That special American brand of Evangelical Christianity that
once had such a strong grip on our culture is dead. Sure there is plenty of it
still around but these are just echoes. The original sound is over. The
movement has stopped growing[i], and what we are experiencing is not just a slump.
It is a beginning of a mass exodus.
I can say this with confidence because we have lost our
voice. How this happened is a long story but suffice to say we have been
assimilated. The gay marriage issue is just a tell-tale example of this. It’s
not that we did or didn’t support the rights of the LGBTQ community. I
personally feel that the rules regarding non-heterosexual relations in the
Bible belong in the same category as the food laws or other parts that are
generally ignored by Christians, but that is an issue for another time. The
evidence that we have lost our voice is that we deferred to the government to
define a God given institution like marriage.
When the Church needs government to define what is
rightfully hers she is pointless. Our whole claim is that Jesus is Lord of all.
If this is true then why would we go running to the government crying “mommy!”
when things don’t go our way. What we
have done is essentially admitted that we don’t really believe Jesus can do
anything, and reduced ourselves to just another political interest group, a
particularly pathetic interest group that clings to conservative values without
any basis since we clearly don’t believe our own claims about Jesus.
Say what you will about the Catholic Church, she knows her
place with regard to governments. She scoffs at them. She’s seen so many come
and go. In her adolescent years she played them like pawns. In spite of her issues she stands as evidence
that Jesus is really King because no government can stop her. We will probably
see a lot of evangelicals converting to Catholicism in the next 5 to 10 years,
but this won’t bring our voice back. The Catholic Church has never had the
influence on American culture that Evangelicals once had.
[i] You can read the Pew Forum stats here: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/. Christianity offers a rebuttal here http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/may/american-christianity-is-dead-not-so-fast.html but it doesn’t really matter. I am not saying Christianity is dead, my point is about Evangelicals’ ability to speak to our culture which we have lost.
