Are White Evangelicals Sacrificing The Future In Search Of The Past?

Fivethirtyeight
By Daniel Cox January 24,2018

After dominating much of American politics for the past 40 years, white evangelical Protestants are now facing a sharp decline. Nearly one-third of white Americans raised in evangelical Christian households leave their childhood faith.2 About 60 percent of those who leave end up joining another faith tradition, while 40 percent give up on religion altogether. The rates of disaffiliation are even higher among young adults: 39 percent of those raised evangelical Christian no longer identify as such in adulthood. And while there is always a good deal of churn in the religious marketplace — people both entering and leaving faith traditions — recent findings suggest that membership losses among white evangelical Protestants are not being offset by gains.

...research also suggests that one of the prime motivators for leaving a religion is belief incompatibility. A 2016 PRRI study found that the most common reason people give up on their childhood faith is that they no longer believe in its teachings. Twenty-nine percent of Americans who have left their formative religion explicitly mention negative teachings about gay and lesbian people as a proximate cause for their disaffiliation. Even in the face of these demographic challenges, there are few signs that evangelical Christianity will bend to the prevailing cultural winds. In 2017, a group of evangelical pastors and theologians released the “Nashville Statement” on sexual morality and gender roles, which among other things reaffirmed the group’s uncompromising opposition to homosexuality.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-evangelicals-sacrificing-the-future-in-search-of-the-past/


Evangelical Christianity is a GOP political action committee disguised as Christianity.