Evangelical response to news that American “nones”– atheists, agnostics, and people indifferent towards religion — now outnumber Evangelicals has been predictable. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing who to blame for their decline, Evangelical talking heads blame attendance loss on their churches being emptied of “cultural Christians.” Their numbers are smaller these days, the thinking goes, but more congregants are “true Christians.”
Does Evangelicalism really have a “cultural Christian” problem, or is this just an excuse preachers and parachurch leaders use to obfuscate their culpability in the decline of Evangelicalism?
Former SBC President J.D. Greear thinks he knows exactly how to give the troops back their optimism: Insulting those who’ve left the denomination’s increasingly polarized and tribalistic ranks. He told Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN; archive):
Much of that [lack of interest in spirituality], the pastor said, is likely connected to the shrinking acceptance of Christian norms within American culture writ large.
“[A] lot of the decline in those numbers is cultural Christianity,” explained Greear. “But, if you look at the statistics in the amount of what I would consider true disciples, those numbers are actually encouraging.”
Insulting departing members by calling them cultural Christians is an old SBC strategy—it dates back to at least 2012, when another then-SBC leader, Ed Stetzer, began using it to explain away the SBC’s declining membership and baptisms. He went so hard on this talking point that I strongly suspect someone handed it to him with orders to use it everywhere.
In a 2012 column he wrote for Christianity Today, he declared: “Christianity isn’t dying, cultural Christianity is.”
You see, many in the USA who identify as Christian do so only superficially. These “cultural Christians” use the term “Christian” but do not practice the faith. [. . .]
Christian nominalism is nothing new. As soon as any belief system is broadly held in a culture, people are motivated to adopt it, even with a low level of connection. Yet, much of the change in our religious identification is in nominal Christians no longer using the term and, instead, not identifying with any religion.
So cultural Christians aren’t really super-dedicated to Jesus. Not like Ed Stetzer is. Not “true disciples,” like good little Christians should be. No, Christianity is just the culture these fakey-fake fake fakers grew up in and inconceivably consider their own. The moment the religious fat sizzles in the pan, these ickie fake Christians flee for more comfortable surroundings while the real Christians hunker down and Jesus harder.
Evangelicals still use this myth to cope with their decline, too!
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In May 2015, Stetzer repeated these talking points in two separate places: Church Leadership (archive) and USA Today (archive). That year’s very important. It’s the year that Pew Research released their Religious Landscape Study, mentioned above. And it’s the year that evangelicals as a group finally became aware of their decline. They’d been able to ignore the signs for years—and I had the comment-box arguments to prove it. Finally, the Religious Landscape Study tore their veil of willful ignorance away. It forced them to face facts at last.
So that year, the accusation Stetzer insinuated in 2012 became explicit. On May 13, 2015, Stetzer’s post title and subtitle at USA Today said it all:
Survey fail – Christianity isn’t dying: Ed Stetzer
Fakers who don’t go to church are just giving up the pretense.Later in his post, Stetzer tells his readers that The Big Problem Here really is that less Jesusy denominations, meaning those ickie, grody mainline and progressive ones, were finally losing all their fakey-fake fakers. That’s all! Nothing to see here! The future was for sure evangelical!
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And, of course, we’ve already seen J.D. Greear’s galaxy-brain take on the report. Over at CBN, he huffed pure copium as he further declared:
“What we’re after here is not demographic increase; what we’re after here are real followers of Jesus,” the pastor told CBN News, noting, “Unfortunately, a lot of [people] are not reached in the church by just doing great music, great guest services, and a relevant sermon.”
My, my. How sour are those grapes, J.D. Greear? They must be very sour indeed. You didn’t want them anyway, right?
Bear in mind that out of all evangelicals, the SBC was the least interested in making sure every one of their recruits was a true-blue, 100% all in, gung-ho “true disciple” or “real follower of Jesus.”
I do not remember ever hearing once about any SBC pastor kicking tithes-paying members out of a single church. Nor do I remember ever hearing about any purity tests administered to the flocks to ensure that only unsullied TRUE CHRISTIAN™ bottoms warmed those hallowed pews and donated money.
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If evangelicals really had that huge a number of fakey-fake fake Christians floating around in their churches, they sure didn’t care at all about addressing that problem until their membership rolls began to shrink. And their method of dealing with it, so far, seems to be just to use it as an excuse for decline.
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Since evangelicals have never figured out how to recruit and retain people who have no obligation to be part of their groups, all they can do is try to negate and vilify those who are leaving. In doing so, they’re sending a message to the flocks still warming church pews: If you leave too, this is what we’ll say about you.
Years ago, I ran into a former church member at the local McDonald’s. He and his family moved on to a Bible church pastored by a Bob Jones graduate. He piously shared with me the difference between the people I pastored and his church: We are focused on quality, not quantity.
His church only wanted “true Christians.” The problem with this thinking, of course, is that if Evangelical churches relied on all those “quality” Christians to fund their work, they would go out of business overnight. Greear, Steltzer, and other megachurch leaders know that without the money “quantity” Christians give, their churches would go bankrupt.
I predict that Evangelicalism will continue to hemorrhage members, and as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, “true Christians” will blame everyone but themselves for the decline.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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It’s ironic that folks like Stetzer and Grear —whose Evangelical churches have stressed “saving” souls by whatever means and filling their pockets, I mean,
pews—are making the “quality over quantity” argument. It sounds like they’re just trying to have it both ways.
It’s all about purity right now, or perhaps from the beginning of time. An example, they’ll take the cultural Christians if they follow Trump. They won’t be so eager to cherry pick the cultural Christian if Trump gets their support. As the Evangelicals dwindle down the rhetorical attack will go up and before you know it they’ll have their justification to attack in other ways.
Back in the old days when church-gpijg was seen as a must for anyone looking to get ahead in the community, and there were few other options for people to be involved in on a Sunday morning, yes, it was culturally expected that people go to church. Were they “true believers”? Probably some were. But I don’t remember anyone complaining about their presence in pews or their offerings in plates. So these Christians are partly right – linking church-going as culturally necessary is on the decline. However, their claim about who are “true Christians” and who aren’t is just their way to assert “superiority”.
Sounds like what hardline Communists say about their failed Maoist / Leninist / Stalinist regimes: “Well, that wasn’t real Communism. Give us another chance and we’ll get it right next time.” From Nero to Marx to Hyles, all totalitarians are the same.
Yep. The guy who pastored the last church I was a member of ‘splained his dinky attendance with one comment: “Huge churches like Charles Stanley’s and John MacArthur’s have standard issue, run-of-the-mill Christian warriors. But our little church contains God’s Special Forces.”