Flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today is running a remarkable article detailing exactly how unchristian most evangelicals really are, according to a series of Gallup and Barna polls. Among the many things learned:
- Divorce rates are slightly higher among evangelicals than among non-evangelicals.
- States dominated by evangelicals (the Bible Belt) have the highest divorce rates.
- Evangelicals outgive mainline Protestants, but still don’t get to even half a tithe.
- Only 6% of evangelicals tithe.
- Even while evangelicals do it less, rates of unmarried cohabitation are rising most swiftly in Bible Belt states.
- Only 12% of “True Love Waits” pledgers keep their pledge of premarital abstinence.
- Almost half of evangelicals say premarital sex is okay.
- White evangelicals report racist attitudes at least twice more often than other whites.**
What do we learn from this? Most obviously, we learn that white evangelicals are divorce-happy racists. But more importantly, we learn the true power of the “born again” experience, as author Ron Sider can’t keep himself from telling us:
Graham Cyster, a Christian whom I know from South Africa, recently told me a painful story about a personal experience two decades ago when he was struggling against apartheid as a young South African evangelical. One night, he was smuggled into an underground Communist cell of young people fighting apartheid. “Tell us about the gospel of Jesus Christ,” they asked, half hoping for an alternative to the violent communist strategy they were embracing.
Graham gave a clear, powerful presentation of the gospel, showing how personal faith in Christ wonderfully transforms persons and creates one new body of believers where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, rich nor poor, black nor white. The youth were fascinated. One seventeen-year-old exclaimed, “That is wonderful! Show me where I can see that happening.” Graham’s face fell as he sadly responded that he could not think of anywhere South African Christians were truly living out the message of the gospel. “Then the whole thing is a piece of shit,” the youth angrily retorted. Within a month he left the country to join the armed struggle against apartheid—and eventually giving his life for his beliefs.
The young man was right. If Christians do not live what they preach, the whole thing is a farce. “American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century,” Barna concludes, “because Jesus’ modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus.” This scandalous behavior mocks Christ, undermines evangelism, and destroys Christian credibility.
How nice that someone noticed.
*What Barna calls “born again” I call “evangelical.” What Barna calls “evangelical” I call “fundamentalist.”
**Stats I would have like to see are abortions and teen pregnancy. I know Oklahoma’s teen pregnancy rates are always at or near the top, so I suspect those stats would also be telling.
When people, political groups and religious groups evaluate themselves and call themselves to better behavior–it’s an honest and healthy exercise and should be applauded.
Of course we’re all free to criticize and those trying hardest to do right are “in the arena” and will no doubt draw the most criticism. Perhaps we should show a little respect though, when a group member points out the groups own flaws. So few groups have a vocal member who does this sort of thing. By using this against the group we discourage them from heeding this sort of message–or from even admitting their problems out loud in the first place.
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
(Paris Sorbonne,1910)
Other quotes from the article you reference:
“Sociologist Christian Smith’s study comparing the attitudes and behavior of evangelical, fundamentalist, mainline, liberal, and Catholic Christians as well as those of the “non-religious” found that over the previous two years, evangelicals were more than three times more likely to have given “a lot” of money to help the poor and the needy than the non-religious.41 In fact, evangelicals scored higher than any other Christian group.”
In that same article those hardcore evangelical the “bible is perfect” types were labeled as having a “biblical worldview”. This is what is says about the:
“…the small circle of people with a biblical worldview demonstrate genuinely different behavior. They are nine times more likely than all the others to avoid “adult-only” material on the Internet. They are four times more likely than other Christians to boycott objectionable companies and products and twice as likely to choose intentionally not to watch a movie specifically because of its bad content. They are three times more likely than other adults not to use tobacco products and twice as likely to volunteer time to help needy people.45 Forty-nine percent of all born-again Christians with a biblical worldview have volunteered more than an hour in the previous week to an organization serving the poor, whereas only 29 percent of born-again Christians without a biblical worldview and only 22 percent of non-born-again Christians had done so.46
In a 2000 poll Barna discovered that evangelicals are five times less likely than adults generally to report that their “career comes first.”47 And there is accumulating evidence that theologically conservative Protestant men who attend church regularly have lower rates of domestic abuse than others.
Brian,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
I personally have little interest in encouraging or discouraging evangelicals from “admitting their problems out loud.” I do, like you, think it is of great import that an evangelical scholar has called out his own, and that Christianity Today provided the forum for doing so, a sentiment I alluded to in passing in the opening sentence.
But evangelicals and fundamentalists do not deserve the same treatment (in this matter) as other religious groups, mostly because they have allowed and even encouraged their most prominent leaders to chastise the rest of the US for faling short of thier moral mark, and this time and time again. Because of the evangelical movements political aims and the moralistic rhetoric used to advance them, they deserve a firmer hand.
In addition, the absolutist claims made by evangelicals also warrant a firmer hand. Most other religious groups do not threaten nonbelievers with eternal hellfire—but evangelicalism usually does. Until it ceases this rhetorical colonialism, it will earn my contempt.
Just FYI, that article is from Books & Culture magazine.
See: http://BooksAndCulture.net
“No one can judge a religion or a religious teaching based on the practices of those who do not live according to it rather based on the practices of those who live according to it” said a Mennonite Pastor some time ago.
Honesty,
Too true. But when a group—particularly a religious group—advocates bending society toward its values, it needs to live up to those values itself first.
Politically active evangelicals promise that America would be much better off if it lived by evangelical values. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. But you would think that if evangelicals truly believed what they say say, they would first live out those values and, second, offer themselves as the proof in their political pudding.
But they choose to be no different than non-evangelical America, aside from demonstrably empty rhetoric. At some point, it becomes a matter of do as I say, not as I do.