More On The Evangelical Culture War And The Decline Of The Church
October 27th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
I recently posted that I was having serious concerns that evangelical Christianity’s embrace of politics and the culture war, was having a negative effect on the Gospel. In a recent post over at internetmonk.com they comment on a recent book making a similar assertion. The book details the decline in church attendance among young people and the potential reasons for this shift. Chaplain Mike comments about the book saying:
What lies behind this shift? The research supporting the findings of American Grace led its authors to conclude that the “culture war” approach and conservative political agenda of evangelicalism over the past 30 years has turned young people off and prompted them to walk away from church. And the one issue that has been particularly troublesome for them is the church’s attitude toward homosexuality.
Now I am not going to argue that homosexuality is God’s ideal for men and women. I think the Bible speaks pretty clearly on that. But I also think in general evangelical Christians are so unloving and un-Christlike in their treatment of homosexuals that I can see why young people would walk away from a religion that treats others that way.
The more important bit I think we should take away from this is that even if evangelicals win the culture war battle, they are going to do so at the great cost of losing the war for men’s souls. That’s a war we can’t afford to lose.
