The Coming Evangelical Collapse?

I think though history with all its warts and blemishes is starting to be embraced. Look at Rough Stone Rolling and Massacre at Mountain Meadows, both of which are quasi-approved books by prominent orthodox Mormons. Both deal with difficult aspects of history. So I honestly have a hard time seeing history being problematic in the future. Yeah it might turn off some, but no more than folks who buy into OT literalism coming face to face with history. I think the old canards of horses and steel in the Book of Mormon will end up being more problematic than polyandry and massacres. Of course there will be a transitionary period.

Of course you are right about conversion. I’m skeptical there as well. Every investigator I had back when I was on a mission was exposed to such things. Yeah you lost some but those who were baptized tended to be much stronger members because of it. I don’t think any investigator made it to baptism without encountering nasty anti-Mormonism. Most of which was sensationalized history. Ultimately if missionaries are doing their jobs in presenting truth it’s not a big deal. And, as I said, can oddly be useful.

As for (2) I don’t think you see it in Mormonism anything like you do in the kinds of Evangelicalism discussed. That is I think Mormons do see doctrine as much more important – even if superficially dealt with by the average person. While I think (2) is likely a bit of a caricature for Evangelicals as well, I think it just less applicable to Mormons. Yeah Mormons do focus on feelings, but not in the same way I think the Evangelical society does. Although I will agree with you there are some parallels albeit manifest quite differently.

Oddly I think (1) might be somewhat problematic given that Mormons are so Republican and some members always have trouble drawing the line between religion and politics. Yeah it’s not typically talked about at Church. But there is, especially in the west, a connection that is unfortunate. I also think that this causes problems outside of the US. Albeit less now that Bush is out of office. I suspect though the Church won’t get involved in a Prop-8 like situation again.

Regarding thinkers and intellectuals among our conservative evangelical brothers and sisters, the Atlantic ran a couple of pieces almost ten years ago. http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/10/wolfe.htm

Evangelical protestantism has a long history of adaptation in the U.S. I think projections of a collapse of evangelicalism here are as reliable as the multiple projections over the years of the coming demise of Mormonism. Or for that matter, like the predictions I heard a few years ago of a coming collapse of Roman Catholicism in light of the abuse scandals among some of its priests.

Transformation–likely. Collapse or demise? I would not bet on it.

Evangelical protestantism has a long history of adaptation in the U.S. I think projections of a collapse of evangelicalism here are as reliable as the multiple projections over the years of the coming demise of Mormonism. Or for that matter, like the predictions I heard a few years ago of a coming collapse of Roman Catholicism in light of the abuse scandals among some of its priests.

Sorry, that’s just bad contextualization. One needs to place evanglicalism into the broader context of protestant Christianity (which the author of the original post does if not in that article, but in other articles on his site). Evangelicals are just one half of protestant Christianity. The other half, mainline liberal protestantism, is floundering badly. They are losing members in droves. It’s not even arguable based on the statistics that it is happening. That’s the context in which one has to view the possible contraction of evangelical Christianity. They both share basically the same theology, they were the same thing only 100 years ago. So an honest evangelical will ask, Is the same thing that happened to them happening to us? The author answers that in many cases it is, only the superficials are different.

Both have been overtly politicized, mainlines became very liberal, evangelicals became very conservative. They both share the experiential turn that happened with Schleiermacher, allowing feeling to trump traditional theology, though in different ways. They both de-emphasized core theology in favor of other ideas, ecumenicalism and social gospel for mainline protestants, and things like the prosperity gospel and immediate relevance for evangelicals. The point I am trying to make is that the author knows that this path has already been trod by his mainline cousins, he is trying to figure out if it is going to happen to his fellow evangelicals. He thinks the answer is yes.

Also, evangelicalism has been around for barely 100 years, so even we Mormons have a longer track record of adaptation than they do.

I guess I see it that Christianity as a whole will adapt. It might no longer be American Evangelicalism as we now think of it but something else will emerge

In a nutshell that’s the article’s whole point. It’s not that Christianity is going down, just the American Evangelical variety of it.

The author tends to draw a distinction between Evangelicalism and the movements in those other nations. Maybe I’m being ignorant here. But I have a hard time seeing a huge difference.

What really sells in Latin American and Africa is Pentecostalism, which is not the same as Evangelicalism. They both developed around the same time (turn of the 20th century) and in the U.S. The author specifically says that Pentecostalism/Charismatic Christianity may be the Phoenix that rises from the ashes, but he has doubts because Pentecostalism has its own set of problems. Biblical fundamentalism along with pentecostal style worship does appeal to some people, but I don’t see it applying to the people leaving Evangelicalism.

Seth,

Are you thereby implying that Mormons have a religion based on emotions but that we don’t think it is factually based?

David Clark,

I suppose where we differ may be on our definition of evangelical protestantism. I regard the evangelical movement as tracing back to the Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening, which both occurred a lot more than one hundred years ago. I gather you are tracing the evangelical protestant movement to the time that the liberal protestants began to separate from conservative protestants, which I agree was somewhere around 100 years ago.

Thus, I view even that division of U.S. protestant Christianity into two wings as part of its history of adaptation. I also view pentecostalism as part of evangelical Christianity and its adaptation. (“One of the fastest growing segments of the wider evangelical movement has been its pentecostal branch.” http://www.wheaton.edu/isae/defining_evangelicalism.html

If what you and/or the author means is that the current form of the conservative evangelical protestantism (as a completely separate wing of American protestantism) will not continue in the form we know them today, I fully agree. But I do not think it is going away. I do not even think there will be a “collapse.” But that is me. I may be wrong.

The more things change -

I wish I had more time to post a lengthy comment, but I’ll just add:

This is nothing new. For my dissertation, I’ve been reading a lot of religious writing from the nineteenth century. Pretty much the same arguments were made back then as well: The young are too different (or are indifferent). There’s going to be a massive generational shift that changes everything. People are moving away from denominations to a more free and inclusive spirituality (look at the 19th century Theosophical society). Conservative religion will collapse, liberal religion will fade away. In only a few decades, the populace will have largely abandoned organized religion. Etc. Etc.

Those predictions didn’t turn out so well. The thing about religion is that as the conservative denominations either collapse or become more secularized/liberal, there are always newer, upstart sects (to use a term from Finke and Stark’s “The Churching of America”) on the fringe, waiting to fill the void. Evangelism may collapse, but something else will take it’s place. As Clark said “what’s usually interesting about the future are the unforeseen aspects.” Few ever really see these upstart sects coming.

My recommendation is: Don’t believe the hype.

I think much of the problem is when churches lose focus, such as the article suggests. So many evangelicals are now politicized or televangelized that their focus on Christ has gone missing.
Harold Bloom noted that the once great and admirable Southern Baptist movement could only now be described as the “Know Nothing” Baptists. They take a verse out of context, and build a belief upon it. They establish creeds, which define them and their stance towards the world.
As long as Mormonism rejects creeds and stay a people who study and learn, we should be okay. In previous years, our church began to stray from those concepts, with Elder McConkie’s heresy creeds, for example. It took Pres Benson to warn us about reading and knowing the Book of Mormon, and Pres Hinckley to challenge us anew, to get us studying again. I think books like Rough Stone Rolling and MMM will only help the membership and world to gain knowledge of our faith. Knowledge is not a dangerous thing. It is knowledge which frees us and allows us to embrace the fullness of the doctrine.

I believe a divide is growing between the world and the Church. That divide will force members and others to choose sides – they no longer will be able to dwell in Zion, but have a summer cottage in Babylon.

There will be clashes. Religion will be forced to be quiet and underground to an extent. Just look at the attempt this week in Connecticut by its legislators to give control of Catholic finances to its laity. It would have taken real power away from the bishops and other Catholic priesthood, and placed it in the hands of the people. Choices such as gay marriage would quickly be impacted by having bishops forced to listen to their congregants or risk losing funding.

That religious fight is just beginning, as groups begin to ignore the 1st Amendment (as they’ve tried to wipe out the 2nd over the past few decades).

Religion must change in the face of a secularized world. I do see many Christian churches, which are focused on politics or wealth enrichment, being forced to choose to either line up with the political climate, or stand on principle. Not an easy thing to do.

For evangelicals, who are a bunch of confederated churches, the small churches risk disappearing. This economic crisis is hurting several churches right now, especially those who have taken on debt to build or finance new initiatives. Suddenly, they don’t know how they’ll pay their mortgage, let alone pay salaries. The LDS Church does not have that problem, as our buildings are fully paid for, and somehow has convinced us to pay 10% of our salaries for the benefit of working more hours. ;)

I agree it will be the bigger and more focused religions, those with strong hierarchy, such as the Catholics, Orthodox and Mormons that will survive. But we also will have to adapt.

I think the Church has learned how to adapt, as it has moved across the world, seeking to open doors with Communist nations and others, which were uncertain about American Churches, and us in particular.

And I think that having additional scripture, such as the Book of Mormon, will end up being a bonus for us, as it sets us apart from the other survivors.

Rameumptom,

I agree that the biggest beneficiaries of an Evangelical collapse will be Catholicism and Orthodox communions, but not because of the big hierarchies, but in spite of the hierarchies. Count me as one who sees the world becoming more post-modern, at least in the religious realm. On this analysis people will emphasize tradition more than truth claims, so the churches with the longest and strongest traditions will benefit. The Catholics and the Orthodox have those in spades, we Mormons do not.

Also, compared to Mormons, Catholics and Orthodox are pikers when it comes to hierarchies. A diocese has much more flexibility in planning, spending, organizing, teaching, etc. than does an average Mormon stake. Most Mormons can give you the chain of command from them right to the President of the Church. Your average Catholic knows he has a priest, there is a Pope at the top, and in between something else happens, but they haven’t a clue what.

This post on the essay is kind of interesting as well. It argues using that identification survey we talked about.

The new ARIS strongly suggests that a kind of generic evangelicalism is fast becoming the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in America. By far the fastest growing segment of American Christendom are the “non-denominationals,” who were only .1 percent of the adult population in 1990 and are 3.5 percent now.

I think the figure though is self-identified members versus attending members. My understanding is that the European and Latin American figures are members of record versus active. Yet because of our proselytizing we probably have a significant number of members of record that don’t self-identify.

(I may be wrong in that – but that was what I was more getting at…)

Quick followup. To give you an idea of how the calculation might be made for an individual church.

In an Evangelical church let us say for example that a church has 200 members on its books, and has a attendance on Sunday morning of 180. The 150 is made up of 100 members plus 30 children of those members, plus 50 regular attenders (adults and children).

The calculation would be 180/(200+30+50) = 180/280 = 64% Probably a growing church.

More traditional churches would include the children in the membership category, but would have the same calculation 180/280.

Hope that helps.

Eclectic, I think the point I was asking about is the question of how to calculate “members on the books.” Mormons tend to be a bit overly liberal here (IMO). You’re on the book unless you explicitly ask to be taken off. That’s why I asked about the self-identification figure.

It’s easy to forget, but evangelicalism, especially in the south, was heavily associated with the segregationist movement. Their loss on this social issue didn’t decline their numbers. Quite the contrary. Other issues filled the vacuum this one left. Indeed, it’s around the time that civil rights has solidified itself in the culture that evangelicals began paying more attention to homosexual issues.

I think though that what Mormons believe is quite different. Most Evangelicals I know who oppose evolution oppose it because of young earth creationism. Most Mormons who I know oppose it just think that the human body was significant. A few do the “no death before the fall” which is pseudo young earth creationism but not as many as you’d expect.

Michael, I agree, but I think the big difference is that as a heavily prosylatizing Church we have a lot of influx who don’t stay that biases things a bit. Some of those eventually get taken off the roles. But by and large they don’t. So you have a lot of people who maybe only came to Church for two weeks counted as Mormon. That’s why I find the self-identification surveys so interesting since they exclude such people.

It seems to me that the LDS view is different though given our notion of a pre-mortal existence. That is we are essentially an embodied spirit. Thus what makes us different from animals is that spirit. That changes the reception towards evolution in a fashion that is different from Evangelicals.

It’s true that some, such as some of Pres. Packer’s comments reflect a naive common sense view of reproduction. (Obviously unaware of how much tiny changes can add up over time) That said I don’t think the moral issues make sense.

I do agree though that a common view of anti-evolutionists is the more Aristotilean reading of “kind” when reading scripture. Most don’t realize that they are adding to it via Aristotle latent in the culture.