The Weakness of American Evangelicalism - Part I

I contend that American evangelicalism is culturally weak. This means that in our increasingly pluralistic culture, Evangelicalism lacks cultural influence. I argue that this is due to six specific traits of American Evangelicalism. If the cultural weakness of Evangelicalism is to be overcome, Evangelicals need to reflect on how the American Church can be transformed into a stronger institution. Despite many improvements, the Evangelical Church at large requires sweeping reform. Nothing less than another reformation will do.


The fact of the matter is that American Evangelicalism was practically culturally irrelevant in the second half of the twentieth century. True, Evangelicals did gain sweeping political influence through the Religious Right. However, politics is only one part of culture, and ultimately not a very influential one. The modern state is increasingly run by bureaucrats rather than elected officials. One only needs ponder the lack of results, despite thirty years of political mobilization on the part of the Religious Right. Evangelicals might achieve victory for a time through politics, but ultimately the state is driven by far more influential aspects of culture. The Religious Right has ultimately done more harm for Christianity than good because it has spread resentment amongst non-Christians (and even some Christians). It has awakened fears that Christians desire a return to the Protestant Establishment in the United States. The reality is that law (politics) does not create cultural change, but rather is the product of cultural change. Law is the expression of the will of the cultural elite. The most powerful cultural centers in modern America are academia, elite media outlets, law schools/public policy schools, the arts, book publishers, literature, museums, etc. It is strength or representation in these areas that determine the strength of a particular cultural movement. And it is in precisely these areas that Evangelicals are the most impotent. This means that the influence of American Christians on contemporary culture is likewise impotent. The reasons for this are complex and I don't fully understand them myself. However, to a great extent they are a result of six traits of Evangelicalism.

Conflict Model - Evangelicals, by and large, don't view the non-Christian culture as a lot of poor souls that need to be won, but as enemy combatants that need to be conquered and subdued. It is telling that Christ commanded his apostles to make disciple (i.e. teach and instruct) the nations, not scream at them or dominate them politically. The conflict model emphasizes antithesis over relevance. It forgets that non-Christian culture contains much good and needs to be discipled , not obliterated and replaced by a "pure" Christian culture. In short, it forgets the common ground between Christians and non-Christians by virtue of the fact that both are still made in the image of God. The inability to connect with the good in non-Christian culture ultimately means that Evangelicals lack all relevance. The early Church fathers were especially good at finding the common ground between Christians and non-Christians, and the early Church was culturally stronger because of it.

Anti-Intellectualism - Most Evangelicals are suspicious (to say the least) of intellectual life. They view the modern university (not without warrant) as anti-Christian. I think that the university is only implicitly anti-Christian - i.e. it educates in a decidedly secular fashion, since most in academia aren't Christians - not explicitly so. However, the continued dearth of religious perspective in academia is the fault of Evangelicals to a great degree. Rather than formulate a comprehensive plan for real educational and intellectual cultivation, Evangelicals have simply retreated from academic life. Academia, at best, is something to be survived. What educational programs Evangelicals do produce are deeply reactionary and typically unscholarly. They don't teach Evangelicals how to think but what to think, and what Evangelicals are told to think (e.g. creation "science") often borders on intellectual dishonesty. Exposure to non-Christian views are avoided, and where there is interaction, Evangelicals are not taught how to critically examine the ideas, but to wave them away as liberal or secular hogwash. They are taught to reject wholesale "secular learning" rather than redeem what is good in it. All of this belies a deep lack of confidence on the part of Evangelicals in the intellectual credentials of Christianity. Additionally, despite the recent prominence of many orthodox Christians in intellectual life (George Marsden, Alvin Platinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Francis Collins, Mark Noll), Evangelicals are typically unsupportive of Christian intellectuals. In part this is because Evangelicals are suspicious of such Christian academics. They are often viewed as "tainted" by their academic pursuits, especially when they hold views (such as those pertaining to evolution) that most Evangelicals refuse to even entertain. While Evangelicals dump millions of dollars into politics, church programs, and popular Christian organizations, institutions that foster Christian learning are left underfunded or ignored all together. The sole research center funded at my undergraduate institution was a political one; the Center for Vision and Values. When reasons were given for giving generously to my Alma Mater, the rich experience of cultivating robust Christian learning was typically not one of them. Even the speaker at my baccalaureate couldn't help mixing Christianity with politics and civil religion. In short, Christian learning is often viewed as a means to an ends (e.g. training the leaders of tomorrow), not an end in itself. This means that Evangelicals are uninterested in the scholarly content of Christian learning, only its utility in the culture war. This devastating for Christian culture. Christians are right to affirm that academia is a critical component of the spread of secular culture, but the lament of Evangelicals to this effect is matched only by their impotence in doing anything to counteract it with a model of true Christian learning.

Populism - Evangelical neglect of culturally important institutions is typically justified by an erroneous understanding of culture. Evangelicals typically think that mass evangelism is the way to win cultural influence. What is ironic is that the rise of the mass evangelism movement runs parallel to the collapse of a Christian impact on culture. This is because cultural influence is not gained by numbers. Christianity, even if reduced to the 40% or so of those who we might say are true practicing Christians (as opposed to nominal - "in name only" - Christians), is still the largest single world view in the country. Yet its share in the culture economy is vastly below this. This is because it not quantity that matters but quality. Think, for instance, of the influence that people of Jewish ethnicity have due to the fact that they are typically well-educated and well-cultured (about 1.7% of the nation is Jewish, but one-third of the supreme court is Jewish). Jews, faced with extreme prejudice through their history in the Western world, had to form a strong culture or else be subsumed by the larger culture. Evangelicalism is typified by a misguided attempt to dominate popular culture. The problem is that pop culture is merely a vulgarized and commercialized interpretation of high culture. If we look at summer blockbusters, pop music, or television sit coms, we see commercial imitations of high culture trends such as existentialism, pragmatism, hedonism, and relativism. Evangelicals are puzzled why, despite the mass production of Christian movies, books, and praise music, Christianity lacks the ability to influence the lives of the average American. Evangelical churches routinely fail to even influence the lives of many of their congregants. The reason is that the Church cannot exist merely as a pop culture institution, because such institutions are inherently weak without high culture support. The average American falls for the ills of American pop culture, such as movies, songs, and TV shows that glorify sexual promiscuity and individualism because they have been prompted to do so through public schools, the media, secular colleges, film, and books published by secular-minded publishing companies. These areas of high culture continually preach human autonomy and moral relativism regarding traditional mores. Without such high culture support, the attempt to be "relevant" in pop culture makes Christianity look kitsch, sentimental, and weird to non-Christians and even many Christians. Often Evangelicalism makes Christianity look shallow and superficial due to its overemphasis on the popular. When this perception is exported through mass evangelism (think of those tracks you always find at the mall), the result can be that more harm has been done than good.