The Coming Evangelical Collapse

This can’t be an accident. Why is the media suddenly reporting this way? Is this writer onto something? And if what he’s saying is true, how can this be good news for the Orthodox? NFTU

(Christian Science Monitor) We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

…

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.

Related? Suspect charged in pastor’s shooting death

(CNN) A 27-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of a pastor at a church in Maryville, Illinois, authorities said Monday.

Terry J. Sedlacek was charged with fatally shooting Fred Winters, the pastor of First Baptist Church. Winters was shot during Sunday morning services.

Prosecutors also charged Sedlacek with two counts of aggravated battery for the alleged stabbings of parishioners Terry Bullard and Keith Melton. The injuries are not life-threatening, said Illinois state police spokesman Ralph Timmins.

The gunman was also seriously wounded, Timmins said.

The church, meanwhile, urged its members to remember Winter’s family, the wounded parishioners and the assailant and his family.