Jesus For President

[AiA in Atlanta]

Times. They are a changin.' And with Jerry Falwell burning in hell and unable to rally the Republican faithful who voted for Bush will the Republicans have to move to the center?

"What Baptist leaders have known for years is finally public: The Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination in decline. Half of the SBC's 43,000 churches will have shut their doors by 2030 if current trends continue.

And unless God provides a miracle, the trends will continue. They are longstanding and deeply rooted. The denomination's growth rate has been declining since the 1950s. The conservative/fundamentalist takeover 30 years ago was supposed to turn the trend around; it didn't make a bit of difference.

Leaders said it did. Reporters and politicians believed it did. But the numbers kept going down until, finally, they have become obvious to everyone.

Evangelical faith has been dropping since 1900, when 42 percent of the U.S. claimed that distinction. Every year, Religious Right evangelicals, such as those who lead the Southern Baptists, are a smaller proportion of the country. Every year, their core values are violated more flagrantly by the media, scientific discovery and mainstream behavior. Every election, politicians promise to serve them and then don't because evangelicals lack the power to make them.

What all this means is that we were duped. All the hype proclaiming an evangelical resurgence was merely that – hype, a furious shout from a faith losing its grip, manipulation by a relatively small group of dedicated, focused, political power-seekers."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christine ... 05009.html