Christine Wicker

Despite the common perception that evangelicals are a powerful force in America, author Christine Wicker says they are actually a dying breed. In her new book, The Fall of the Evangelical Nation (HarperOne), she chronicles declining numbers—from baptisms to retention—among evangelicals. 

A former Dallas Morning News religion reporter, Ms. Wicker spoke with managing editor Robin Russell.

You say that evangelicals in America are not really 25 percent of the adult population, as many believe. 

I thought they were 1 in 4, but where that number comes from is self-identification. If a person says they’re evangelical, then that’s what they are. But rarely do people really define what they mean. When they do, the numbers drop. 

If you look at 16 million Southern Baptists, if you look at 30 million of National Association of Evangelicals (the country’s two largest evangelical groups) and then add in a pretty good number for the unaffiliated megachurches, it looks like a fourth of population. But how do you get to them? They join different churches, they ask for transfers of their membership. There is a huge amount of double-counting—triple-counting—because people not only join different churches, but they attend different churches. What’s happened with the big megachurches is they’ve stopped counting members; they only count attendance. 

The Baptists published in their annual report that 5 million of them don’t even live in same town where the church they’re supposed to belong to is. That’s not much of a member. If you take their numbers, you’re left with 11 million people. They publish how many they run in Sunday school: 5 million people. Just because you go to Sunday school doesn’t mean you’re part of the Religious Right. The Baptists say that 1 in 8 in their church isn’t even saved. If you take that person out, you get about 4 million. This number scared me. It simply can’t be that low. How many people are we really talking who are the core? 

The NAE say they have 30 million members. All their member churches gave out their membership numbers. They had about 7½ million people. I called NAE and they didn’t even know where the 30 million number came from! I went on to get baptism and growth statistics—all published by the churches. And I’m telling you, there’s no way they have 1 in 4 left.

So how did evangelical Christianity get to be perceived as such a major force in the U.S.? 

They’re organized. Even 7 percent of the population, if they’re well-organized, punch far above their weight. They are able to deliver a close election. What’s happened is they’ve been able to put out the idea that there’s been a huge resurgence of evangelicalism, when in fact their numbers have been going down since 1900, when they were 42 percent of the population. They’ve managed to completely muzzle the voices of other Christians in this country who are five times as numerous as the evangelicals. 

Fifty years ago, everybody in this country pretty much agreed with the religious right on most things. Nobody was championing the “gay lifestyle,” as the evangelicals call it. Nobody was pushing that women had the right to abortion. It isn’t the evangelicals who have changed—it’s the rest of us. You look anywhere you want in the culture and tell me that Religious-Right evangelicals have had a huge impact. They just haven’t. When [George] Barna went out and looked for evangelicals, he couldn’t find them anywhere. Little Rock (Ark.) came the closest. Some will say that Barna’s definition is too stringent. That’s absurd. He doesn’t even mention the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, evolution—none of that.

What has been the appeal of evangelical Christianity? 

It answers human needs brilliantly. It tells us what’s right and wrong. It gives us a God who’s always listening to us. And it says he’s gonna help you. It keeps us from feeling helpless. It gives us purpose, it gives us guidance, it gives us community. Megachurches are absolutely phenomenal. This is the best deal in town. Most of these people give very little money to the church. They don’t even have to join anymore. The preaching, the music, the seats. The bathrooms have fresh flowers in them. They do everything, and these people are wonderful. You can wear anything you want to church. You can be sleeping with your boyfriend, you can bring him right to church and nobody will say anything.

So why aren’t more people buying into it? 

It’s happening because it’s based on beliefs that have become less tenable as science has changed the very software of our minds. We don’t think like people in a patriarchal, honor-bound society anymore. And in order to be an evangelical, you have to buy into so much of that.

You also looked at their reluctance to do evangelism. 

When I was a kid in the South, it didn’t seem so odd to say we were the only people who were saved. Now, even to evangelicals, it’s just got a nasty feel. The world has come together in ways; we know each other better. So that basic premise is harder and harder for people to swallow. For me, I don’t want to be in an exclusivist group. I’m already exclusive enough. I’m a white woman who lives in America. There are enough barriers between me and the world. I’m not going to call myself an evangelical and put up one more. If you’re an evangelical, you don’t even know what’s happening to you. But if you’re a non-evangelical, you know that being an evangelical shuts up the free flow of ideas. You know that people stop talking to you about who they really are and what they really believe. And I don’t want to be that kind of person.

Evangelicals are also increasingly leaving their churches. What’s going on? 

About a thousand a day leave. We never really hear about that. We know about the process of conversion, but apostacy or the process of unconversion is even more compelling and irresistible. It’s what happened to me. It’s what happens to most of those 1,000 people a day. Once it starts, they can’t stop it. They lose their security, sometimes they lose their God, they lose their friends, they alienate their families. They’re saying, “I just don’t believe this anymore.” And often what they’re saying is, “I don’t believe God’s grace isn’t extended to everyone.”

What makes evangelical megachurches especially vulnerable? 

They have a business-driven model. They do niche marketing. They try to serve everybody, and they do it fabulously. But that takes a lot of money, a lot of facility and a lot of volunteers. One of the big megachurches needs 1,000 volunteers each Sunday for their children’s program. And instead of waiting until they have money, they use the business model of borrowing money. Their marketing strategy has caused them to overextend, and their strategy is also built on location. So as suburbs move farther out, they are pinned by these large facilities.

Aren’t megachurches mostly a Baby Boomer phenomenon? 

There’s some evidence that people who are coming up don’t want to foot the bill for any of the things that baby boomers have done—megachurches included. They want their money to go somewhere else. Barna just released a study that showed when [younger people] give, they give less to the church, and they often don’t give. 

It appears that God is now speaking to the hearts of evangelical pastors about the needs of the poor. Jesus never cared about the poor. Don’t you know he said, “The poor will always be with you”? That’s the only thing I ever heard about the poor when I was growing up. And that hadn’t changed much up until 10 years ago. I am intrigued to realize that younger people want to give their money to those kinds of causes. I asked one megachurch preacher, “I can’t believe all these churches are talking about the poor now.” And he told me, “You have to. The people won’t stand for it now if you don’t.” These are people who read the culture very well. You just don’t get much smarter than these guys. 

But these magnificent founding pastors are getting older. They’re going to retire, and finding replacements has not been easy. They get a perfectly good, perfectly capable pastor, but they can’t capture the former glory.

What would you say to United Methodists who are concerned about declining membership? 

I would say, “Be of good cheer.” I think Christians should be bold. I think we should say we are Bible-based; we just don’t believe [evangelicals’] interpretation of it. Mainline churches need to give good sound bites. I think they need to come out swinging. That’s what fundamentalists have done. They had something to give. 

People want a tangible connection with deity or a cosmos force or the great spirit, but Christianity in America has been unable to target the problems we most need help with. People are making up their own faith. “Everything turns out as it should.” What’s that? That’s magical thinking. The Bible doesn’t say that. The old biblical stories aren’t serving us so people are making up their own. 

What do Methodists have to offer? Well, they have Jesus. People still do like him. I like him. It’s easy to leave the church; it’s hard to leave Jesus. They have a book that still means a lot. My stepdad just died. When that preacher got up and he started intoning those old words it felt like balm on my spirit. They still mean something to me. 

I think Methodists should study other success methods the way the megachurches did. I think they should innovate. I think they should change. I think they should go where the people are and answer the needs. My friend’s husband is running around on her. He’s a lifelong philanderer. Is he a sex addict? Can he really change his behavior? We didn’t ask those questions when I was a kid, but we do now. 

I don’t know what to say to her and she doesn’t know what to do. You’re not going to hear that preached. If he is not responsible for his behavior (and science is showing us in new ways that we do not have the volition that we thought we had), what do I do about it? Do I kick the bum out? Do I suffer? To what degree can we hold each other accountable? That stuff is just bombarding us every day and people are making their own decisions because they have to.

rrussell@umr.org

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