Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Is there a "Coming Evangelical Collapse"?

Michael Spencer, aka the Internet Monk, thinks so. His article on the Coming Evangelical Collapse (CEC) has me agreeing with him.

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.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

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.
Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.


Spencer goes on to outline why this has happened (shallow theology, caving in to consumerism, fighting the wrong battles, ie, the culture wars), and what the landscape will look like (less professed evangelicals, more Catholic and Orthodox converts, and more persecution).
He also goes on to say that this is not all bad--there is much of evangelicalism that needs to die. The corruptions and perversions attached to evangelicalism need to be washed away, like the health and wealth heresy. (How long would it take Joel Osteen to become an all-out universalist if his lucrative livelihood was threatened?)

I don't know if I see things quite as direly as Spencer does, but he is right. Current evangelicalism is incredibly and tragically shallow. It is biblically and culturally illiterate. It has retreated to its Holy Huddle, and is utterly unprepared to survive in a hostile society. The environment for being a Christian in the West is rapidly changing. Might Obama be our last professing Christian president? Maybe. If not him, perhaps the next. Will Christianity be expelled from all civic discourse, politics, academia? Likely. Will Christians face some form of persecution? Likely. Will the money dry up, in the Christian world, as Spencer predicts? Yes, but this will likely be a good thing in the big picture, as many stupid/silly projects won't get funding. But it will still hurt many worthwhile ministries, eg, someone like me who raises support for a living. Many of us will have to consider going bivocational.

I've contemplated dropping the term "evangelical" as a self-descriptor because of the culture-warrior baggage and because the tent has become so big that I don't want to affiliate myself with beliefs/causes I believe to be unbiblical. I've heard some folks going with their tribe (Reformed), or using "orthodox" (small "o") to describe their time-tested, biblical beliefs.

What do you think? Is evangelicalism going to collapse? Is it already? Do you use that term to describe yourself? Why/why not? Will we face persecution soon? Will the money dry up? What does a post-evangelical America look like?

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