Weeping for the Dying Church

I was in Tacoma Washington in the 1980’s. As I left my hotel to have dinner with the host of a convention I was to address the next morning, I noticed a very large number of people gathering in my hotel for a meeting that night. My host informed me that a Moral Majority Rally was to take place and he had been very involved in the planning and promotion of that meeting. I urged him to attend, and I would have room service for my meal, but he refused and took me and his wife to a restaurant away from the hotel.

He was a very committed Christian and saw the Moral Majority as an answer to prayer and the foundation of hope for our country and for the Christian faith. I listened with care and interest as he explained the hopes and dreams of the movement. The idea that Christians could bind together and vote together to have influence and even control of the government seemed to be a thrilling concept to him.

Then I had a sudden and for me a rather frightening thought. I explained that I did not want to dampen his enthusiasm, but one thought just would not leave my brain and I needed to express the fear it brought to me. I said, “Is it possible that this movement is happening because we Christians no longer believe in the power of our own message and the impact of our examples to change the world and are now going to try to do so with political power? Does this mean we are going to try to legislate morality?”

My question stunned my host, his wife and me as well. We tried to talk around the issue and finally just changed the subject. I had no idea what lay ahead for the Christian faith or for our nation. There were so many things I did not know at the time that soon made what I simply asked almost prophetic.

I did not know that the moral majority was the result of a very well planned and well produced plan put together by some well-established leaders in the Evangelical church. Some of them had joined hands with Bob Jones University in its fight to avoid integrating the school and evidently saw the possibilities of gaining political power and creating change by organizing Evangelicals into a voting bloc. They carefully chose abortion as their main motivational issue.

It must be said that this movement was successful beyond anyone’s imagination. They were able to be very instrumental in electing a president by delivering over eighty percent of the Evangelical Christians. They gained three Supreme Court Judges who will most likely make abortion against the law again. Since they are now such a vital part of the Republican base, politicians in every state are bending over backwards to introduce laws they think will endear the Evangelicals to them even more securely. This has resulted in determining what books are in school libraries, what historical facts must not be taught and have turned even masks and vaccines into a political and often a faith statement.

This has been a remarkable success but at what cost? When I see what has happened to the church I served, it has broken my heart and I write this in tears instead of anger or argument.

I have loved the church all of my life. I pastored three Southern Baptist churches over thirty-three years as a minister. I was born and raised in a church that was more like a family to me than just a church.

But now I see that we have made a lot of laws, but we haven’t changed any hearts. The one major thing that made us Evangelicals was the knowledge that first the hearts must change, or rules have no power for change.

Now the church I loved is known for who and what it hates instead of how much it loves. Everyone is very aware of how the Evangelical church feels about people with different sexual orientations. Everyone is well aware of walls built, borders closed and children in cages while we waited in vain for one word of compassion from the ones who set themselves up as followers of the personification of love.

I weep for a polarized nation where former friends are now rejected as enemies, where the one great need is an army of peacemakers and the army that is supposed to serve that calling are among the most divisive people we know.

I weep for a dying church. The Moral Majority started in the eighties. Every ten years the Pew research produces a survey of church attendance in America. In 1990 twelve million people said they were “nones” The term used for people who are not members or participants in any organized religion. Ten years later in 2000 the number had doubled to 24 million and has continued to grow until 2020 it was one third of the US population. If the “nones” Were a religious group, they would be the largest group in America…more “nones” than Baptist, Catholics, or Evangelicals.

The politicizing of Christianity is not the only cause for this decline, but it is the basis for there not being a future for the church as we know it. 90 percent of the Generation X have never been inside of a church and seem to have tuned us out and tuned us off. Most churches would agree with my uncle who said, “The young people’s department in my church is sixty-five years old.”

Jesus said we are to be the salt of the earth to give taste and preserve the example of His life and teachings. He also said if salt loses its savor it is good for nothing but to be thrown on the dung heap.

I never thought that was a prophecy and certainly did not expect to see it happen in my l lifetime, but even here in the buckle of the Bible belt I am having to watch churches closing their doors and selling their buildings.

A large Presbyterian church was torn down a few blocks from my home. That church had been serving people for over one hundred years, and it was too sad for me to watch. I meet with some leaders of a major denomination once a week, and it is almost like a grief group. they tell of many of their churches with less than thirty members who are trying to sell their property and close.

Weeping for the dying church would be overwhelming and depressing if I did not believe that God will always have a church. It may be so different we will not recognize it, but He will have one.

Maybe it is time for all of us who are followers to start thinking, scratching our heads, and praying for wisdom to figure out what must be done to have this vital witness in our world. Doing the same things we have always done has not worked, and will not work now.

Finding an answer must dominate our thinking and prayers. Maybe the church needs to go back to its earliest roots and become small groups in houses. Maybe there are much better answers than that. I intend to search. I hope others will join in this effort. Maybe even the Evangelicals?