist, relativist moral world view. Judeo-Christian values and the Bible are no longer the moral foundation of decision making in life for the vast majority of Americans.)

According to America: An Emerging Mission Field in World Christian Encyclopedia, Second Edition p.27: “In 2000, the United States sent out 118,200 missionaries, but it also received 33,200. Ironically, the world’s largest missionary-sending country has now become the world’s largest missionary-receiving country.” Not to mention:

o The world’s largest Buddhist temple is located in Boulder, CO, USA!
o The world’s largest Muslim training center is in New York City, USA!
o The world’s largest training center for transcendental meditation is in Fairfield, Iowa, USA!

According to Leighthon Ford, evangelist and Christian leader, “North America is now the largest mission field in the English-speaking world” (Cities’ and surrounding areas’ concentrated populations make them obvious targets for sharing the Gospel).

The number of churches in Chicago has decreased by 900 in the last 10 years! In many cases what were once churches are now condominiums.

Conclusion

I wrote these two posts in support of Michael, not because I, nor he for that matter, take any joy in what is going on. I hope that these can help serve as a wake up call to the Evangelical community that the status quo position is not a viable one. Many have asked where is the role of God and the Holy Spirit in all of this? Well I for one see this as a wake up call to pray, and to seek God’s direction and guidance in all of this. We believe in the good news of Jesus Christ and we want to see his name continued to be honored and lifted up.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Michael Bell

Michael Spencer has published a series of articles about a coming Evangelical collapse in the United States. One, published in the Christian Science Monitor, has stirred up a great deal of debate, both inside and outside the Christian community. As a person who is greatly interested in statistics, I was very interested in seeing if Michael’s claims could be borne out by statistical analysis. Let’s look at some of his statements and see if these ideas can be statistically supported.

1. “Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.”

Let start by looking at the present day numbers. Michael says that between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelical. According to the recently released American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), of the 228,182,000 adult Americans in the survey, 77,747,000 self identify as “Evangelical” or “Born Again”, a number equivalent to 34% of the adult population. These numbers come from across the theological spectrum and include a significant percentage (18.4%) of Catholics who identify themselves as Evangelical as well as members (38.6%) of mainline denominations. So when Michael says that a maximum of 35% of Americans are Evangelical, he is pretty much on the money.

If you only want to count those Evangelicals who are not attending Catholic or mainline denominations you have a number of 56,500,000 who identify as Evangelical or “Born Again”, a number equal to 24.8% of the total adult population. So it would appear that Michael’s range of 25-35% was an extremely accurate starting point.

2. “Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants.”

While certain segments of evangelicalism will remain strong, as affirmed by Michael in his article, much of Evangelicalism will see significant decline, particularly among the Baptists, who currently make up over 50% of American Evangelicals.

Consider this: In the general population, 22% of adults are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, while 28% of adults are between the ages of fifty and sixty-nine. When we calculate the ratio between these two groups we come up with a ration of .785 to one. This means that if you want to keep up with the general population trends, for every 1000 adults you have between the ages of fifty and sixty-nine, you will need 785 adults who are currently between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine with which to replace them.

So how do the Baptist fare? For Baptists 11% are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine while 37% are between the ages of fifty and sixty-nine This calculates out to a ratio of .297 to 1. In other words there are only 297 adult Baptist between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine for every 1000 adults between the ages of fifty and sixty-nine.

When we compare the numbers of 297 with 785 we find that Baptists are only reproducing themselves at 37.8% of the rate at which the general population is reproducing itself! While people who call themselves Baptists are 15.8% of the population today (according to ARIS), in less than two generations we are looking at Baptists potentially being only 6.0% of the general population (15.8% times 37.8%).

We should note that the actual number of attendees of Baptist churches may be slightly higher than the numbers would indicate as you will likely see Christians who do not self identify as Baptists going to Baptist churches. (I would be one who falls into that category today.) Admittedly there will also be other factors involved: People also have a tendency to come back to the church later in life. Other Evangelical Christian groups are statistically healthier than the Baptists are currently, so Evangelicals as a whole will likely not fare as badly as the Baptists. What this does tell us though is that at least for Baptists, less than two generations from now they will likely be less than half as strong as they are now. Michael’s prediction is looking pretty accurate.

3. “We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity.”

According to ARIS, currently 21% of adult Baptists are over the age of seventy. (I keep using Baptists in my examples as they are a good representation of evangelicals and it helps to keep things consistent for now.) In ten years, based on what we know of life expectancy, roughly this number of Baptists will have died. Yes, some of those who are currently older than 70 will still be with us, but at least a corresponding number who are currently under 70 will also have died. They will be replaced by the children of those Baptists who are now in the eighteen to twenty-nine year range, which as mentioned previously is 11% of adult Baptists. Assuming that those who are in the eighteen to twenty-nine year range roughly reproduce themselves over the next ten years, you will have a net decrease in Baptists over the next ten years of roughly 10%.

So as Michael has said, the next ten years should be the beginning of the collapse, and as was shown earlier in the article, this collapse should continue for several decades until half of the Baptists are gone.

4. “This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. “

I did an interesting study a number of months ago entitled Southern Baptists in Decline – Where will it end? In the study I looked at the ratio of attendance to membership in denomination both in Canada and the United States. In doing so, I made the interesting discovery that:

Generally if your attendance is under 50% of your members and adherents your church will likely decline over the next ten years. Conversely if your attendance is greater that 50% of your members and adherents, your church will likely grow over the next 10 years. There are of course exceptions to the rule.

Almost all mainline churches were under the 50% ration, and almost all had experienced significant decline. One of the interesting exceptions to the 50% rule was found in the Southern Baptists, who despite having an attendance to membership ration of roughly 28%, managed a small growth between 1990 and 2000. I attributed it at the time to a positive “Evangelical” factor. What I did not realize at the time was that the Southern Baptists had not yet reached what Michael Spencer calls the “generational horizon.” The Baptists were a generation behind the mainline church in terms of the age of their members, and while the mainline churches have already experienced significant decline, the Baptist are only just beginning their decline. I should note that from the ARIS data we can see that the mainline churches now have a much healthier distribution of members (especially compared to the Baptists), although one that still indicates that decline will continue in relation to their proportion of the general population.

5. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism.

One statistic that really jumped out at me when going through the ARIS data was the statistics on Education. In the general population, 27% of those of the age twenty-five and older were college graduates. In Baptist churches the figure was 16%, and in Pentecostal churches the figure was 13%. I am seeing more and more of the Western world viewing Evangelicals as ignorant and uneducated and not worthy or participating fully in the public square. Unfortunately the education numbers seem to support their thesis. Are there Evangelicals who are going to rise to this challenge?

This ties into the last point of Michael’s that I wanted to look at today:

5. 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.

If you want to know what the America is going to look like in forty years, and how Evangelicals will be treated, look at Canada today. Here are some numbers on Canadian Christians. If my statistical analysis up to this point has been correct, then Evangelical numbers in the USA in forty years will be very similar to Evangelical numbers in Canada today. Much of what Michael has said about the way Evangelicals will be treated in the USA is already true in Canada. Michael also talks about the rise of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement and it is these churches, along with moderate charismatics like the Christian and Missionary Alliance who are leading the way in church growth in Canada. I do not have the time or space to go into further details, but forty years from now it will be a much different world from what you are currently experiencing.

All is not lost however, Michael and many of his commentators have talked about what can be done. I am pleased to report that Evangelicals in Canada are starting to show signs of health and growth again. Perhaps too, Michael has given a wake up call that, like in the story of Jonah, if not ignored can lead to significantly different results.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

For all my new readers, here are the original, longer and more detailed “Coming Evangelical Collapse” posts.

The Coming Evangelical Collapse: Part 1
The Coming Evangelical Collapse: Part 2
The Coming Evangelical Collapse: Part 3

Couple of notes on the original posts that may clear up some commenter feedback:

1) I clearly said that evangelicalism was going to suffer a collapse, not at all meaning it would die. I said that HALF of evangelicals would be something else within 2-3 generations/10-20 years.

2) I clearly said I am not a researcher or a prophet.

3) I am all about church planting and new churches.

4) Megachurch evangelicalism will survive on size, not on fidelity to the Gospel.

5) Pentecostalism has more energy, not less problems. It is also more cross cultural and open to the work of the Spirit.

Thanks to the good folks at CSM for this opportunity.

Also, there is now an icon on the sidebar for a direct subscription to the podcast via iTunes. Thanks to Lurker Shane for the help.