Is American Evangelicalism on the Verge of Collapse? – A Response

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In my previous post “Is American Evangelicalism on the Verge of Collapse?,” I included a series of links that responded to a study showing a decline in American Evangelicalism. Michael Spencer of internetmonk.com riffed on the study, and Leith Anderson, the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, rebutted Spencer’s article. (I would encourage readers to check the previous post for details.)

I want to thank those readers who responded to my post. Today, I want to add my thoughts.

Back in the dim, distant past (the mid-’80s), when the show was actually still funny, I enjoyed watching Saturday Night Live. One of my favorite characters was Martin Short’s tobacco industry lawyer, Nathan Thurm. 'That's a lie! I never said that! Show me the papers....'A sweaty, nervous man with a pronounced twitch, Thurm would be interviewed by 60 Minutes-type investigative reporters and would dodge any question that made Big Tobacco complicit in the deaths of smokers. To Thurm, everything that came out of the interviewer’s mouth was a lie, no matter how true it might be. He would spin every statistic, turn damning statements into PR copy, and keep glancing nervously at the camera to see if the audience was buying his confabulations. Watching Thurm squirm and twist the facts egregiously made for the comedy.

But Leith Anderson’s update on Nathan Thurm should make none of us laugh. If anything, we should be crying at how blatantly he spins reality as he dodges painful truths. And I say that with a pronounced heavy heart. None of what follows gives me any joy.

In what ways does Anderson pull a Thurm?

1. Spencer’s article is aimed at the decline of Evangelicalism in the West, with the U.S. being a key focal point, as reflected in the ARIS study. This is Anderson’s response:

Evangelical Christianity is rapidly growing in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Traditionally Catholic South America is fast turning into an evangelical Pentecostal continent. Christians are multiplying by the millions in Communist China. And in the USA? The growing edge of almost every evangelical denomination is Hispanics. Many of the largest and fastest growing evangelical megachurches in this country are Hispanic, African American and Asian. While white megachurches have been around for a while many of these new ethnic megachurches are just getting started.

Excuse me, but since when is Anderson’s title president of the International Association of Evangelicals? It is true that Evangelicalism is growing in places once deemed “The Third World,” but that is not the West. And the East is not the area over which Anderson presides. In other words, he fails to speak directly to the Spencer article’s area of focus.

2. Anderson notes a positive trend in U.S. Evangelicalism: the rise of Hispanic Evangelicals.

My question: If polled, how many Evangelicals would say that we have too many Mexican immigrants in this country, especially of the illegal variety? I see that hand, and that one, and you over there, and you, and…boy, that’s a lot of hands going up.

I don’t think there has been a group screaming for tighter border control than Evangelicals. Seriously. In fact, immigration issues are on the forefront of the culture wars, right up there with  abortion.

Does Anderson truly believe the collection of people he oversees is supportive of the growth of Hispanic churches, many of them populated by people of suspect citizenry? Sadly, I suspect that many of the constituency would love nothing more than if the attendees of those churches went back to where they came from.

Also, the rapid growth of Hispanic Evangelical churches is no counter to the precipitous decline in all other Evangelical groups, as the ARIS survey shows. In other words, this is a dodge by Anderson.

3. Anderson notes the rise of Pentecostalism around the world as a positive sign for Evangelicalism.

Imagine you’re a kid again, and you form a club for kids your age. It will be the best club ever. No uncool kids, just your friends. Then your Mom catches a whiff of your plan and asks if your kid brother will be included. When you say no, because he’s a whiny little kid and your club is only for older kids who have it going on, Mom tells you right away that he’s either in or there will be no club. Shattered, you relent, though not without a kick at the kitchen table leg and a lot of mumbling.

As someone who has been associated with a number of Evangelical churches and ministries over the years, I can say with no hesitation that Pentecostals are considered the snotty-nosed kid brother in the Evangelical clubhouse. They may be in, but they are merely tolerated.

Too mean? Then ask how the largest Evangelical denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, feels about their missionaries speaking in tongues. The fact that the mission board of the SBC tried to eliminate “Pentecostal-ish” members from serving is telling.

In fact, I suspect that the group of Evangelicals most ardent in their Evangelicalism would be aghast if people in their congregation spoke in tongues or claimed to have a word of knowledge, a gift of healing, or a prophecy to share. Evangelical churches split over such things.

So I find it disingenuous on Anderson’s part to hold up Pentecostalism as the bright, shiny hope of Evangelicalism worldwide, when a lot of Evangelicals wish that Pentecostals would stop crashing their club.

4. Anderson says its wrong to define Evangelicals by their political affiliations because the leadership isn’t political:

I have talked to thousands of evangelical pastors in almost every state and rarely have I heard any of them talk about politics. They talk about God, the Bible, faith, Jesus, salvation, evangelism, discipleship and a lot of other spiritual themes. The political label has been added mostly by the press, politicians and religious leaders not connected to or accountable to churches. If those who wrote the label now want to peel it off, most evangelical church leaders either won’t notice or won’t care because they are focused on what they’ve always been focused on–God, the Bible, faith, Jesus, salvation, evangelism, discipleship and a lot of other spiritual themes.

Even if one can say that pastors in Evangelical churches aren’t politics-minded (and that’s a stretch if one looks at the history of the Religious Right), there is no doubt that the people in the pews are. To be an Evangelical is to be a Republican. To be an Evangelical is to fight on the forefront of the culture wars, a battle that is waged politically.

The problem is that this battle has largely failed, as it was destined to do. Jesus alone changes hearts, government laws do not. If the people are ungodly, the laws will not turn their hearts to righteousness. When even James Dobson admits the battle is lost, it’s lost. And that admission is creating havoc in Evangelical ranks, because for too many people, the culture war (as fought through political means) defines their entire Christian faith. That political manueverings have largely failed may, in fact, be one of the reasons that those discouraged people are abandoning Evangelicalism. They want a vital relationship with God, not their elected officials.

Lastly, Anderson’s comments tell us nothing of the bigger picture.  George Barna has  published numerous polls that show that Evangelical pastors do not adequately reflect their congregations. The pastors ARE more spiritually minded than the people they serve. In addition, they are curiously unaware of this at times, rating themselves highly on their ability to transmit the Gospel to their charges in a life-changing way that forms those people into little copies of themselves. But Barna’s numbers show that the people in the seats are two-thirds less likely to actually espouse what the pastor believes, no matter how much the pastor believes it. That’s a pretty serious  disconnect in belief between the leadership and the average Joe or Jane Evangelical. Anderson should know this.

5. Anderson says that the best exhibition of Evangelicalism comes when bad times strike:

There is a very practical way to observe the depth of evangelical Christian faith across America. The next time there is a tragedy–tornado in a small town, shooting at a school, apartment fire in a major city–listen to what the survivors say on television. You will be impressed by frequently declared depth of Christian faith in Jesus when facing the harshest traumas of their lives. This is the evangelical faith that has spread across our land and will continue into the next generation.

To me, what you are at all times better reflects a changed life than what you are when the heat is on. If people only trot out their faith in disasters, can they truly be counted among the faithful? Remember the old line: There are no atheists in foxholes.

It’s a sad state of affairs when the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals has to stoop this low to find anything positive to say about the movement he leads.

6. Anderson points to new blood as a positive sign:

In the coming decade many older local congregations will go out of business. Of course they will, just as many older Christians will die and many older businesses will close. But, have you seen what is happening in your local elementary school on Sunday mornings? Across America there is a rapid spread of new churches meeting in schools, community centers, restaurants, theaters and any other rentable gathering place. Almost all of them are evangelical congregations with young pastors and young parishioners.

Folks, all we’re doing in the above is splitting existing congregations into tinier and tinier factions. We’re recycling people. We’re passing around the same people and calling that church growth. For every new church plant that starts with ten families, those ten families were most likely cannibalized from an existing congregation elsewhere. Evangelicalism is not growing in the United States, even when younger congregations led by younger people are factored in. This is the whole point of the ARIS report.

Frankly, I am stunned at the Thurm-job Anderson did in his rebuttal of Spencer.

We don’t need leaders like that heading anything. He said nothing that dealt with the reality of declining numbers. Nothing. With a wave of his hand and a few words, he dismissed it all.

Look, we need serious people who talk bluntly and truthfully. The best thing Anderson could have done is to kick some butts and take names, to admit that the culture wars and political wranglings have diluted the Gospel message and driven people away from or out of Evangelicalism. He could have talked about the necessary things Evangelicals can do to stop the hemorrhaging.

So if he won’t, I will:

1. Get serious about evangelism.

Isn’t the word evangel at the root of Evangelical? If so, why aren’t we evangelizing people? If Anderson wants to know why the world is turning Pentecostal it’s because the Pentecostals are still serious about evangelism when most others couldn’t care less. Go to an Assemblies of God church some Sunday and I’ll bet you they have a wall covered with photos of missionaries they support. Now go to a non-Pentecostal church (especially the vaunted Evangelical megachurch) and attempt to find that same wall. Missing, right? Hmm…

2. Get serious about discipleship.

When poll numbers come back showing that 85 percent of Christian youth who go to college apostasize by the time they graduate, that’s one serious problem. And the fault lies in the pathetic Christian education departments most churches run—if they run one at all. I can tell you that the demise started when churches fired all their paid, trained Christian ed staff and replaced them with volunteers. In the defense of those amateurs,  there’s nothing wrong with volunteers teaching, unless they’re amateurish. And most of them are. They’ll claim they don’t have the time due to career obligations (which is another issue) to devote to doing the job right, so they don’t. Too many do just enough to get by. And it shows.

The lack of a coherent vision for Christian education in our churches manifests in the complete lack of biblical worldview in all too many Evangelicals. Barna has repeatedly shown that pastors rate their flocks’ adherence to a Christian worldview almost three-times higher than the actual response numbers show from those in the pews. We have got to stop lying to ourselves on this issue. The people in the seats don’t know the Scriptures, so they have no coherent framework from which to make godly decisions about life.

We need a decisive, coherent, systematic, cradle-to-grave indoctrination into the Christian faith for every last person who claims the name of Jesus. But we’re simply not doing that in the West.

3. Drop the political rhetoric.

Neither major party in the United States adequately reflects the Gospel. There, I said it.

All the political wrangling in the world will not change the hearts of people. Jesus Christ does that, not Sarah Palin, and not Barack Obama.

If Evangelicals are sick of the direction this country is headed in, then they must stop trying to ramrod morality down the throats of the immoral through one piece of legislation or another. Instead, get out there and lead people to Christ. He’s the only change agent that truly works.

4. Get the focus off of Evangelicalism as a movement/culture.

Evangelicals spend far too much time navel-gazing. Being a Christian is not self-focused, but others-focused. Let me tell you, people today have a high B.S. meter, and they know disingeuousness when they see it. We don’t need to put any more impediments in their way to Jesus. It’s time to take the focus off ourselves and get some real humility. When Leith Anderson pulls a Nathan Thurm, he does a disservice to humility. Better to fess up when seriousness is called for than to cop out in an effort to be positive .

5. Stop the factionalization.

Evangelicalism is dying in the United States because it is splitting into smaller and smaller pieces that end up becoming less and less effective. Evangelicals have become so brand-conscious that we now have a niche church for every possible need, just like we have a coffee flavor for every single person living in America. Our military may be shilling an Army of One, but that’s what the Church here is becoming—to its detriment.  If we don’t find the commonality and quite sniping at each other, we’ll become increasingly irrelevent.

6. Give the lax an ultimatum.

Dead wood is hurting our churches. It’s also inflating the numbers. The Southern Baptists claim more than 40 million people on their rolls, but only 15 million actually attend church on a regular basis.  It’s time for churches to tell people to commit or go elsewhere. The Army of the Lord won’t function as intended if the majority of its soldiers are AWOL. There are no private Christians. You either join the group or suffer the consequences.

7. Stop talking, start doing.

The Western Church cannot endure if we talk and talk yet fail to practice that talk. If the lost are to ever know that we are Christians and what we say is truth, we have to walk the talk. And we need to severely chasten those who make excuses for the lack of walking. We don’t need that kind of talk. With all due respect to Leith Anderson, his talk in his rebuttal to Spencer’s article just plain stinks. Where is the call to repentance and practice? Isn’t that why he’s president of the NAE? Shouldn’t he be doing more than just glossing over the genuine unpleasantries that American Evangelicals must face if we are to turn this thing around?

Evangelicalism in on the decline because it loved itself too much and loved the lost too little. It didn’t take the Great Commission seriously, yawned at the plight of the disadvantaged, and spent too much time preening. When its leaders only promulgate those errors and ignore the hemorrhaging, then it probably needs to be kicked off the national stage until it remembers its lines again and learns how to act right.

Is American Evangelicalism on the Verge of Collapse?

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A recent, ongoing conversation occurring around the blogosphere concerns what to make of some study numbers showing declines in stalwart Evangelical denominations. Below is a series of links that pertain to the issue:

The American Religious Identification Survey study that kicked off part of the conversation. (An excerpt is here.)

Michael Spencer’s Christian Science Monitor article that propounded the idea that the survey figures signaled a collapse of Evangelicalism within ten years. (Spencer blogs at internetmonk.com.)

Michael Bell posted an intriguing statistical portent that hints at which churches will decline, plus two articles at internetmonk.com that unpack those numbers (Post 1, Post 2).

Leith Anderson, the current head of the National Association of Evangelicals, responds to Spencer’s CSM article.

And finally, Spencer rebuts Anderson.

Today, I’d like to ask what you think of this debate. Is Evangelicalism on the downward slide? And if so, why?

(I wade in with my thoughts in this follow-up post: “Is American Evangelicalism on the Verge of Collapse?†“A Response“)

Community,Politics, and Pastoral Shenanigans

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Election Day is only days away and news breaks of the Ted Haggard scandal, conveniently timed (as the whistleblower himself notes) to cause the most political fallout. 

Ugh.

We've been talking about community here lately, and while this post isn't part of the "Being the Body" series we're in, it's close. It's a tale about what happens when folks are removed from real community.

For the less media inclined, Ted Haggard, now the ex-leader of the National Association of Evangelicals and the ex-pastor of a huge Colorado megachurch, has fallen in some sort of scandal, causing him to resign both those roles. The allegations that brought Haggard down are unseemly, and I don't want to go into them here. But Haggard claims that some parts of them are true and, for the purposes of this post, that's enough.

The Godblogosphere is loaded with commentary on the Haggard situation. Everyone is weighing in with the reasons why this happened, but the analysis is the same tired lament focused on the usual suspects.

Recently, I reviewed a book by David Fitch called The Great Giveaway. One of the chapters dealt with pastoral sin, pointing the finger not so much at the pastors, but at the system we've created in our churches that sets the pastor apart as some kind of CEO, celebrity, or otherwordly figure with no ties to the rest of the church body. I believe that Fitch's analysis is far more accurate than what we're seeing discussed on the Godblogs.

A few points:

1. We've created a cult of celebrity around our most noted pastors. That kind of proto-idolatry only sets them up for failure because we no longer allow them grace to fail in the small things before they become larger.

2. Failure and sin are natural parts of the human condition. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, as we know. This includes our pastors, but we act as if it doesn't. Our mental disconnect sets up pastors for further failure.

3. Because of these factors, pastors find themselves separated from healing community. They cease to be fellow brothers within our church communities.

4. God institutes community for correction, even of leaders, yet our cult of pastoral celebrity destroys the natural workings of the correction. This places pastors outside the community and outside of the community's ministry TO them.

So once again, we see what happens when we do not allow the natural workings of godly community to police, protect, and encourage—even the pastorate.

While I do not condone what Haggard appears to have done, I'm not outraged. If anything, I feel sorry for what our kingmaker attitude has done to the pastorate. Unless we reform our communities, stop treating pastors as superhuman, get off our judgmental attitudes, and get back to recognizing that ALL the sheep have gone astray (not just some), we'll continue to see more high-profile pastors fall. We've got to be grace-filled communities that recognize the sin in our own leaders and allow them to receive grace from us, rather than blackballing them, stripping them of their ordination, and so on. With the constant threat of the "laity" turning on them like a pack of vicious dogs, pastors are all too likely to go into "coverup mode." No wonder the small sins wind up turning into monstrosities.

And don't believe that it can't be your favorite big-name pastor. I'm seeing a lot of people claiming their man is immune, all the while dancing on the ashes of Haggard's ministry. That's sickening, frankly. And unless we get wise to the fact our crippled views on community are what make stories like Haggard's possible, we'll continue to treat these pastors like they're a ruling class, rather than as sinful brothers in need of grace, just like we are.

We don't talk politics on this blog, but I wanted to drop that for one second to talk about this Tuesday's election.

I live in a state racked with pain. Ohio is in serious trouble. Our current Republican administration in this state is rife with malfeasance and failed agendas. The Republican governor has been an unmitigated disaster. His failures have resulted in Ohio being anathema to businesses of all sizes, driving many out of the state and attracting nothing to take their place. Now Ohio, the birthplace of more presidents than any other state, is in dire condition economically. We're the number one state for job losses, one of the worst of the worst signs of trouble.

I've noted in recent months through one of the series I did that I'm what they term a Crunchy Conservative. While much of what I believe politically sounds Republican, I oppose the Republican Party on many environmental, employment, and social issues.

This political season has underscored for me that we're drastically in need of some kind of reform in government. The Republicans don't represent the average family when they put big business ahead of the environment and small businesses. They don't represent the average family when they make all sorts of claims about supporting the family, but their final interest only comes down to supporting the richest one percent of families out there.

The Democrats, on the other hand, mouth some sort of allegiance to the little guy, but their party is responsible for supporting nearly every social evil imaginable.

And in the end, it seems like they're all liars anyway.

I believe that the same problem of making kings out of our pastors has soiled our politics. While politicians say they're part of the community, the community they're a part must only be millionaires and hedonists. I'm divulging no new truth here when I say that most people aren't like that. But the demographic on Capitol Hill doesn't reflect the common man out struggling to live in America 2006. It represents CEOs and loud-mouthed deviants.

My current rep is gung-ho about putting a nuclear waste site in a poorer area of the state not far from my home. Remember, I live in OHIO, not the Sonora Desert. She claims to be a part of my community, but I've got to wonder how any sane person would consider putting nuclear waste in a populated area with a high water table upstream from a major American city. I've got to wonder what PAC got to her and for how much. Isn't that sad?

She's a Republican. I don't know how I can vote for her, though. Her Democratic opponent supports a number of grievous moral sins. I can't vote for the opponent, either.

In short, no one represents most of the people I know in this district. Though they would vehemently protest my assessment, the candidates in this election aren't really part of our community. They're a part of some other class of people entirely who don't get us as much as we don't get them.

Sounds like some of the pastors in our churches, doesn't it?

I'm not sure what we can do about the problems in politics, but we can start doing a better job in our churches of allowing our pastors to fail in our community just as we ourselves are (or should be) allowed to. We need pastors who are like us, too, not outsider glamour boys who seem more attuned to politics than pulpits.