The End of Evangelicalism?

Well, it looks like I-Monk, Michael Spencer, has made the big-time by being featured in The Christian Science Monitor and linked on the Drudge Report. Good for him. He has a very insightful essay linked here that I’d like to interact with. Spencer posits the collapse of American Evangelicalism in the next 10 years and on this count I think he is correct. I also believe his general assessments of the reasons for this collapse are correct but I believe he is wrong on some of the specifics. So let’s start.

To begin with, Spencer lists seven reasons why this collapse is happening and under the first of these he writes:

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

Here I believe Spencer has assessed wrongly in identifying Evangelicals problem as one of being too closely identified with a sub-culture within the American democratic landscape. In reality, American Evangelicals have identified themselves too closely with the American democratic landscape period. How often does one hear in American Christian circles, right, left and center, the postulation of the virtues of our political system and its origins as though this is the high point of history and no one will ever top it? Sorry friends, but this age began with the enthronement of a king, not the election of an administrator, and will end with the conquest of an absolute monarch. Evangelicals have lost sight of the fact that America (and its Evangelical sub-culture) is simply an historical expression of a province in the Kingdom of God.

Under the next reason Spencer says:

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.

Indeed and in fact, because we have imbibed so deeply of the atmosphere of our age, we think discipleship of our children is democratically (and lazily) training them to democratically opt themselves out of our culture, the Faith. Instead, they should be trained to see themselves as royal heirs in training. Growing in maturity and preparing to lead in this age in preparation for the next. In a time and place filled with democratically confused slackers, they are to be royal warriors. This is not easily executed nor is it ever popular among the libertine-leaning multitudes.

Under reason four Spencer posits:

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. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

Here Spencer is totally correct including acknowledging that there are some tentative efforts to reverse the tide. Christian education in our country has been so poor because it mimics broader educational trends, just more nicely. Being the “Leave It to Beaver” version of the secular university isn’t going to move the Kingdom of God anywhere. Being the anti-status-quo will. Our Christian educational institutions need to be rigorous and uncompromising like the monasteries of the Middle Ages but aggressive and street smart like the early church was; filled with warrior saints of the highest caliber like Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Augustine. Evangelicalism looks like a nerdy kid on the verge of smoking his first marijuana joint under peer pressure in comparison.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope to interact some more later.