The Death of American Evangelical Christianity

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.   

Those days are over and I don’t believe we can do anything to bring them back. The culture at large no longer listens to us. Our own children don’t really care. Evangelical churches should expect to see declining membership in the next 5-10 years.  In 50 years people will be trying to figure out what to do with all the old abandoned churches.

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[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.