The Internet Monk, who is not a Lutheran for those of you in doubt, has a commentary in the Christian Science Monitor called, “The coming evangelical collapse.” The article is condensed from three posts available here. He opens by saying:
I believe that we are on the verge- within 10 years- of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity; a collapse that will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and that will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. I believe this evangelical collapse will happen with astonishing statistical speed; that within two generations of where we are now evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its current occupants, leaving in its wake nothing that can revitalize evangelicals to their former “glory.”
To the extent that such a collapse makes evangelicals look less like Joel Osteen and more like Tony Evans, this could be very good. But it ain’t necessarily going to happen.
To the extent that the evangelical movement is built upon false doctrine and misconceptions about God and life, it has to eventually collapse as the false crutches eventually break when leaned upon by the misguided masses.
Or as the Bible puts it,
Church history is full of pendulum swings. After a time of fragmentation following Luther’s death, my Lutheran movement began an era of academic orthodoxy after Martin Chemnitz put together the Book of Concord in 1580. But within a generation corruption infiltrated society, government, commerce and the church as an emphasis on intellectual formulation of doctrine failed to personalize faith in a transformational way.
The Pietistic movement sought to correct that error but swung the other way as their focus on personal experience neglected the study of orthodox doctrine. Soon Halle University, the center of Pietism, became the first victim of Rationalism.
We see similar swings in later revival movements. Just look at the swings between the Calvinistic emphasis on the sovereignty of God and the Arminian focus on man’s free will. The first Great Awakening with Jonathan Edwards was more Calvinistic. Then Charles Finney was more Arminian. And on and on it went. What I have observed is that the leaders of each revival movement seek to correct the shortcomings of his generation’s theology and then his followers take that to the extreme. A generation later someone else comes along calling the church away from that extreme and his followers take the ball and run to the other extreme.
I have a hunch we are due for another pendulum swing. I’m not sure it will follow the scenario laid out by Spencer. He’s basically predicting that current trends will accelerate. I’m wondering if some of those trends aren’t beginning to pivot back the other direction already.
I hope your right, but honestly, I’ve been waiting to see a pendulum (any pendulum) swing back my whole life, and see no signs yet. My fear is that society today is so radically different from anything we’ve seen before, that the pendulum has simply been disconnected. “Society” itself is a word almost without meaning. We live in a “society” that specifically rejects the idea of shared norms, so where is the pendulum now?
Mark Galli at Christianity Today has picked up on I-Monk’s post.
He makes some interesting observations.
Those are good observations. I didn’t take the time yesterday to say that while reading what I read of iMonk’s comments, I kept thinking of the work of the Spirit which so often goes unnoticed for years–the 1,000 prophets who remain faithful to God though under the radar. I’ve heard of God working in New York and Boston, but I don’t know think those cities are going to “turn around” in a few years, so the real work will go unnoticed by many.