04/29/2008 In Media response to "The Fall" by Christine
“The Fall of the Evangelical Nation” made the front cover of the current, May/June issue of Mother Jones with a teaser that asks “Where have all the evangelicals gone?” http://www.motherjones.com/toc/2008/05/index.html
Written by self-described “millionth-generation Southern Baptist,” Debra J. Dickerson, the story is a good example of how clear thinking and self questioning a lot of evangelicals are - and always have been. Her treatment of the book could have only come from an evangelical because only longtime evangelicals know enough to know how big the scam has been.
After presenting statistics from the book that show how false numbers puff up the power of the Religious Right, Dickerson writes:
“The emperor’s-new-clothes flimsiness of these widely accepted exaggerated numbers says much about the cold calculation of far-right religious leaders. Moral Majority and Focus on the Family have happily staked their clout on coreligionists who never knew they were being counted - often twice or three times - among the faithful for political ends.”
(more…)
04/28/2008 In New evidence of evangelical trouble by Christine
The Southern Baptist Convention, which makes up the great majority of American evangelicals, has long been ailing. Its condition took a sudden plunge this week.
Officials announced that Southern Baptist membership dropped by 40,000 people. Quite a feat for a denomination that keeps millions of nonresident members on its rolls.
The drop in membership is the first since when? Maybe since after the Civil War, when Southern Baptists using the Bible to support slavery didn’t seem Christian to a lot of folks. (more…)
04/27/2008 In Evidence from the book by Christine
The first part of “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation: The Surprising Crisis Inside the Church” includes detailed statistics demonstrating the Evangelical Church is indeed in crisis. Here’s a sampling of those statistics
1. The most devout, hard working and generous members of the biggest evangelical churches in the country are the most dissatisfied and ready to bolt. These aren’t my findings. They’re Willow Creek’s. And the finding holds across congregations.
This dissatisfied group is made up of the two core groups that keep churches alive with money and time. If they leave, it’s over for Willow Creek and its clones.
And they could leave. Every day their spiritual options increase, partly because of the Internet. In my book Spencer Burke pinpoints exactly what’s most scary about the Internet in this regard
(more…)
04/17/2008 In Why Christianity shouldn't die by Christine
Yesterday a reporter asked me what I could say to encourage Methodists, who’ve been beaten down by decades of having been called losers. (That’s not exactly how she put it, but that is what’s happened in the Christian ratings game.) Her question dovetailed with one I’ve been asking myself for the eight years that evangelical Jim Henderson and I have been friends. (more…)
04/16/2008 In Christian media respond by Christine
Dear Editor,
Bravo!
Your April 15 editorial on my book, “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation,” was a virtuoso evangelical performance.
Trivialize. Distort. Dismiss. End with a flourish of sanctimony.
And all is well in the Kingdom.
Except the facts still say otherwise.
A mountain of data gathered by evangelicals who no longer believe their own p.r. says so. (more…)
04/15/2008 In Christian media respond by Christine
For a preview of how evangelicals are responding to “The Fall of the Evangelical Nation,” take a look at this editorial from “Christianity Today.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/24.21.html?start=1#related
Be sure to read what the bloggers are saying. Some are able to read through the lines. Even without seeing the book, they can tell that it is worth more than this knee-jerk reaction. (more…)
04/15/2008 In New evidence of evangelical trouble by Christine
Southern Baptists are starting new churches at only half the rate they started them in the 1950s, according to Ed Stetzer, director for research at the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Christian Resources, as quoted in “The Christian Post.”
That’s bad news for evangelicals because Southern Baptists are by far the bulk of evangelicals in the country and because starting new churches is the single best way to reach new people.
A three-year-old church reaches only half as many new people as a new church and a 15-year-old church reaches only a third as many. (more…)
