Christian Science Monitor – The Coming Evangelical Collapse
From the Christian Science Monitor is a prediction that there will be an evangelical collapse.
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.
Mr. Spensor says we will have a period of anit-christianity. If that means that people will vote for all to have equal rights then I am all for it. Maybe we can focus on teaching science in science classes. I can only dream that we can stop thinkning like we did 3,000 years ago and move forward.
Mr. Spensor gives a list of why this will happen.
1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism.
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 onslaught.
3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile.
4. 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.
5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to “do good” is rapidly approaching.
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.
7. The money will dry up.
Is reasons sound a little redundent. It seems like he thinks that the worst problem is that the evangelicals are stupid bigots and that is not enough to help their kids block out the real world. FINE.
What do you think. Is this all to good to be true? Will We get something worse?
