Evangelicals: A Dwindling Flock
Evangelicals: A Dwindling Flock
Jeffrey Weiss, Staff Writer, Dallas Morning News
A new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation by former Dallas Morning News religion reporter Christine Wicker, suggests that evangelical Christianity’s influence in America was greatest a century ago and has been dropping ever since.
She defines the term evangelical as synonymous in the public mind with the term religious right. And she says that figures supplied by the evangelicals show they represent no more than 7 percent of Americans—and the number is dropping.
She recently discussed her findings and their implications with Staff Writer Jeffrey Weiss.
Aren’t you unfairly limiting the numbers by using an essentially political definition for evangelical?
This is a political book in the sense that the religious right and evangelicals are a political force. But that is not my main intention. My definition quite simply is: “Who do the rest of America think evangelicals are?” What do they think when they hear the word evangelical? I know that what the word evangelical means in this country outside the evangelical ranks is the religious right.
If you are correct, what does that mean for evangelicals?
It matters to evangelicals because if I’m right, they are in big trouble. They need to be paying attention. And they are paying attention. I think what we saw with the Southern Baptists [their recent announcement that fewer people were baptized last year] is that their evangelical passion just is not there.
And for everyone else?
What it means is that we have allowed one version of Christianity to dominate the moral and ethical discourse in this country. Only one version is speaking in the public square and there’s just no reason for that. Here’s what it means for all the other faiths in America: You are in the majority.
As a matter of theology, even conservative Christians can’t all be pigeonholed politically, can they? The Rev. Rick Warren is a hugely successful author, a public advocate for dealing with AIDS in Africa and Third World debt, and is a Southern Baptist pastor.
My critics are saying, look, evangelicals are changing. And, yes Evangelicals are changing. I used to think it was because God, after a hundred years, had suddenly laid upon their heart the condition of the poor. Despite the fact that Jesus talked about it constantly, they had not noticed.
I know this because I grew up an evangelical [a Southern Baptist], and the only verse I ever heard about the poor is “the poor you shall have with you always.” Rick Warren has changed. He is part of this new softening.
You use LakePointeChurch in Rockwall and its pastor, the Rev. Steve Stroope, to illustrate some of your ideas. What does Mr. Stroope think about what you wrote?
He’s not too happy with me. I planned to do a very different book [about mega churches]. I let him know that it had changed. And in fact I got a quote from him that I was able to use in the book in which he says that sometimes something has to die for something new to be born.
So why are evangelical churches failing by your definition?
I think the big mystery at the heart of it isn’t why they’re failing. The question I tried to pose in the book is why more people aren’t evangelicals. Because those mega churches deliver better than churches ever did when I was a kid. Those churches are phenomenally good at giving human beings what they need to live happy, healthy, secure, transcendent lives. And the answer to why there aren’t more of them is we just can’t do it.
What can’t we do? Accept that version of religion?
We simply cannot go there anymore. When I was a kid there may have been people who didn’t want to think we [Christians] were the only ones who were saved. But there weren’t many of them. It didn’t gag people. It does now. It just does. And that’s why the Baptists have lost their evangelical zeal, and that’s why they won’t get it back. Because the zeitgeist has shifted.
But in your book you explore research that suggests people don’t have nearly as much free will as we think. If that’s so, how can people choose to leave evangelical churches?
We aren’t making that decision. That’s the whole point of the book. That’s the whole point of my life. I didn’t choose to get out of evangelicalism. I had to.
And that’s how this turn has done the most damage to Christianity. It’s kicked people like me out by the millions. They really aren’t going out on their own volition. They are thrust out despite the fact that they lose their security, they lose their hold on God. They lose their community, they lose their friends. No angels are rejoicing. And they’re still leaving.
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