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 An interesting (but unsurprising) article in Christianity Today shows that self-named evangelical Christians are actually just as imperfect as everyone else, despite many of their opinions of their ilk being quite the opposite. | "The findings in numerous national polls conducted by highly respected pollsters like The Gallup Organization and The Barna Group are simply shocking. "Gallup and Barna," laments evangelical theologian Michael Horton, "hand us survey after survey demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general." Divorce is more common among "born-again" Christians than in the general American population. Only 6 percent of evangelicals tithe. White evangelicals are the most likely people to object to neighbors of another race. Josh McDowell has pointed out that the sexual promiscuity of evangelical youth is only a little less outrageous than that of their nonevangelical peers. |
To most of us, this will not come as a surprise. I know plenty of divorced, sexually active, greedy, racist, war-mongering evangelicals. Hell, I would definitely say that I know more racist and greedy evangelicals than non-evangelicals. However, when you think about it, this "newly discovered" factoid isn't that surprising. If you restrict sexuality to the point that you believe even thinking about sex is evil, it's obviously going to be let out at once in an explosion of carnality. Every kid I knew in highschool who was a goody-goody who then went on to college ended up being promiscuous, kinda crazy, and sometimes just dropping out or failing out of school because of sex, drugs, alcohol, and whatever else they got in to.
I mean damn, I knew from my freshman year on that when guys wanted to find a girl who would get pretty wild in bed once she'd had a few drinks, all they had to do was take a few jello shots with a girl from Campus Crusade for Christ. Sure, some of them were really pious, but most of them just needed a drink or two to forget all about abstinence.
Racism is even less of a surprise. Slaveowners, the KKK, the Nazis - these were all groups who used Christianity as an excuse for their intolerance. You can take a religious teaching in any direction you like, because sayings written thousands of years ago and translated several times can be interpreted just about every possible way you can imagine. Hell, "no graven images" has been translated by the orthodox and catholic churches to mean "fill your churches with as many icons and statues as possible."| "It is not surprising that George Barna concludes, "Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change." |
No, it's not becoming more like the world, it always has been like the world. It's composed of human beings; there's no way around that.| "Our first concern, of course, must be internal integrity, not external danger. What a tragedy for evangelicals to declare proudly that personal conversion and new birth in Christ are at the center of their faith and then to defy biblical moral standards by living almost as sinfully as their pagan neighbors. |
Ok, I just had to stick that quote in here because it's funny. The article frequently mentions non-christians as "pagans." It's cute, I think.
Anyway, the thing about this article is that it's written from an evangelical standpoint, so the "problems" mentioned in the article make this look like some sort of crisis. Sider makes it sound like their entire faith and the people involved are doomed to give up their religion and become like their "pagan" neighbors. In fact, it seems pretty obvious to me that the self-described pious among us have always been just like us, they just feel guilty about the things they do and therefore have to either hide their feelings deep down inside or point their fingers at others so as to shift attention from themselves and their own behaviors. It's a pretty typical case of transferrence, I think.
The point is, though the article is written as though things are changing for the evangelicals, I'd argue they're just the same as they always were; they've just never had the stats in front of them to realize it. These people are supposed to try to be as perfect as possible, but they can't - they're human. They're just as human as you and I.
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