Revival of the fittest: are evangelicals really dumbing down American religion?

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2003 by Amy Sullivan

I was a Jesus geek before being a Jesus geek was cool. In the Midwestern Baptist church where I grew up, we had quite a personal conception of the Lord and Savior. On Christmas, in addition to celebrating with more traditional deserts and carols, we baked a birthday cake and sang a rollicking tune called "Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus." Mrs. Crain, my Sunday School teacher, talked about getting "Jesus bumps" instead of goose bumps. And during the "praise and petitions" part of the worship service that preceded prayers, it was not unusual for someone to offer thanks to Jesus for the recovery of a purse left in a dressing room at J.C. Penney's. Catholics may have a saint for lost causes, but we had a deity, for lost pocketbooks.

In the days before Veggie Tales, we read Christian versions of Archie comic books, in which Betty, Veronica, and the whole gang traveled the world proselytizing. We sang praise songs displayed on overhead projectors, flocked to Amy Grant concerts, and (Lord help us) performed rap songs with puppets, using the baptistery as a stage in order to recruit kids for youth groups. We listened to countless sermons that boiled down to essentially the same point: We were doomed unless we asked Jesus to save us.

In his latest book on the nature of American faith, The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith, sociologist Alan Wolfe calls this kind of evangelicalism "tacky." He also says it's the future of American religion, a "religion [that] has been so transformed that we have leached the end of religion as we know it."

The cause of this transformation, according to Wolfe, is the competitive need to appeal to "switchers," those who change religious traditions and whom he compares to free-agent athletes looking for the best deal the market can offer. As Wolfe undoubtedly knows, but does not point out, competition among churches is not new. Protestant churches have angled for ways to attract parishioners ever since towns offered more than one denominational option--Max Weber described this American phenomenon at the turn of the 20th century. In addition, the rise of church potlucks in the 1950s was partly an attempt to woo potential suburban congregants by offering the best tater-tot casserole or ambrosia salad or themed "Luau Night" in town. While this trend is not new, Wolfe hones in on the fact that it has been accelerating in recent decades.

Today's religious communities face competition not only from other denominations, but also from other religious faiths and from the siren call of secular society. While a 1955 Gallup Poll found that only 4 percent of Americans had switched from the religion of their childhood, by the mid-1980s, that number had risen to over 30 percent. Even that figure does not reflect those who, while not switching religious traditions, fall away from the faith in which they were raised. It is efforts to attract these "unchurched"--or, more accurately, the religio-phobic--that have been behind the broad transformation of American religion Wolfe describes.

Americans are savvy consumers, and they behave no different when it comes to religion. Since its founding, America has always offered more religious choices to its citizens than most other countries. But the general pattern of consumerism in this society has led to an exponential growth in those choices. Americans are shoppers, they want to make their own decisions, they are increasingly comfortable with other people making different choices without passing judgment, they are more demanding that institutions cater to their needs, and they want lots of options. They don't want one kind of blue jeans; they want boot-cut, low-rise, reverse-fit, classic-cut, stretch-fit, flare, slim, cuffed, cropped, sandblasted, rinsed, or faded. Or maybe they want corduroys instead. So it's not surprising that Americans have demanded more variety, in the area of religion, and that they are more comfortable switching between traditions with different offerings.

The market leader in this appeal to religious consumers has been the evangelical community. Wolfe identifies two social developments--preference for personalized faith (which has led to the Protestantization of most religions) and distrust of leadership and institutions--that have driven most of the changes in modern American religion. Evangelical churches, many of which combine Jesus-as-a-buddy theology with daycare, food courts, and concert seating, have responded most directly to those trends. Other religious traditions, in turn, have had to steadily conform to the evangelical model in order to compete for members.

Wolfe outlines the growing challenge to religions communities this way: "Attempting to attract or to keep congregations whose members have been so strongly influenced by a common American culture, all of America's religions face the same imperative: Personalize or die." Put that way, it sounds rather dire. But he's right. Many Americans are looking for user-friendly faith, a cuddly God, and comfort-fit worship options. A Presbyterian church in Memphis uses PowerPoint presentations to highlight the main points of each sermon, just in case congregants doze off for a moment in the extra-cushy pews that are all the rage now, or are otherwise distracted from closely following the message. A reform synagogue in the Bay Area offers a "synaplex" experience--"different Friday night services for different tastes, just as the nearby movie theaters offer many smaller screens instead of one large one." My old evangelist Archie comic books have been replaced by David and Jonathan adventure comics and Bobblehead versions of Moses, Samson, and Noah.