<\/p>\n
According to John S. Dickerson, the answer is “yes.”<\/p>\n
IT hasn\u2019t been a good year for evangelicals. I should know. I\u2019m one of them.<\/p>\n
In 2012 we witnessed a collapse in American evangelicalism. The old religious right largely failed to affect the Republican primaries, much less the presidential election. Last month, Americans voted in favor of same-sex marriage in four states, while Florida voters rejected an amendment to restrict abortion.<\/p>\n
Much has been said about conservative Christians and their need to retool politically. But that is a smaller story, riding on the back of a larger reality: Evangelicalism as we knew it in the 20th century is disintegrating.<\/p>\n
In 2011 the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life polled church leaders from around the world. Evangelical ministers from the United States reported a greater loss of influence than church leaders from any other country \u2014 with some 82 percent indicating that their movement was losing ground.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Polls seem to agree.<\/p>\n
Studies from established evangelical polling organizations \u2014 LifeWay Research, an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Barna Group \u2014 have found that a majority of young people raised as evangelicals are quitting church, and often the faith, entirely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Three years ago, Dickerson launched a project documenting the “health of evangelical christianity in the USA. What he found was “disconcerting.”<\/p>\n
I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive. The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old evangelicalism whimper and wane.<\/p>\n
First, evangelicals, while still perceived as a majority, have become a shrinking minority in the United States. In the 1980s heyday of the Rev. Jerry Falwell\u2019s 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<\/a> recently found that Christians who call themselves evangelicals account for just 7 percent of Americans. (Other research has reported that some 25 percent of Americans belong to evangelical denominations, though they may not, in fact, consider themselves evangelicals.) Dr. Smith\u2019s findings are derived from a three-year national study of evangelical identity and influence, financed by the Pew Research Center. They suggest that American evangelicals now number around 20 million, about the population of New York State. The global outlook is more optimistic, as evangelical congregations flourish in places like China, Brazil and sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n
But while America\u2019s population grows by roughly two million a year, attendance across evangelical churches \u2014 from the Southern Baptists to Assembles of God and nondenominational churches \u2014 has gradually declined, according to surveys of more than 200,000 congregations by the American Church Research Project.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He noted that donations are down as well.<\/p>\n
The pulse of evangelicalism is also shifting, in many ways for the good, from American politics to aid for the global poor, as evidenced in books by the Rev. David Platt<\/a>, the Rev. Max Lucado<\/a> and the Rev. Timothy Keller<\/a>. Evangelicals are still a sophisticated lot, with billions in assets, millions of adherents and a constellation of congregations, radio stations, universities and international aid groups. But all this machinery distracts from the historical vital signs of evangelicalism: to make converts and point to Jesus Christ. By those measures this former juggernaut is coasting, at best, if not stalled or in reverse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Dickerson asks if “evangelicalism can right itself?”<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t believe it can \u2014 at least, not back to the politically muscular force it was as recently as 2004, when white evangelicals gave President George W. Bush his narrow re-election. Evangelicals can, however, use the economic, social and spiritual crises facing America to refashion themselves into a more sensitive, spiritual and humble movement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He concludes:<\/p>\n
Some evangelical leaders are embarrassed by our movement\u2019s present paralysis. I am not. Weakness is a potent purifier. As Paul wrote, \u201cI am content with weaknesses … for the sake of Christ\u201d (2 Corinthians 12:10). For me, the deterioration and disarray of the movement is a source of hope: hope that churches will stop angling for human power and start proclaiming the power of Christ.<\/p>\n
Simple faith in Christ\u2019s sacrifice will march on, unchallenged by empires and eras. As the English writer G. K. Chesterton put it, \u201cChristianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n