The Coming Evangelical Collapse

[bozothedeathmachine]

Linky (http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html)

Oneida, Ky. - 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.
An interesting read. It has an introspective slant. There's a lot of finger-pointing and "us vs. them", but not in vitriolic way. He's basically saying "we're doomed because everything is changing except us".

[Seren_]

A very bad recession can do wonder for religious organizations. I don't wish that to anyone but a lot can happen in ten years.

[KingMerv00]

Normally, I wouldn't hope for the collapse of a religious movement but evangelical Christianity tends to shove their beliefs into government and society.

If they can't learn to back off, I hope they fall apart.

[Steelmage]

All I can say is good riddance!

[Delvo]

The general prediction might be accurate, but if so, he's misidentifying the reasons pretty severely... which I guess is typical of people in dying social entities, because those who understand what's happening might find a way to prevent it.

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism.This is exactly backward. Political conservatism, which is about minimal government, is harmed by its association with evangelicalism. On its own, it's better supported by logic and more popular than evangelical religion, and even those who disagree with it generally do so less vehemently and angrily and hatefully. Evangelical religion has been a parasite trying to suck support from conservative politics by forcing those who want minimal government to have to put up with religious political allies whether they like that part or not, and people leaving the Republican Party or cross-voting for liberal/Democrat opponents have done so to get away from the right's religion far more often than to get away from its policies. Polls have shown that if you switched the association of policies and religious attitudes between the two, the combination of the right's policies and the left's religious attitude would be several times more popular than the combination of the left's policies and the right's religious attitude, and the former combination is also by far the more politically successful approach among third parties and independent candidates. On the national scale, to keep their ratings up, it's the lefty/Democrat politicians who have to sometimes try to sound as if they shared the other side's policies, and the righty/Republican ones who have to downplay their religious attitudes, not the other way around.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught4. 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.6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.These points really just restate each the same thing. They show some vague understanding that people are finding religion harder to take seriously, but how does his explanation of what that's so work? He says they're not doing a good enough job of education their own children in religion anymore, but why not? How is it different from the way they themselves were taught? I believe it's trying too hard and pushing too much, but he probably thinks the opposite; at least, others like him that I've heard or read before do. It's probably because of the kind of thinking that's shown in his references to secularism invading and attacking from all sides, which looks like paranoia and/or a persecution complex. But that kind of thinking tends to cause behavior that only makes people (including your own children) more likely to think you're deslusional and put themselves farther away from you and take you less seriously.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile.To us, this might at first look like a recognition of just how bad the "megachurches" are for PR because it all looks so fake and glitzy and hypocritical from the outside. But remember that it doesn't necessarily look like that to those who are in it or even close to it, and all he mentioned here was scale/size, not image. Plus, if he were talking about bad PR, he would have mentioned the tendency for spectacular hypocrisy in evangelical public figures embezzling money from their own churches or charities and doing drugs with prostitutes and trying to get gay hookups in public restrooms. (He might even add less spectacular things that still make people go "Hmmm", like John Hagee including homosexuality in a list of temptations Jesus must have felt because Jesus felt the same things that "we all" feel.) So, if he's not talking about the churches' bad image, what is he talking about? He only mentioned size, which makes it sound like he thinks the real issue there is a size-based economics-like pattern comparable to complaints about Wal-Mart killing smaller businesses... making religion less personal or some such thing.

[Magyar]

I think this is wishful thinking. I remember back in the 80's after several of the mega church scandals broke. People were all over talking about how this will end the TV evangelists now that they've been shown to be fakes etc. SOME of the same ones are still on TV doing EXACTLY the same healing scams today.

Never underestimate the level of stupid people will go to for a sky daddy.

[blobru]

Linky (http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html)
Oneida, Ky. - 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.

An interesting read. It has an introspective slant. There's a lot of finger-pointing and "us vs. them", but not in vitriolic way. He's basically saying "we're doomed because everything is changing except us".


He must have been spooked by the numbers in the usa religion survey (http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009-03-09-american-religion-ARIS_N.htm) published monday (mar 9), which in general since 1990 shows xtian faiths as a % of pop. losing ground to "no religion", mainline protestantism the quickest.
Actually, the category of "christian generic", which includes evangelical, didn't do that bad comparatively, at -0.6% (vs "mainline protestant" -5.8%). No religion? +6.8%!

[LarianLeQuella]

Never underestimate the level of stupid people will go to for a sky daddy.


QFT! This made me giggle.

[Toke]

Maybe the christian education problem referred to involves flood geology.
It will definitely cause problems in the real world.

[The Atheist]

A very bad recession can do wonder for religious organizations.

Very good point which appears to have been somewhat overlooked.

The current depression will be a huge boon to churches and has probably set secularism back by a generation.

[KingMerv00]

Very good point which appears to have been somewhat overlooked.

The current depression will be a huge boon to churches and has probably set secularism back by a generation.

9/11 helped churches too. Hmm....

*Considers starting a new conspiracy theory*

[The Atheist]

9/11 helped churches too. Hmm....

Yep, I said the same thing in another thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4500691#post4500691). God loves atrocities.

*Considers starting a new conspiracy theory*

Yeah! It wasn't the Jooos, it was Opus Dei and Herr RatZZinger.

(Hell, if Dan Brown can do it, anyone can.)

[Dancing David]

Linky (http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html)

An interesting read. It has an introspective slant. There's a lot of finger-pointing and "us vs. them", but not in vitriolic way. He's basically saying "we're doomed because everything is changing except us".


I can't say that it looks as though mainstream churches are collapsing. Perhaps attendance isn't as high as it was one hundred years ago.

My in-laws like to go to the 'modern' service at the Methodist chuch, they have rock music and a big screen and all that stuff.

And there sure seem to be new churches coming up everywhere.

[Dancing David]

Wow how many unsupported assertions can you have in one piece?

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.




And it goes on and on

"Doom , I tell you! Doom!", not a statistic in sight, no demographics, no data.
hasn't worked yet in the US history, we have allways been dominated by those kooks.

I bet the Puritans thought that well pumps were the bane of society as well, and that public education as evil.


1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

Sure isn't evident, they are the ones who are dominating our society, they are the reason we can't have Halloween costumes at school.

[normdoering]

I can't say that it looks as though mainstream churches are collapsing. Perhaps attendance isn't as high as it was one hundred years ago.

They're not collapsing quickly, but there has been a steady, long term, shift towards non-belief in America. I've got more notes on it here:

http://normdoering.blogspot.com/2009/03/zeitgeist-its-darker-than-you-think.html

A recent survey noted that "More Americans Say They Have No Religion." Our numbers have gone up from 8.2 percent in 1990, to 14.2 percent in 2001, to 15 percent in 2008. While there are more Catholics in California, Texas and Florida, the increase is attributed mostly to Latino immigration. Christians who aren't Catholic are now a declining segment of the country. While still growing, the growth of non-belief has slowed a bit. Alas, at this rate, a percentage point or so per decade, I won't be around any more by the time non-belief is the majority opinion... if that ever were to happen.

That doesn't mean that the Christian Science Monitor article by Michael Spencer, "The coming evangelical collapse," is correct. But the unstable mix of Christianity and Ayn Rand style libertarianism was doomed to failure and loaded with potential conflicts from the beginning. We'll now, I think, see those conflicts surfacing in the GOP as each side blames the other for their failure.

However, Mr. Spencer's concept of a coming "anti-Christian age in Western history" is off the mark. Christians are still a big majority and the numbers of non-believers is not growing fast enough for any kind of "anti-Christian age." What is more likely is that new politically influential Christian leaders, like Rick Warren, will come under the sway of Barack Obama and work on Obama's policies, forcing concessions from him. As more light is shed on the Bush Administration's failures, and perhaps even crimes, the GOP will be abandoned by large chunks of what was once the Christian right. Then we might wind up with something worse -- a Christian left.

It will be polluted by the same scientific ignorance and general policy drives, but it will add a whole new slew of socialist Christian agendas.

[INRM]

I just hope when those evangelicals stop believing they develop a secular sense of morality in it's place. Religious extremists often do have a compromised sense of morals.

It is sad that some people behave themselves only because of fear of burning in hell forever


INRM

[The Atheist]

I just hope when those evangelicals stop believing they develop a secular sense of morality in it's place.

Quite.

And what if they don't? How can we tell?

[Roadtoad]

I think people tend to be overly optimistic. I don't see evangelical Christianity dying. I see it changing tactics, as they have with Intelligent Design. They will change slowly, but the real problems will remain, and they'll simply alter tactics.

It helps to remember that folks like Jerry Falwell once favored segregation. Once that became unfashionable, they altered course to keep the faithful, simply because that was where the money was.

[Delvo]

I think people tend to be overly optimistic.It might be optimism to you, but to the article's author, it's pessimism.

I don't see evangelical Christianity dying.The article's author doesn't either. He's talking about things becoming significantly less common or less influential or such. One number he gave as a prediction was 50% of its present level. "Dying" would be closer to zero.

[quarky]

When Jesus comes back to kick some ass, all that will remain will be evangelists.
Get ready, peoples.

Hard times could see an increase in all manner of illogical behavior.
Pagans will flock to Christ, for instance. Other woos, too.
Jesus represents even more hope than Obama.

(I wonder how lottery ticket sales are doing, during this economic down-turn?)