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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20955 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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I had a somewhat different experience of the evangelical church growing up than you did, though I can see where you are coming from. I remain in the congregation where I grew up, a Baptist-adjacent Bible church in a blue state.

That tone has severely softened in recent years, as white Catholics have become the standard-bearers of the religious right in many ways, but there's a serious way in which the often harsh, but nevertheless informed critiques of more traditional forms of Christianity within historic Protestantism have been flanderized in evangelical circles to an absolute rejection of the Christianity of non-evangelical forms of faith -- indeed out of ignorance.

I’d say that our attitude toward Rome growing up was guarded, sometimes harsh, but not particularly uninformed; of course I have a deeper understanding of the critique as a middle-aged man than I did as a teenager, but that’s true of many things. We didn’t talk about the Eastern Orthodox much, but there weren’t a lot of them around. Our attitude toward middle- and even high-church Protestants was reasonably positive so long as they were strong on Scripture and held to sola fide.

I agree that the general evangelical attitude toward Rome is much less guarded today than it was. Opinions on Eastern Orthodoxy are pretty mixed, but the most common attitude is to regard them as eccentric Roman Catholics. (I will give you that this one is pretty uninformed.)

That said, evangelicalism has also been characterized by a firmer affirmation of conservative social doctrine than spiritual doctrine (I'm not saying spirituality isn't important to them -- I'm saying their emphasis, especially to people who grow distant, is often perceived to be culture war instead of spiritual development), and so leaving evangelicalism is often associated with leaving social conservatism.

I can’t speak to your experience, but in mine people who leave evangelical Christianity tend to move toward social liberalism first, then when this clashes with evangelical Christianity they abandon evangelicalism. It’s a commonplace that when a young man comes to his pastor and says, “I just can’t accept the truth of Christianity any longer,” the correct response is, “Who is she?” Also common today are people who want to accommodate their friends on LGBT issues and leave their evangelical churches when those hold fast to the biblical teaching.

To those leaving it may look like the church is prioritizing social issues over spiritual things. But striving after obedience to God’s will revealed in Scripture is fundamentally tied up in spiritual things. (“If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and, “Faith without works is dead.”) You can be socially conservative without being an evangelical Christian, or a Christian at all, but it’s no coincidence that socially liberal churches also have a low view of the Bible.

(There is a smaller cohort that leaves evangelicalism directly for more liturgical churches. This is a different phenomenon, and most of them don’t think that evangelicals’ positions on social issues are too conservative.)

… and I'm simply reflecting on the market failure where the mainline Protestant churches that have already been there for a long time now aren't even considered as an option, and are themselves being out-competed by "woke evangelical" churches the same way the megachurch is out-competing the Bible church on the street corner!

I agree that this demand exists, but in my world it’s less than one might suppose. I expect that most “woke evangelical” churches will fade away in a generation or so as the children of their members abandon any connection to Christianity.

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