In case you haven’t noticed, evangelical Christians have totally missed the point of all this research about the changing religious landscape in America. I shouldn’t be surprised by this, I know. And I suppose I’m not so much surprised as I am impressed. I’m impressed and bewildered at how completely my former faith enables people to live in an alternate reality.

To many people this is a non-issue. Most non-religious people are accustomed to rolling their eyes at the excesses of Evangelicalism—the funny way they talk, their awkwardness around the subject of sex, and their current obsession with fighting gay marriage. But for me, this inability to accept things is a source of recurring personal frustration. It affects me personally because I’m surrounded by this culture and the people who live inside this bubble are my friends, my family, my neighbors, coworkers, and students. Their ability to detach from reality makes it difficult for me to have productive conversations about things that really do matter, and it can get discouraging.

I’ve touched on their response to the latest study once before (see my “Baptists in Denial“) and just the other day Hemant Mehta made a similar point in reaction to a comic by Adam Ford. You will be forgiven, by the way, for mistaking Adam4d for a Christian rip-off of The Oatmeal, which is ten times funnier and is one of the most wildly popular sites on the web. Actually, Adam4d is rarely ever funny from what I can tell (I can’t even tell if he’s trying to be). It’s often judgmental and condescending, always preachy, and you can count on it to hit all the same stale theological talking points as last Sunday morning’s sermon. That makes it wildly popular among evangelicals (so much so that he can now do this full-time and make a living from it easily), but boring as hell for anybody outside that bubble.

In the comic strip linked above, Adam regurgitates the same talking points that all the other evangelicals seem to be reciting: The 8 point drop in the American Christian population (along with a 7 point “rise of the nones”) only signifies that the people who left the faith were never legitimate Christians in the first place. That certainly tracks with the Bible verse that suggests as much, although it completely ignores the possibility that millions of people leaving this religion can also be an indicator that this religion no longer finds traction among the people to whom it’s supposed to appeal. Evidently that’s not even a consideration for these folks. If millions leave, the problem must be with them, not with the religion.

Convictional versus Cultural Christianity

Probably the most irksome element in their judgment is that they’ve concluded the reason people are leaving is that we weren’t committed enough, and the only reason we ever called ourselves Christians in the first place was because it was somehow socially advantageous to do so. Pardon me, but as one of the ones who left the faith over the time span covered by this study, I can tell you that you’re completely missing the point. I’ve collected hundreds of friends over the last two or three years who have the same story I do, and one of the things we all have in common is that we were passionately committed to our faith. We were head-over-heels in love with Jesus, just as we were taught to be, and there’s something oddly offensive about being told that all those years of investment in our faith weren’t even sincere.

And while I’m at it, this business of “convictional” Christianity versus “cultural” Christianity is just utter crap. I’ve heard the same dichotomy repeated by Ed Stetzer, Russell Moore, and Richard Land. Maybe this is more of a Baptist thing than I realize, but I suspect their view is shared by the majority of evangelicals from other regions of that epistemic enclave. The first problem with this false dichotomy is the one I’ve already alluded to, namely that it too quickly assumes the only reason large numbers (we’re talking millions) are leaving the faith is that they didn’t care enough to stick to what they were taught to believe. Nowhere is there any admission that the people who left may have been following the dictates of their own consciences or intellects. They simply must not have been up to the task of following Jesus.

The other major problem I see is that this dichotomy fails to recognize that what they are calling “convictional Christianity” is itself an alternative culture. All Christianity is culture of one sort or another. You may disapprove of all other versions but your own, but rest assured that whatever version you embrace is itself an expression of a culture. For what is culture, anyway? A culture is simply a collection of ideas, values, expressions, and artifacts which convey a common identity and common priorities among a group of people. Every form of religion is a culture, even the ones which see themselves as having been handed down directly from God himself.

Evangelicals don’t usually get that. They don’t like to see their culture as a culture because in their eyes that would cheapen it. Speaking of their religion as a culture makes it sound like it’s a human invention, and they simply won’t have that. Every word, every idea, every tradition must have come directly from heaven into the minds and practices of the people, at least among the ones they think “got it right.” Come to think of it, it’s pretty anathema to see Christianity as a religion at all. Call it Christian exceptionalism. They like to say that it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship. I used to say that, too. But that’s another false dichotomy (see my “It’s a Religion Too, Not Just a Relationship“).

You’re Not Doing As Well As You Think

Evangelical exceptionalism leads people like Stetzer, Moore, Land, and Adam4d to judge all other forms of Christianity as inferior to theirs. They believe their version has a magic to it that keeps people from ever wanting to leave it. Anyone who leaves must not have had the magic formula right, thus they failed to persevere to the end. And since these guys were already looking down on all non-evangelical versions of their faith (they’re looking at you, Catholics and mainliners), the greater drop in numbers among those inferior groups simply confirms their suspicions that those churches had it all wrong anyway.

But hold on a second. Evangelicals are losing ground, too.1 Their drop may have been smaller than their more moderate and liberal counterparts (one point as opposed to about three in both the Catholic and mainline groupings), but their decline of the share of the population reached into every age group just as it did in all the other denominations. What’s more, as in all other denominations, their numbers get increasingly worse as respondents to the survey get younger and younger. The giant flashing red light in this study is that among anybody younger than age 35, Christianity is losing its grip at a much faster rate than it ever has in history. It doesn’t take much hard thought to fast forward a few years and see the problem this poses to the religion as a whole, both in its moderate and conservative forms.

Does this lead these people to ask the hard questions about what they’re doing wrong? Evidently not. They’re certain they have God’s mind in all these things. They won’t budge. Have you tried changing an evangelical’s mind about anything? I have, and it’s extremely difficult. Sometimes I wonder how mine ever changed about anything. Clearly it did, but I’m not sure I could boil it down to any single reason or factor other than a personal inclination toward curiosity and a passion for getting to the bottom of things. And notice what people like me have to do: If we really want to ask all the hard questions, we will eventually have to leave because these traditions make no place for that kind of iconoclasm. That’s a formula for never getting better. Then when someone holds a giant flashing red light in their face and they just dismiss it as irrelevant noise? Now they’re just digging their own tradition’s grave.

I’m not saying the Christian faith won’t morph and mutate and take on a form that better fits the world we’re becoming. Like any living thing would, traditions often adapt and evolve so that they can survive into the next generation. Christianity will do the same. But I’m fairly confident that the inflexible categories and “convictions” touted by the gentlemen discussed herein will not be around in their current form for much longer.

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1Some have been confused by the apparent contradiction in the study which shows that evangelicals lost one percent of their share of the population while still experiencing a slight gain in real numbers. Those looking to put a positive spin on this have seized on that detail but they may be confused about what this means. The increase is likely attributable to the normal course of births and childhood baptisms which follow any group that produces more than two children for every set of parents. But the general population has grown at a greater rate than has their membership. In other words, yes, they are still having babies and people are still marrying into their denominations, but the rate of increase through those means isn’t keeping up with the growth of the population as a whole. Thus their share of the population has gone down, not up. And those numbers get more dramatic the more you look at folks who haven’t yet grown any gray hairs.