This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West.

I read a very interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor about the future of Evangelicals in America.

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

According to the article, evangelical Christianity will collapse because of several mistakes of the religious movement. It's an interesting idea, especially because many people observed that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was an event that united Americans, and made them more accepting and accommodating to Americans of different faiths and backgrounds. There was a common enemy - the terrorists - and a lot of Americans took comfort in Bush's religious conviction.

The article offers several reasons why the collapse is imminent; the two most interesting claims are listed below:

"1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society."


"2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it."

Another interesting aspect of the article is that it offers suggestions as to what will be left after the collapse and suggests is that religion will not die in America, but instead "Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success....Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions."

Interesting. I wonder how this will affect the politics of Americans?