New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff has written the umpteenth claim that declining churches and Christian influence in America owe to conservative “religious blowhards” who “have entangled faith with bigotry, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.” And “for some young people, Christianity is associated less with love than with hate.”
Every branch of Christianity, and every religion, has its share of blowhards and hypocrites. Conservative Christian blowhards get more attention because they have political influence and peeve liberal cultural elites. But do they deserve exclusive credit for overall Christian decline?
Religious Right fixtures get the spotlight because of their politics, but there’s little evidence that churches grow or decline based on political stances or national media attention that’s negative or positive....
Today white evangelicalism is in slow decline while non-white evangelicalism is growing. Liberal churches, which are nearly all white, are shrinking much faster and have been shrinking continuously for 55 years. They have not, from the view of columnist Kristoff, “entangled faith with bigotry, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.” They are firmly in political and cultural sync with secular culture. So why aren’t they growing?
Liberal churches and liberal Christian political activists barely register in national media or conversation....
The early 1980s media exposés of Mainline Protestant support for Marxist causes marked the beginning of the end for their public influence. It was obvious that far left church prelates didn’t politically represent average Mainline church goers who were and remain politically right of center.
And yet it’s wrong to think that far-left political stances by Mainline prelates caused liberal church decline, which began years before these church agencies politically radicalized. No doubt some church goers quit their denominations in protest or disgust over national church public positions. But I think few did for that reason. They mostly quit from indifference and apathy in reaction to vapid theology.
Churches are primarily relational and personal. Congregations grow or decline based on their theological agenda, spirit, outreach and people skills. National denominational policies or national political impressions conveyed through media do not typically play major roles in the fate of local churches. The scandal or politics or favorable publicity of a national religious figure is unlikely to affect local congregations....