That Evangelicals are not as big a threat as they think

Once you get passed the first few paragraphs, it’s an interesting article, although we may not agree with all of Wolfe’s conclusions. But it’s just one more piece for the “What Does Religion Mean to Americans, Anyway?” file.

No other aspect of their faith is as important to conservative Protestants as worship: prayer, visible and frequent, is what attracts them to church. But worship in conservative Protestant America rarely involves introspective efforts to honour a supreme being whose concerns are other-worldly. “Lord, give me a clean X-ray when I go for a mammogram next week” or “God, help the search committee find a new pastor for the church,” are some of the forms taken by prayer at one Baptist church in New Jersey. At an evangelical church women’s group in the suburbs of New York City, each participant has a chance to ask God to respond to her concerns, and, as she does, others take notes so that they can pray for their friends during the week. Those concerns, moreover, are anything but other-worldly: most involve health, money, and real estate, along with issues facing the church. We should not doubt the meaning that worship has for conservative Christians. But nor should we ignore the fact that, judging by how many believers express themselves in prayer, these are people who believe that God helps those who focus on themselves.

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Not all religious leaders are happy about prayer that focuses on individual needs. “Christian worship,” writes the conservative Lutheran theologian, Marva J Dawn, “is about offerings of sacrifice.” Proper worship, in her view, requires an appreciation of God’s power to punish us if we fail to take seriously the demands he makes upon us. But because we live in a culture of narcissism that makes us want to feel good about ourselves, Dawn argues, we make ourselves, and not God, the centrepiece of our worship.

Marva Dawn is one of many evangelicals concerned about the lack of strong religious commitment among her peers. I discovered this to my surprise when I published The Transformation of American Religion (Free Press) this autumn. My book, containing many of the examples and stories I have cited here, was widely discussed among conservative Christians, and many of them agreed with my findings. Cal Thomas, a conservative evangelical and perhaps America’s most widely read newspaper columnist, called it “must-reading.” Christianity Today, founded by Billy Graham, found the book’s message “disturbing for believers” and said that it correlates with criticisms of evangelical religious practice coming from within the movement.

Individuals associated with the Christian right want to believe that they can help save America from a slide into moral despondency. But in reality, Christians in America find themselves experiencing what I call “salvation inflation”: the trend, very much like grade inflation, in which less is expected but more is rewarded. People whose taste for immediate gratification leads them to conclude that they can be saved just by pronouncing their faith in Jesus are unlikely to save themselves, let alone save their country