Is the Evangelical Church Hopelessly Lost? - Part I

John Dickerson, an Evangelical pastor, says that “a majority of young people raised as evangelicals are leaving the church.”  According to Dickerson, “In the 1980s heyday of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority some estimates accounted evangelicals as a third or even close to half of the population, but research by the Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith recently found that Christians who call themselves evangelicals account for just 7 percent of Americans.”  From 50% to 7% – quite a drop!  (Taken from the N.Y. Times article The Decline of Evangelical America by John S. Dickerson

It seems to me that evangelicals are lost.  We’re wandering aimlessly and some (actually most…especially young adults) are wandering out the door.  We not only don’t know where we are, we don’t know who we are.  We’re lost inside and out.

I think we need two blog posts to discuss this.  In this post I want to talk about how we got lost.  Next time I’ll wrestle with whether or not we’re hopelessly lost.

Who were evangelicals before we got lost? 

The word “evangelical” is derived from the Greek word “euangelion” which means “good tidings or good news” i.e. Gospel.  Evangelical Christians have historically been followers of Jesus who actively shared the good news of God’s love expressed through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Our distinguishing characteristic was conversion; the belief that the love of Jesus Christ transforms human beings and empowers us to become different people. 

We believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ is literally changing the world.  The kingdom of God that Jesus announced is crashing into this world and the world is being transformed.  It is a message (and a movement) of redemption and hope.  Evangelicals have a beautiful heritage and a beautiful message.

The evangelical movement is normally traced back to the Great Awakenings and leaders like John Wesley and George Whitfield.  But the heart of evangelicalism (Gospel) is as old as the Christian movement itself.

So what happened?

Like other good movements before and since, the Evangelical movement has been sort of high-jacked and morphed into a kind of “mutant” that doesn’t look much like it’s original self.  From my perspective, subcultures (think of them as viruses) have grown up in the evangelical church.  Over time these subcultures (viruses) have severed us from our identity and cut us loose to drift aimlessly.  There were other factors but I think these three were primary. 

Fundamentalism

A lot can and has been said about Fundamentalism but I will try to simplify as much as possible.  Fundamentalism is the 20^th century version of 1^st century Phariseeism.  The Pharisees were the legalists of their day and the Fundamentalists were (and are) the legalists of their day.

In response to the threat of liberalism in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, a group of protestant pastors got together and developed a list of “fundamentals.”  These were the “essential” beliefs that, in their opinion, one must adopt in order to be considered a Christian.  Most lists included five “fundamental” beliefs: biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth of Christ, substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Christ and the miracles of Christ.    

Here’s the important part.  The list itself was not the problem.  Many evangelicals hold to these beliefs.  The problem was the same one that always slips up from behind and bites legalists in the butt.  For Fundamentalists, an empirical belief in the fundamentals became the way one achieved salvation.  Fundamentalism turned “belief” into just another form of works salvation.  Instead of entrusting ourselves into the loving care of God through his Son Jesus, a beautiful transformation, “belief” became just another way to earn God’s favor.

Consequently we lost the transformation and the beauty.  The problem with any form of legalism is that it doesn’t actually change who we are.  We remain the same people (often bigoted and hateful), but we feel okay because we “believe” the right things. 

Fundamentalism may have been the greatest blow to the evangelical church.  Some say it was the virus that killed us.

Militant Eschatology

I thought I made up that term until I googled it and discovered that there’s a book out entitled Restorative Militant Eschatology.  I don’t know what the book’s about but here’s what I mean.

Eschatology is a word that is used to describe the study of the “end times.”  Around the time Fundamentalism came into vogue, a school of eschatology developed, at least partly out of the Fundamentalist movement.  In other words, this understanding of how this age ends and the new age begins is a little over 100 years old.  So, for 1900 years the church functioned without this idea of the end of time.

Here’s how I would describe this school of eschatology in a nut shell.  There are lots of variations on this theme, but here’s a summary.  The world is a really bad place and it’s only going to get worse.  At some point the world will be much like the time of Noah when human beings were totally controlled by the evil in their hearts.  When that happens Jesus Christ will return, but unlike his first coming when he came in peace and sacrificed his life, this time he will come in war and sacrifice the lives of his enemies.  The first time he came as a lamb.  The next time he’s coming as a lion.  In short, he will destroy all his enemies and set up his kingdom.  This theory is, of course, derived from a very specific understanding of the book of Revelation and parts of Daniel.

There are lots of flaws with this concept of “the end of time,” but the biggest problem, in my opinion, is its militant nature.  If this is the way Jesus and his Father work, then God is no different from any of the warrior gods in the Greek or Babylonian pantheons.  Jesus didn’t really defeat evil on the cross.  To get the job done he will have to come back and slaughter his enemies. 

Think about it.  If this is the way God operates then the cross is depleted of its power and we don’t really have a Gospel worth sharing.  Maybe this is one reason no one is listening when we try to share it.  We do have a beautiful story to tell.  It’s a story about a God whose love is so powerful it moves him to rescue the world.  He doesn’t have to destroy his enemies by nailing them to crosses and killing them.  He defeated evil and sin and death and hell by being nailed to the cross and dying.  His resurrection is the proof. 

Without that story to tell, evangelicals are lost.  

Militant Activism (I think we could list some more but I’ll stop because this post is getting really long.)

Fundamentalism needs two things to survive and thrive; a belief system and a list of enemies that fail to adhere to the belief system.  Militant activism is the fuel that keeps the Fundamentalist engine running.  Whether Christian, Muslim or some other expression of Fundamentalism, they need an enemy to fight (sometimes physically).

For Christian Fundamentalists the enemies tend to change over time.  Right now abortionists and homosexuals seem to be our primary targets.  Like our Pharisee ancestors we are bent on ignoring the beam in our own eye while we poke at the speck in the eyes of others.  The end result is wide spread blindness.

The other day I received a request to fill out a survey from Lifeway Research, a division of the Southern Baptist Convention.  One of the questions instructed me to rate how much of an intentional effort my church is making to address abortion and homosexuality.  I responded by saying that our church is pretty busy trying to deal with our own sins of gluttony and greed.

Sadly, evangelicals have become known for what we are against, not what we’re for.  Various research groups have conducted random surveys asking, “What is an Evangelical?”  Typical answers are almost always negative.  Most people identify us as narrow minded, bigoted, right wing, hateful and negative.

Not many are saying, “Oh yeah, evangelicals are those followers of Jesus Christ that believe he is transforming our world one person at a time.”  We don’t hear many people say, “Evangelicals are people filled with love for their enemies.  They follow the example of the founder of their movement.  They reflect the beauty of Jesus Christ!” 

Consequently, more and more young people are simply leaving the church.  There is a new wave of atheism gaining momentum among young adults.  The evangelical church is lost and we’re losing those who can’t see Jesus in us.

Are we hopelessly lost?  Stay tuned.