Jan 30 2008
The Death of Evangelicalism
Michael Spencer at Internet Monk has a great article on the ongoing demise of evangelicalism. (This is a follow-on piece to Michael Patton’s the Entertainment Driven Church article at Reclaiming the Mind blog.)
Evangelicalism is over. Long live post-evangelicalism. (Whatever we are/it is.)
The is “the end” of evangelicalism, and it’s not dying with a whimper. Oh no. It’s going out with party hats and noise-makers. And Bratz dolls. And Barbie. And video games. And an elf. And the Word-faith message. And Starbucks.
The end of evangelicalism isn’t the deep vacuum of space. It’s the Borg ship. With pizza, a band and great commercials.
Is this Christianity? If you realize your answer no longer has any basis in reality, consider just being honest: No, it’s not.
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This isn’t about kickin’ worship bands or big screens. Take them, take them. I don’t care. What I want to know is if we recognize that the disease is overtaking the evangelical body, and the time has come to think like people upon whom an evangelical dark age has come? The barbarians aren’t at the gates. They are running the city. We can’t shut the gates. We have to find places to survive. We can debate how big the hole in the side of the ship is all we want. The fact is: this ship is going down.
Christ’s church will survive and triumph. But in America and the West, the entertainment driven “church” is going to dominate. For those who will not be absorbed, for whom resistance is not futile, there are choices to be made.
This is not an indictment of faith by any stretch, but a realization that western evangelicalism has come off the tracks in a dramatic and dangerous way.
As Michael Patton put it in an earlier piece,
“If Joel Osteen, R.C. Sproul, Benny Hinn, Chuck Swindoll, Oral Roberts, J.P. Moreland, T.D. Jakes, Jimmy Carter, Billy Graham, Brian McLaren, Pat Robertson, and John Piper all distinguish themselves as evangelicals, then we must admit that the designation both means everything and nothing at the same time.”
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