RON
The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience My friend Graham Cyster, an evangelical church leader in South Africa during the struggle against apartheid, was once smuggled into an underground Communist cell. “Tell us about the gospel of Jesus Christ,” they said. So Graham talked about the way reconciliation with God leads to a reconciled body of Christ where there is neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white. When he’d finished, a 17-year-old boy who had been listening intently said, “That is wonderful. Show me where I can see that happening.” My friend’s face fell. He admitted sadly that he did not know of any good example in South Africa.“Then the whole thing is a piece of f—kin’ shit,” the young man yelled.Within a month the youth left the country to join the military wing of the anti-apartheid movement. That experience led Graham to resolve never again to preach what he was not trying to live. One of the greatest scandals today —at least as devastating as the “scandal of the evangelical mind” bemoaned by Wheaton College historian Mark Noll —is that vast numbers of evangelicals do not practice what they preach.The polling data is clear.“Gallup and Barna hand us survey after survey,” evangelical theologian Michael Horton says,“demonstrating that evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.” One wonders if the central evangelical belief —in a new birth through personal faith in Christ who sends the Holy Spirit to
SIDER
transform us into the very image of Christ—is in reality a farce, a fraud, or a false promise. George Gallup, Jr., speaks of an “ethics gap—the difference between the way people think of themselves and the way they actually are.” The following statistics—taken from recent polls by Barna, Gallup, Green, Ronsvalles, and Smith— are disturbing: • Only 8 percent of those who identified themselves as “born-again” Christians tithe—that is, give 10 percent of their earnings to the work of the church/charity (Barna, 1999). • The more money Christians make, the less likely they are to tithe: 89 percent of those making less than $20,000 a year tithe, while 4 percent of those making $40,000-$59,999 tithe, and only 1 percent of those making $75,000$99,999 tithe (Barna, 1999). • General giving of Christians to their churches declined as a percentage of income from 3.14 percent in 1968 to 2.48 percent in 1994.And evangelical giving, which had been dramatically greater than that of other Christians, crept closer and closer to the average (Ronsvalles). • In the early 1990s when the average church member gave $20 a year for global outreach (evangelism and social ministry), the average American church member spent $164 in soft drinks and over $1,000 on recreation—while over one billion people tried to survive on $1 a day (Ronsvalles). • 77 percent of evangelicals say that volunteering in local community organizations is “very important,” but only 32 percent actually volunteer “a lot” (Smith). • The percentage of “bor n-again” Christians who have experienced divorce is higher than that of nonChristians: 26 percent vs. 22 percent (Barna, 1999). • 25 percent of “born-again” Christians have lived with a member of the PRISM 2004
36
opposite sex without getting married (Barna, 2001). • Born-again adults spend 700% more time per week watching television than participating in an activity such as prayer, Bible reading, and worship (Barna, 2000). • Evangelicals are more likely than Catholics or mainline Christians to object to having an African-American neighbor (Gallup, 1989). • 26 percent of the “high-commitment” evangelicals and 46 percent of the “lower-commitment” evangelicals think pre-marital sex is acceptable (Green, 2001). • 13 percent of “high-commitment” evangelicals even think it is acceptable for married persons to have extramarital sex (Green, 2001). Whether the issue is marriage and sexuality or money and care for the poor, evangelicals today are living scandalously unbiblical lives. Large numbers of evangelicals live in flat contradiction to biblical norms. Our lifestyles contradict our theology and undermine our witness. Think of the witness we would have for Christ if virtually every time that non-Christians met evangelicals they discovered joyful people in committed marriages, leaders in overcoming racism, and generous partners in empowering the poor. Instead we have been seduced by society’s individualistic, adulterous, materialistic values. We have neglected our fundamental belief that a living personal relationship with Jesus Christ produces marvelous, lifelong conversion.What an irony that just when evangelicals are loudly supporting governmental faith-based initiatives (based on the assumption that spiritual faith can transform broken people), the polling data suggest that in many crucial areas evangelicals are not living any differently from their unbelieving neighbors. Continued on page 33.