Some Insiders Say, Evangelical Church Today is Politics, Not Religion


According to this link, a large number of evangelical preachers have resigned from their churches and have left the ministry. I want to say at the outset some may say my use of the term "evangelical" is inaccurate. The link used the term. It seems to refer to the Southern Baptist Convention and its fellow travelers.

The problem according to those the link author spoke with is that churches become divided politically. One side wants to dominate the other. The pastor tries to talk about religion but the customers are not interested.

One kind of church avoids the problem by treating the church as a concert venue. Contemporary Christian rock is the main menu. Sermons are short and about topics other than lessons from scripture. This is a safe route to go.

The problem, one interviewee said, is that people coming to these churches find politics more interesting than Christianity. In today's current event, one set of politics involves no masks, no vaccinations and Trump is great. The other is some or all of the opposite. Even if you had attended a particular church for a long time and almost suddenly found sermons and coffee time were about stuff you didn't agree with or didn't find interesting I'm guessing you are on your way out of church or out of the faith.

Two celebrities in the Southern Baptist Convention, Beth Moore and Russell Moore (not related) have left the SBC. Along with them has been a 10% reduction annually in membership. Admittedly some of this is fewer births but the result is the same.

It reminds me of a blog I wrote a few months ago by Professor Roger E. Olson, a professor at Baptist Baylor University. He said that after decades of studying, writing and teaching religion he was retiring discouraged. The great enterprise divided by groups who studied the Bible and came to somewhat different conclusion, different denominations, has collapsed into the unorganized free for all with new branches springing up in every directions. 

There are classes still, I suppose, in "Comparative Religion" trying to compare doctrines of different denominations. As the denominations die or merge out of economic necessity I don't see how study of what they believe, or once believed, will be very informative. 

All of this seems, to me at least, to be inevitable. The problem started by use of the Bible as the source of every branch in the faith. When they Bible does not provide a clear statement of what the faith is about it will inevitably go wherever it wants.

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