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.
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.”
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
Ranger, interesting, and that matches more closely my experience.
iMonk – what do you mean by “Exclusive salvation via Jesus”?
Exclusive salvation via Jesus.
iMonk, can you expand? Are you saying this view is harmful to evangelicalism?
What am I missing?
Great minds think alike?
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.
Great diagnosis, what is the cure?
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?
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?
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.
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.”)
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.
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.
perhaps if the church in america is to truly follow jesus it will have to die and be resurrected just as he was.
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.
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 . . .
[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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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?
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.”
“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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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*
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?
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.
Another question:
Is “leaving the faith” really the same thing as “leaving evangelicalism”?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
BTW, your software misinterpreted my “8″ followed by a parenthesis as a 8).
Dang! Now it doesn’t do it. In my original, my 8 followed by a parenthesis showed up as a “cool” smile.