Pivoting off the news that the conservative Southern Baptist Convention saw its membership decline for the seventh year in a row, Molly Worthen argues that it might be time to discard the idea that “the churches that grow are the strictest, most demanding churches”:
If you step back and assess the big picture, few conservative churches are growing anymore (the Assemblies of God is, but by less than 2 percent per year). Evangelicals’ recent strategies—ranging from a hipster makeover to appeal to the Millennial crowd to the mistaken hope that millions of Latinos are leaving Catholicism and becoming conservative Protestants—cannot hold off the world-historical forces of secularization. As the historian David Hollinger has argued, even if liberal churches have lost the battle for butts in the pews, the steady advance of civil rights, the sexual revolution, and gay liberation suggests that they are winning the wider culture.
You’ve probably heard that the United States has been the exception to the decline of organized religion in the developed West over the last 200 years, and that’s true. But American exceptionalism has merely delayed secularization, not halted it. Poll numbers—rising numbers of “nones” who say they have no religious affiliation; slowly falling rates of church attendance—suggest that even if Americans continue to believe that life has a supernatural dimension, many may be drifting out of institutionalized worship. Traditional religious organizations are losing their grip on the public sphere and their influence in the lives of individuals.
As Emma Green reports, however, Southern Baptists aren’t responding to the news by rethinking their approach to an issue many believe are hurting them with young people – gay marriage. She quotes Russell Moore as proclaiming “there is not space in Southern Baptist churches for someone who is unrepentantly engaged in homosexual conduct.” Her take on the matter:
As laws on marriage change, popular belief may change, too, and that may affect the strength of the Southern Baptist movement. But no matter what environment the denomination is operating within, Moore seems to be saying, the core of their beliefs remain the same. Sex is a procreative act, defined by the intention of giving life. Marriage is biblically circumscribed, a union created by God, not the state. And Southern Baptists believe it is their duty to evangelize, to share these views with the world. Insofar as they succeed in creating converts, they will have persuaded those people that this is the right way of seeing marriage and sexuality, just as gay-marriage advocates have persuaded others that theirs is the right view. This doesn’t have to be a “war,” with one winner and one loser; people can have a variety of opinions that are fundamentally at odds, and Moore seems to believe that can happen with civility. As he said at a recent discussion held by the Ethics & Public Policy Center:
I don’t think that what we’re seeing is a move within evangelicalism … away from, for instance, a Christian sexual ethic. I do think, though, that we’re seeing an era in which Christianity is able to be clear. Nominal, cultural, almost-gospel Christianity is going away, and with it, the impulse to try to make Christianity marketable by making Christianity normal.
The creative question is not whether Southern Baptists will finally “admit defeat” and cede their views, now that many states are starting to allow gay marriage and many people are having pre-marital sex. It’s how Southern Baptists will live side-by-side with those who live and believe differently than them.
The Dish 