Was George W. Bush Good or Bad for Evangelical Christianity's Image?
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Responding to the question of whether George W. Bush was the most faith-based president in modern times, reader Darcy Grant says that Bush actually alerted many Americans to the dangers of a conservative evangelical worldview:
The sad thing is that George W. Bush's behavior in the White House did in fact represent the conservative evangelical form of Christianity in the United States, a form of Christianity that views the Bible as the inerrant, inspired, and infallible "Word of God." Although we (and others) paid a high price for it (and will continue to pay a high price for years to come), there is one good thing that came from the atrocities committed by the Bush administration: George W. Bush's behavior in the White House demonstrated very powerfully, for many Americans, the gross, practical outcome of a strictly conservative evangelical perspective.
I've seen conflicting reports about whether the political involvement of evangelical Christians, including the election of Bush and many of the causes he promoted, has helped or hurt Christianity's cause. On the one hand, Barna Group President David Kinnaman writes in his recent book UnChristian that Christianity—and evangelicals in particular—have a growing image problem. Time's David van Biema summarizes Kinnaman's research:
It used to be, says David Kinnaman, that Christianity was both big and beloved in the U.S.—even among its non-adherents. Back in 1996, a poll taken by Kinnaman's organization, the Barna Group, found that 83% of Americans identified themselves as Christians, and that fewer than 20% of non-Christians held an unfavorable view of Christianity. But, as Kinnaman puts it in his new book (co-authored with Gabe Lyons) UnChristian, "That was then."
Barna polls conducted between 2004 and this year, sampling 440 non-Christians (and a similar number of Christians) aged 16 to 29, found that 38% had a "bad impression" of present-day Christianity. "It's not a pretty picture" the authors write. Barna's clientele is made up primarily of evangelical groups.
. . . Not only has the decline in non-Christians' regard for Christianity been severe, but Barna results also show a rapid increase in the number of people describing themselves as non-Christian. One reason may be that the study used a stricter definition of "Christian" that applied to only 73% of Americans. Still, Kinnaman claims that however defined, the number of non-Christians is growing with each succeeding generation . . . .
On the other hand, the recent American Religion Identification Survey shows that evangelical Christianity is one of the few religious traditions that are growing in the United States:
Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as "Christian," "Evangelical/Born Again," or "non-denominational Christian." The last of these, associated with the growth of megachurches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.
How to square these two trends? It's the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches that are bleeding members, while evangelical and evangelically tinged nondenominational Christianity grows. As those movements expand and increase their political clout, non-Christians—including those who were formerly mainline Protestants or Catholics—develop more negative views about them. More demographic evidence that the culture wars are escalating.
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Predictions of Major Collapse of Evangelical Christianity
Just to add a little fuel to the fire . . .
Here is an excerpt from a recent article from Pew Research Center Publications entitled, An End to Religion, Newspapers, and the American Way of Life on March 20, 2008:
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1161/blogging-religion-economy-newspapers
“A March 10 editorial in the Christian Science Monitor by Michael Spencer (who writes the blog InternetMonk.com) foresaw a major collapse of evangelical Christianity within the next 10 years and the rise of an anti-Christian chapter in Western history. Spencer also ventured that new forms of Christian ministry will emerge less focused on politics and power and more focused on happenings within the church.”
The “InternetMonk” is a well-known Christian blogger who has been featured in TIME Magazine (for his blogging on Joel Osteen) and was chosen as a featured blogger by the Dallas Morning News. Here are a few excerpts from the referenced article regarding Spencer’s prediction of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity:
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/my-prediction-the-coming-evangelical-collapse-1
I believe that we are on the verge- within 10 years- of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity; a collapse that will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former “glory.”
Why Is This Going To Happen?
1) Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This was a mistake that will have brutal consequences. They are not only going to suffer in losing causes, they will be blamed as the primary movers of those causes. Evangelicals will become synonymous with those who oppose the direction of the culture in the next several decades. That opposition will be increasingly viewed as a threat, and there will be increasing pressure to consider evangelicals bad for America, bad for education, bad for children and bad for society.
The investment of evangelicals in the culture war will prove out to be one of the most costly mistakes in our history. The coming evangelical collapse will come about, largely, because our investment in moral, social and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. We’re going to find out that being against gay marriage and rhetorically pro-life (yes, that’s what I said) will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence and are believing in a cause more than a faith.
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End of excerpt.
Interesting outlook, especially from a Christian.
You have a point, Mr. Becker
Much of what we find discomforting about the rise of the many "independent" and megachurches (fueled in no small part by
the "Left Behind" series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins) is that worship of end times prophecy stuff appears to be OVERSHADOWING worship of the simple teachings of Jesus.
These guys don't know "the day or the hour" any more than anyone else. Yet many have been convinced that Jesus is likely to appear any minute. Therefore, secular matters can be ignored in their minds.
I even read a guy in my local paper who opined in a letter to the editor that "all the causes of the liberal environmentalists are for naught because God is going to blow this place (earth) to kingdom come and rebuild it all anew". So forget about clean air and waterand such---no such efforts are needed in that man's mind.
religion
The thing that bothers me about folks like Bush in positions of power is their belief in the "End Times", that first will come Armegeddon, then Jesus, then 1,000 years of peace and prosperity. What happens after that, I guess they don't know. At any rate, what could a "Good Christian" want more than for Jesus to come back? Might make you rethink Bush's attitude towards the Muslims, who I'll bet he believe's are the "evil" we need to vanquish in the final war... which will bring about armageddon, annihilation, and the "glorious coming of the Lord". Wacked out, but what some folks believe.
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