Here's his first reason why the collapse is coming:
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.I think here the author, as in other places in the article, has a pulse on something but overstates and misses what has already happened around him.
Evangelicals, especially in their 30's and under, have already shifted away from being solely politically conservative. We are no longer in the hip-pocket of the Republican Party, thank goodness. The preponderance of "Evangelicals for Obama" bumper stickers are a small window into this movement.
Many, many 30-something and younger evangelicals voted for Obama. I did. I'm theologically conservative and socially/politically moderate. I voted for him while simultaneously preparing to work against him in regards to the abortion issue. It's not much different from backing Bush in previous elections while simultaneously preparing to work against him when it came to issues of the environment, gun control, and bending over backwards for big business.
Much of evangelicalism has waken up to the realization that we cannot be in the back-pocket of any one political party. What's pushing many of us past the stale old partnership with political conservatism is doing what evangelicals have always been famous for: reading our Bibles.
This is not to say that political liberalism is more biblical--it's to say that neither of them are biblical, so we must walk as faithfully as we can between the two and not be either groups "pet."
I've got theologically evangelical friends and students that I work with who range from libertarian to practically socialist. There's a political broadening already happening that will help evangelicalism to mature and continue to have an influence in our culture.
This is a good thing, and something that I think just might stave off "our collapse"...at least for a couple more years.
For a more comprehensive (and thoughtful) response to the article, check out Christianity Today's response here.
5 comments:
I think that Evangelicals have done more damage to the movement by attaching their hopes to The State (whether that's a State run by W. or a State run by The One), than by any culture warish stuff.
It is a repudiation of an Orthodox (in the classical sense) view of Humanity to create structures that culminate in a person's dependence on the State.
In the quest for Justice, on both the Right and Left, we are giving up, imho, a Christian understanding of personhood.
I think it's unavoidable that Christians (real, bible-believing ones) in the West are going to become a fringe group that is at best ignored, at worst persecuted by the culture at large.
In fact, that's our traditional role in a lot of places. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It makes for a church that is small but it's authentic. And thriving. Look at China.
Hey, Bro, I thought that a major weakness with that guy's article (for all its merits, which were considerable!) was lack of a definition of evangelical. He seemed to be hedging toward a fundamentalist or "conservative evangelical" definition, whereas evangelicalism is much broader than that. That, in turn, limited his view of the data and how he was assessing it.
what a great cloud of commenting witnesses i have here! glorious! thanks for your thoughts, guys!
Internet Monks less condensed thoughts are here along with some clarifications:
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-original-coming-evangelical-collapse-posts
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