Evangelical Trends

“A growing number of evangelical scholars are embracing systematic theology as dogmatics, recovering the catholic heritage of the Reformation while engaging constructively with the global and historical traditions of the church.” - Michael Horton

“ ‘Purity culture’ arose in the 1990s as an evangelical reaction to a broader culture that, in more ways than ever, embraced sexual freedom…. Church leaders responded by promoting virginity before marriage, as the church always has, adding in tactics of pledges, purity rings, and dances with their dads.” - Breakpoint

“To identify charismatics, we asked respondents whether they attended religious services where people engage in signature practices and beliefs of Pentecostal and charismatic movements: speaking in tongues, receiving direct revelation from God, divine healing, or receiving a definite answer to a prayer.” - PRRI

“I am seeing this in a lot of other institutions [other than SBC], is that the healthiest people are disengaging, because they are not the people who want to go through the nonsense that one has to go in these things.” - Juicy Ecumenism

“…there is solid evidence that White Americans who viewed Trump favorably and did not identify as evangelicals in 2016 were much more likely than White Trump skeptics to begin identifying as born-again or evangelical Protestants by 2020.” - Pew

“though the Bible and traditional teachings of the Christian Church hold that Jesus truly existed as both man and God, among the key findings of the biennial State of Theology survey from Ligonier Ministries conducted with LifeWay Research, is that 52% of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more.” - C.Post

“A panel of prominent Christian ethicists and pastors said that it is important to define what an evangelical actually is in discussions with people who may not be familiar with the term, warning that sometimes people may have a very wrong idea about evangelicals and what they stand far.” CPost

To thrive, I think there are at least five things we need to face the next ten years:

Veteran religion reporter Kenneth A. Briggs is author of “The Invisible Bestseller: Searching for the Bible in America.”

Christianity Is Growing but It Is Shifting