Could This be Why Most Evangelical Churches are Declining and Dying?

How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church  from The Atlantic by Tim Alberta

"Having grown up just down the road, the son of the senior pastor at another church in town, I’ve spent my life watching evangelicalism morph from a spiritual disposition into a political identity. It’s heartbreaking. So many people who love the Lord, who give their time and money to the poor and the mourning and the persecuted, have been reduced to a caricature. But I understand why. Evangelicals—including my own father—became compulsively political, allowing specific ethical arguments to snowball into full-blown partisan advocacy, often in ways that distracted from their mission of evangelizing for Christ. To his credit, even when my dad would lean hard into a political debate, he was careful to remind his church of the appropriate Christian perspective. “God doesn’t bite his fingernails over any of this,” he would say around election time. “Neither should you.”"  --Tim Alberta

UPDATE 5/13/2022

The nation's largest Protestant, Evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, released its annual statistical data yesterday, reporting "expected" attendance declines due to COVID, including an "online" participation figure of 1.4 million, and a one-year decline in overall membership of over 400,000.  That's 2 million members lost since 2015, 2.9 million since it reached its peak in 2005.  Can this decline in membership, which is greater than even some of the more rapidly declining "mainline" denominations, be connected to the poison caused by the invasion of right wing politics which push the gospel of Christ out the door?  

This article starts out with a description of a worship service in a Michigan church where the pastor announced to the congregation he was going on a "diatribe" and then proceeds to tell them that a "nurse" who works in the local hospital told him they had just 2 patients with COVID, but 103 patients who were "vaccine compromised."  There's no possible way that was true.  Was the pastor intentionally lying to prove his point?  Maybe, and I would not be surprised if he were.  Was the anonymous and unnamed "nurse" giving him false information that he didn't bother to check out before passing it along?  That, too, is possible, though he should have verified it before he said it.  Or was there even such a nurse?  

And the fact that I am speculating on all of the possibilities here, including the absolute remotest outside chance that his statistics, which do not match any facts about either COVID or the vaccinations, might be accurate for that one hospital on that particular day, is an indication of just how far Evangelical Christianity has fallen.  That a pastor is willing to deliver false information to his congregation from the pulpit in order to make his political point is a sign that the spirit has departed from the church.  

Growing up in an Evangelical denomination, I saw this coming.  As a high school student, I could not understand why most of the adult members of the church in which I grew up did not like Jimmy Carter.  Most of the older people did, but the median adults in the church, most of whom grew up in the south somewhere, did not, even though he was an openly faithful Evangelical Southern Baptist.  And that's really where my eyes were opened to the dependence of white, Evangelical churches on political influence and power rather than on spiritual power.  It was a confusing message they sent, "don't be worldly," out of one side of their mouth, but "except when it comes to getting political power," out of the other.  

But is it Really As Bad as All That?

But as bad as it was then, it has become a cult that has completely overtaken many Evangelical churches now.  In 2016, in the middle of a sermon in an Evangelical church, I'd had enough.  I'd been a member there for five years, but patience had been wearing thin with references to extremist right wing politics, and then, as Trump entered the Presidential race, efforts to paint him in a more "Christian" light.  This sermon featured an outright endorsement.  I looked at my wife and at that moment, decided that courtesy was not required.  We got up, gathered our stuff and walked out, and I noticed one other couple doing the same.  That was the tipping point.  But beyond that, we never returned, but not a single person with whom we had shared fellowship in church for five years called to see what was wrong.  That confirmed we'd made the right decision. 

In finding a congregation in which to worship, we discovered just how bad it had become.  After observing a decades long fight in our denomination over the words "inerrant and infallible" being applied to the Bible, we found churches in which scripture passages were either distorted beyond recognition and out of context, or simply set aside in favor of a political diatribe.  And I don't use the term "diatribe" in an exaggerated manner.  Right wing politics is so much a part of the culture of most white, conservative Evangelical churches that the members cannot distinguish Biblical truth from political propaganda in the pastor's sermon.  The "conversion" experience that is being sought is to convert members of the congregation to cast their ballot for right wing politicians.  

Yes, it is that bad.  

A Measurable Change 

We are part of a congregation where the pastoral staff has made a commitment not to dilute the preaching or worship with a right wing political agenda.  They are taking heat from some members of the congregation for not bringing the right wing social agenda into the church.  On the other hand, there have been individuals who have joined because the leaders refuse to bow to pressure, and refuse to dilute and change the church's mission and purpose at the expense of a right wing political and social agenda.  In my mind, I've started to think in terms of Evangelical congregations being either "confessing" churches, remaining committed to the gospel message of Christ, and "political" churches, which fit the definition of a cult, and are, in their own descriptive language, "apostate" from the true church.  

It may well be that, over a period of time, those who recognize that a paradigm shift has occurred will find their way into "confessing churches" that remain faithful to orthodox Christian theology and doctrine, while those in the political cult find congregations that feed their prejudices.  There is statistical evidence that a shift like this is occurring.  The Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest Evangelical Protestant denomination in the United States, has lost two million church members in a decade, and their weekly attendance is down by more than a million during the same period of time.  The loss has been getting bigger each year since 2016.  That can't be blamed on poor record keeping or on churches not turning in their annual statistics.  In fact, the SBC keeps churches on the roll for five years after they've stopped reporting, so the actual losses are likely much greater than reported. 

The Biggest Grievance

It's sad to see churches rendered virtually ineffective in evangelism and ministry.  But what's even worse is the lying from the pulpit.  In the piece by Tim Alberta in The Atlantic, the pastor parrots themes from extremist media sources without any discernment or scrutiny, because it's what he wants to believe.  And he wants his congregation to believe it to.  He's replacing God with himself, putting himself in the position to control the thinking and the lives of the members of the church, using his influence and authority as a pastor to lend credibility to his false narrative.  

The church is being hijacked.  A verse that I memorized in Vacation Bible School when I was a kid keeps coming to mind as I read about these horrific sins, 

"You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come.  For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding on to the outward form of godliness but denying its power.  Avoid them!  

For among them are those who make their way into the households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.  As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith also oppose the truth.  But they will not make much progress, because, as in the case of those two men, their folly will become plain to everyone.  2 Timothy 3:1-9, NRSV. Emphases mine

Written two thousand years ago, that is an apt description of what right wing politics is doing to the Evangelical church.  I hope that people are wise enough, observant enough and educated enough to see their folly.