The Coming Evangelical Collapse

From the Christian Science Monitor courtesy of somebody on facebook:

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

And

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

More here.

As happy as it makes me to entertain the possibility that this cultural and intellectual blight on the face of America might soon evaporate into irrelevancy, I'll believe it when I see it.  

Yes, evangelicals, fundamentalists, and charismatics have so theologically and strategically painted themselves into a corner that their continued success is, to some extent, surprising in this day and age.  I mean, evolution is a fact, but this is the crowd that opposes it, so they're necessarily anti-science.  Corporate capitalism has changed how we live our lives, so the traditional nuclear heterosexual family is simply not possible for millions, but the evangelicals don't seem to care about reality.  Sexual imagery is part and parcel of consumerism, no turning back on that, but evangelicals seem to think that shaming Puritanical finger-wagging is somehow going to pull off the impossible and get us to all adopt a Victorian sexual standard.  And on and on.  Depending on how you slice it up, it really does appear that the deck is stacked against the fundamentalists and their ilk.

But I just can't get away from an observation Noam Chomsky has made on several occasions.  The reason America is so off-the-scale for industrialized nations in terms of backward superstitious religious attitudes, he asserts, is that capitalism has effectively destroyed the civil society.  That is, the capitalist notion that we are all on our own, that we are all to be fierce individuals, coupled with the takeover of ostensible democratic institutions by monied interests, has resulted in mass civic alienation: we Americans are sad, lonely, and have no sense of control over our lives.  Fundamentalist, evangelical, and charismatic Christianity directly addresses this problem.  I mean, it doesn't SOLVE the problem, but it addresses it.

In an aggressive evangelical fellowship, members can feel like they're part of something greater than themselves.  They can exercise a small extent of personal influence over their religious body.  They can surround themselves with like minded individuals who are all happy to be together.  And they can all compare their lot in life positively with that of people who don't share their beliefs.  It's all ultimately misdirected and destructive, of course, but given the state of the nation, it's surprising that more people don't embrace these Bronze Age attitudes.  Americans are desperate; zealous fundamentalism offers a perverted hope.

And that's why I'm nowhere near announcing evangelicalism's death.  Until America can get its shit together and offer its people a meaningful life, Protestant fundamentalism, and other literal-interpreters of the Bible, will continue to serve as institution of last resort.  It really does play an important role.  Opium of the people.  Not going anywhere.

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