The Coming Evangelical Collapse article hits the media…

Michael Spencer’s article referenced earlier in this blog has gotten the attention of the mainstream media – it was published in the Christian Science Monitor today.
I think this newer, 1500 word version of the original post is more cohesive than the original. My prior comments stand – I think he’s mostly right.

I’ll also add that I think that affluent suburban megachurches and their satellite institutions will be affected just as deeply by the coming shifts. This is partly due to the phenomenon I’ve described already, which I’ll term here “The Building-Driven Church.” Already congregations with multi-million dollar facilities with million-dollar maintenance budgets are laying off staff, clinging to their gilded temples while the economy melts down around them.

Let me preface what comes next with an admission that my children attend private Christian schools, but I’m really torn about this. I’m grateful that we can afford to send them there, but I can’t lay my finger on the Bible verse that says, “Go into all the world and build multi-million-dollar church buildings and hugely expensive private ‘Christian’ schools for the children of privilege.” Somehow my gut tells me that the equation of Christianity and material affluence is an abrogation of the Biblical ethos, and one of the facets of consumerist evangelicalism that I don’t think anyone should be sad to say goodbye to.

Michael Spencer is right, and as grateful as I am to evangelicalism for all it has done, in its current iteration its inevitable decline is not only a good thing, but absolutely necessary if a recovery of biblical Christianity is to have any chance. If you will read Spencer’s article, he is not suggesting what some of the more radical Emergents are suggesting, but says that evangelicalism’s collapse is due to its failure to proclaim a robust, fully articulated theology that upholds Biblical truths – not just convenient cultural shibboleths like being against abortion and gay marriage (please don’t misunderstand this as a statement of support for either one).

As a cultural observer of a few decades ago observed, “The times, they are a’ changing.”

The working-class philosopher who worked and thought on the waterfront had a companion observation:

“In times of change
Learners inherit the earth,
While the learned
find themselves beautifully equipped
to deal with a world
that no longer exists”
Erik Hoffer

I and my fellow seminary graduates should take note.

This of course