LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This Christianity Today article reveals that Evangelicals are as sinful- or moreso- as the rest of us.

Scandalous behavior is rapidly destroying American Christianity. By their daily activity, most "Christians" regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is Lord, but with their actions they demonstrate allegiance to money, sex, and self-fulfillment.

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."1 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.

Alan Wolfe, famous contemporary scholar and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, has just published a penetrating study of American religious life. Evangelicals figure prominently in his book. His evaluation? Today's evangelicalism, Wolfe says, exhibits "so strong a desire to copy the culture of hotel chains and popular music that it loses what religious distinctiveness it once had."2 Wolfe argues, "The truth is there is increasingly little difference between an essentially secular activity like the popular entertainment industry and the bring-'em-in-at-any-cost efforts of evangelical megachurches."3

In other words, Evangelicals, in spite of their high-flown and loudly touted ideals and religion, are just as human as everyone else. And that last sentence has confirmed my secret belief that most people go to those mega-churches for entertainment, not spiritual succour. I mean, some of these places have rock bands and multimedia screens (karaoke hymns?), and the sanctuaries look more like a movie house than a church. Now I understand why.

It is not surprising that George Barna concludes, "Every day, the church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change."4 We have very little time, he believes, to reverse these trends. African Christian and famous missions scholar Professor Lamin Sanneh told Christianity Today recently that "the cultural captivity of Christianity in the West is nearly complete, and with the religion tamed, it is open season on the West's Christian heritage. I worry about a West without a moral center facing a politically resurgent Islam."5

See the rest of the article at the site listed above. It's interesting reading, and something that you can point your more hypocritical Evangelical friends to when they start being holier-than-thou. According to the stats mentioned in the article, Evangelicals and Born Again Christians are no better than the rest of us. And where divorce is concerned- especially in the South, they are actually worse. There you have it- they're human, too.

Sunfell