Dinosaurs still walk among us; those loud, lumbering, living relics of the distant past.

They spring from the shadows every once in a while, in furious, blustery fits meant to inspire fear in the hearts all those within earshot, but instead they only yield pity. These, after all are not the confident displays of strength from a vital, dominant life force, but the last, desperate gasps of a scared, dying animal.

Evangelical Christianity in America is facing certain extinction.

Not Jesus of course, and not the beautiful, peacemaking, power-checking, justice-seeking, bigotry-busting, healing heart of the Gospel that he carried and delivered by hand to a hurting world. That endures, it persists, it has no shelf life, no expiration date. It is meteor-proof.

What is going away is the oversized, cumbersome, angry religion that has had the run of the landscape for far too long. It’s a bloated theology of fear, an apologetic of perpetual impending doom that comes always in loud, spitting, screaming fury from pulpits and blog posts. That is becoming obsolete; a mortally flawed creature no longer suited to its surroundings.

It’s a slow fade, but a sure one. Every time a high-profile Christian leader makes headlines toting a tired message soaked with vitriol and parched of benevolence, the watching world begins to further distance itself. It collectively evolves away from that because it recognizes that a faith that always expresses itself in war terms isn’t something to covet or aspire to. It understands en masse, that hatred justified by ancient quotes and dusty creeds, is still hatred.

The dinosaurs need to know that they are on borrowed time; that if their religion can’t be expressed without vilifying someone else, it’s seen as a really lousy testimony to a God who is Love. People of all walks of life and all faith perspectives are growing increasingly intolerant of spirituality defined by aggression. They are already neck-deep in that as they trudge through the brutal everyday. What they are seeking is the antidote to that, and in too much of their experiences with religion they have been found wanting.

If all you bring to the table are battle rhetoric and a list of enemies, you don’t have the heart of Jesus and you are marching toward irrelevance. You are facilitating the inevitability of your own disappearance. So many of these prehistoric Christian leaders are conditioned to simply roar louder in the face of any dissension. It is a time-acquired defense mechanism. They are programmed through decades of bad teaching and politically charged religion to crave a holy war. As a result, whenever anyone opposes their message or questions their conduct, they damn and dismiss them as heathens and heretics; lustful lovers of the world, hopelessly blinded by their sin.

But the truth is, these folks see all too clearly. Their eyesight has evolved over time. They aren’t rejecting Jesus, but they are also not accepting that simply because something claims to be of him, that it is. They’re demanding proof. They are rejecting the prehistoric fear theology that has outgrown its usefulness here and they are seeking stuff that looks and sounds and feels like love.

We’re in the final last gasp of the dinosaurs. As the surrounding environment becomes more and more inhospitable, these Jurassic creatures will continue to dig in their heels and ramp up their rhetoric and rally their shrinking bases; screaming about the evils of this and the moral decay of that, but ultimately these giants will adapt or they will vanish.

They will either recover a religion marked by love and not fear, one based in compassion instead of violence—or they will die.

This isn’t about abandoning religious tradition or the invaluable, timeless treasures of our faith history, it’s about jettisoning the restrictive, oppressive, damaging attack posture that has come to be the calling card of so much high-profile Christian leadership in the world.

Hatred in the name of Jesus, is facing certain extinction.

And the world will be far better for it.

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