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You're right to label "lets actually win the fight" as the Evangelical option: so far, Evangelicals have done the best job of fighting and surviving secularism. Ryan Burge over at Graphs About Religion has a post with some good graphs about this, but Evangelicals have gone from 18% of all Americans in 1972, to a height of 29% in 1991, to 19.5% today. In contrast Catholics have gone from 27% in 1972 to a height of 28% in 1994 to 22% today, with a long slow decline from 2010 to the present. Over the same time period Mainliners went from 30% of the population in 1972 and has been in steady decline ever since, now standing at 8.7% of the population. Of course Eastern Orthodox has remained at ~1% from 1972 to today.
In other words, from the 1970s (when 90% of the USA was Christian) to today (when 62% are) Evangelicals have treaded water while all the other major Christian traditions have declined. And according to Pew Research, the overall decline of Christian identification in the US seems like it has leveled off in the low to mid 60s since 2019. Pew also found that the number of Americans who pray daily has stabilized at around 45% since 2021, and the number who attend religious services at least monthly has stabilized in the low 30s since 2020. If Evangelicals could hold steady over the course of decades of decline in Christianity, who knows what they might do now that the decline has stopped? Perhaps the long siege is coming to an end and the Winged Hussars are coming, though this time they're bearing grape juice in communion cups and copies of The Purpose Driven Church while charging to the sound of CCM.
But how much of evangelical popularity traces to their own surrender to secularism? If you’re turning the religion into pop culture, with amphitheaters and self-help books and guitarists and fashionable speakers with private jets, then you’re losing to secular culture all the same. They may nominally believe that Christ was crucified but they never actually experience the spirit of that. They are allergic to solemnity; no mourning, only saccharine merrymaking. If you were to place behind the jocular evangelical some traditional scene of the Passion, the mismatch would be immediately obvious and the sermon would be shameful. The vibes are all off. Not all of them are doing Avengers-themed musical renditions of the crucifixion but they all seem somewhere down that path. And the lack of centralization leaves them defenseless against bad actors manipulating greedy pastors; they will be steamrolled in the future by more organized and serious competitors who will exploit their glib docility.
Tell us how you really feel!
If you define a Christian as someone who believes the Nicene Creed, then Evangelicals qualify. And they seem pretty good at following Christian practices: 72% of Evangelicals pray daily, compared to 51% of Catholics, 53% of Orthodox, and 45% of Mainline. 51% of Evangelicals read scripture (outside of religious services) weekly or more, compared to 14% of Catholics, 15% of Orthodox, and 18% of Mainline. 30% of Evangelicals participate in weekly prayer or bible study groups, compared to 8% of Catholics, 6% of Orthodox, and 9% of Mainline. And of course (true to their name) 32% of Evangelicals discuss their religion with nonbelievers monthly or more often, compared to 13% of Catholics, 12% of Orthodox, and 13% of Mainline.
When it comes to Christian beliefs, 93% of Evangelicals agree that "God is a perfect being and cannot make a mistake" compared to 75% of Catholics and 80% of Mainline. 92% of Evangelicals agree that "God is unchanging" compared to 76% of Catholics and 79% of Mainline. 82% of Evangelicals believe in hell, compared to 69% of Catholics, 60% of Orthodox, and 59% of Mainline. 91% of Evangelicals agree that "There will be a time when Jesus Christ returns to judge all the people who have lived" compared to 72% of Catholics and 76% of Mainline. 82% of Evangelicals agree that "Sex outside of traditional marriage is a sin" compared to 49% of Catholics and 55% of Mainline.
And as far as "surrendering to secularism", 61% of Evangelicals say that homosexuality should be discouraged in society, compared to 23% of Catholics, 39% of Orthodox, and 25% of Mainline. 64% of Evangelicals believe that greater social acceptance of transgender people has been a change for the worse, compared to 26% of Catholics, 20% of Orthodox, and 22% of Mainline. 65% of Evangelicals believe that abortion should be illegal in most cases, compared to 39% of Catholics, 37% of Orthodox, and 29% of Mainline. 84% of Evangelicals are in favor of allowing prayer in public schools, compared to 63% of Catholics, 63% of Orthodox, and 57% of Mainline.
Overall, despite your dislike of Evangelical worship aesthetics, Evangelicals seem to be doing a better job of keeping to Christian practice and beliefs than anyone else in the USA.
And as someone who has been in Evangelical churches my entire life, I was completely taken aback by your claim that Evangelicals believe Christ was crucified, but never experience the spirt of that. I mean...I feel like it got pounded into us quite a bit! I've heard a lot of sermons trying to drive home how much pain and suffering Jesus went through on the cross. Usually they went a bit overboard, in my opinion, but that's the better side to err on I suppose. And while the lack of centralization leaves individual churches more vulnerable to bad actors, it also prevents bad actors from taking over the whole movement. We're too decentralized to all agree to follow a single flim-flam man!
The data is very convincing, thank you for posting it. I suppose I have to take the evangelicalpill now.
Well, you're not wrong about the aesthetics. We Evangelicals famously have bad taste! Fortunately that doesn't seem to have watered down the message too much.
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Ha! Let's hope so. One of my more cringeworthy opinions is that I genuinely like a lot of contemporary worship music. Liking Matt Redman is pretty lame, but you know what, those songs are catchy and uplifting, and there is value in that. I like Gregorian chants as well, but I guess I like all kinds of music. Heck, I kind of like Dan Schutte and Marty Haugen, so clearly I have no musical taste at all.
The figures are sobering, at any rate - for all that there's been time spent online talking about people flocking to Catholicism or Orthodoxy, those traditions are declining or at best holding steady. Evangelicals are the ones holding on. Maybe part of that is just because they are willing to occupy the public space, with less hesitation.
I wonder, though, how much we should factor in the changing nature of evangelical identification? There was a trend, I seem to recall, of otherwise-non-churchgoing conservatives starting to identify as 'evangelical Christian' without changing anything about their behaviour. Call that solidaristic identification, I suppose, because it seems like an identification with other parts of a political coalition. How widespread are changes like that?
There is only one thing I can say to that.
Just don't tell me you like John Rutter's music! Incredibly popular, especially now that Christmas is coming so it'll be non-stop on our classical station, incredibly treacly that makes me gag. He should be writing Disney soundtracks, though that's probably insulting to Disney soundtracks.
As I've gotten older, I find I've become more tolerant of liturgical and musical diversity, while at the same time less tolerant of theological diversity. It has become increasingly evident that you can find faithful believers at Hillsong concerts or at Anglican evensong or even listening to incredibly tacky, Disneyfied worship music, or even the infamous My Little Pony mass, and I think I am scripturally commanded to be tolerant and broad-minded in matters of taste. At the same time, we are also commanded to not be neutral with regard to the essentials. So while I won't judge a church for singing hymns that I think are musically ugly, I will judge a church if, for instance, it omits prayers of confession, or denies original sin, or takes God's name in vain.
It's not that aesthetics are totally irrelevant - I tend to agree that worship should be reverent, or should be structured, as much as possible, to incline the believer's spirit towards God. Some music may not be appropriate for that. But for me the category of what can be acceptably reverent is an expansive one, and it includes everything from plainchant to something like Joe Praize.
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As long as they don’t make me go to their rock shows and TED talks on Sundays, I can grudgingly bear this cross.
That is not the solution to "the laity were not permitted to receive under both species".
I would rather the Winged Hussars arrived to this 😁
As erwgv3g34 says, can’t fault your taste in Winged Hussar arrival music.
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Sabaton? Excellent taste.
You know, the charge of the winged hussars at the siege of Vienna is one of my favorite historical events. As much as I love, say, the ride of the Rohirrim or the battle of Cardassia Prime, they are marred by being fiction; they never happened. Even something like El Cid's posthumous attack on the Moors is most likely a legend, while other events like the undying loyalty of Spartacus's army were completely made up by Hollywood.
But the battle of Vienna actually happened. The winged hussars really did arrive. King Sobieski literally led a charge of 18,000 horsemen at the head of 3,000 Polish heavy lancers that broke the Ottoman army and saved the city right as it was about to fall; it's very well documented. Something out of stories truly took place in our world, and that makes me very happy.
Well, you know, some university course on how we need to be decolonised of our racist appreciation of this event is probably lurking in the wings somewhere, but until then it's a kickass song and a kickass video using footage from a movie about the battle 😁
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Haha... this is the best description of an evangelical church service I've ever heard. Did you make this up just now or is this a meme floating around Catholic circles that I haven't heard before?
As far as I’m aware, I’ve never heard it before I invented it in my one lifetime stroke of genius while in the car with my wife.
But now I hope you hear it elsewhere, otherwise I’ll use it in public one day and everyone will know I’m merely a breaker of goats and gnomes.
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