A TDE reader sent this link to me last week. I meant to get to it sooner, but didn't. Interesting stuff at Christian Science Monitor: The Coming Evangelical Collapse.
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.
Catholics would lose a good ally in the culture wars, yes, but might Catholicism pick at the remains?
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.
Boy, that'd be a switch: more evangelicals becoming Catholic than Catholics becoming evangelicals. There are many former-evangelical Catholics, of course, but their numbers seem dwarfed next to former-Catholic evangelicals. Ten percent of American adults are former Catholics, and most of those folks aren't druids and atheists.
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Heck, others might also benefit from the evangelical fall-out: Psychics make a fortune during uncertain economic times. Hitler did well in uncertain economic times, too, as did FDR.
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For those who missed it, the weekend brought one of the more interesting things my com box has ever seen: The Reticulator reviews Russian movies. Odd hobby, that, but then again, when you consider the good looks of Russian women, maybe not. Dostoyevsky commented frequently on their beauty, but I think he also said their attractiveness tended to be remarkably short-lived. I think he described Grushenka as possessing this singular Russian trait, but I'm no Dostoyevsky expert. If anyone out there (Reticulator?) can clarify this, that'd be great.
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You're never too old not to grow up: A 40-year-old man faces battery charges after getting into a physical fight with his mother and girlfriend over beer money.
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Random Quote that Has Stuck with Me for Years: "In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention." Simone Weil
