If you followed the links in Gina's post, you may have decided that MIchael Spencer’s predictions are overly apocalyptic -- like this:

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants...This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good. Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

But if current trends hold, there are, no doubt, troubling times ahead for Christians (but haven't there always been!).

According to a recent survey referenced here (CNN has more), the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Christians is 75 percent, down from 86 percent in 1990. Perhaps more disturbing is that the only result found consistent from state to state is “an increase in the number of people expressing no religious affiliation.” With the increased social acceptability of “having no religion,” this is a trend that will prove challenging to reverse.

Spencer lists seven things foreshadowing the coming evangelical breakdown, the most significant, in my mind, being, “We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.”

George Barna would agree. The most recent update from the Barna Group reports that not only has the percent of adults holding a biblical worldview remained essentially flat (7-9 percent) over the last 13 years, “less than one-half of one percent of adults in the Mosaic generation – i.e., those aged 18 to 23 – have a biblical worldview.”

Barna nails the reason: “children are not provided with the basic ability to think in ways that correspond to foundational biblical teachings.” His get-well plan calls for “Christian families, Christian schools, and Christian churches…to invest more effort and tangible resources into helping young people understand and adopt the core ideas of Christianity, and to reinforce those concepts through their own lives.”

Evangelical collapse or not, we Christians have to do a much better job of living out our faith and articulating it, intentionally, compellingly and winsomely, even to those born and raised in the Church.

Comments

[labrialumn]

Spencer seems to have it out for the Christian resistance in the culture war waged by the hard left. I wonder why that is?

Genuine Scriptural belief would require such a thing - at least in the areas of morals. Prudential matters such as specific wars, or areas where principles apply, but where direct commands do not necessarily specify are broader, though some 'tests of worldview' specify conclusions you must reach which are debatable.

But there is no debate over abortion or infanticide or sexual purity. That the youth allegedly (and I doubt this) are firm on resisting the left's kulturkampf against Christendom would indicate a deeper knowledge of Scripture than is evident.

[LeeQuod]

Hey, lab, check it out: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/index.html#entry-64197481