This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In America, the secular movement is a dismal failure, or is it?
While it has tried for centuries, the secular, of its own accord, has neither the numbers nor the ideological dominance to dispatch religion. The only influence the secular really has is what religion concedes to. As a small minority, it shrewdly draws Christianity into culture conflicts that create self-destructive consequences for the people of faith and their churches. It has learned to divide to try to conquer.
American mainline Christianity lost its way when it took sides in the culture war. It was seduced into supporting the "sexual revolution" sponsored by the secular. The mainline Protestants, joined with some Vatican II Catholics, accommodated the popular culture and ultimately adopted permissive moral standards. Taking sides in the culture conflicts by embracing the secular sexual agenda has been ruinous for the mainline churches in America. Their memberships have plummeted over the last 50 years. While some of their adherents "switched" churches, many more abandoned organized religion altogether.
American evangelical Christianity lost its way when it panicked over the sexual revolution by re-prioritizing its mission and charging headlong into culture conflicts. To fight off the axis of progressive Christianity and the secular, evangelicals emphasized political advocacy over preaching the gospel. Advocating a political ideology over theology reduced Christianity to just one more special interest group battling for its political end of the stick. Choosing advocacy over evangelization diminished Christianity's transcendent authority and appeal, leaving many of the rising generations at best ambivalent about organized religion.
American Christianity is now being drawn into yet another conflict, this one between religious rights and gay rights. Having lost the battle over same-sex marriage to the sexual revolutionaries, American Christianity, once again panicked, is overplaying its hand trying to legislate its rights and protections absent any consideration of civic rights for the LGBT community. Protecting religious rights is foundational to the well-being of a pluralistic society and all forms of faith. But it is neither American nor Christian to deny civic rights to others. To do so is unacceptable and unsustainable, particularly for those among the younger generations that place a greater priority on fairness for all.
American Christianity has nothing to fear from the secular. Secular success over Christianity should not be accounted to anyone or anything but what the churches have done to themselves. They lost sight of the reasons for their own past prosperity and the history of how Christianity as a whole has triumphed over the secular time and time again since the crucifixion of Christ. Neither the secular nor other faith traditions have a brighter future than American Christianity, despite the propaganda promulgated otherwise. Christianity is the dominant faith in America and will remain so.
Nevertheless, during the last 50 years, American Christianity has wandered in the wilderness, wounded from fratricide while fighting against a bogeyman that created unwarranted worry in the hearts of the clergy, luring them into culture conflicts that are no more than diabolical diversions from the true purpose and mission of the faith. Both progressive and conservative American Christianity have been seriously damaged by their engagement in culture conflicts — mainline churches abandoned the conservative and strict moral standards that made them "mainline" in the first place, and evangelical churches forgot why they are called evangelical to begin with when they advanced advocacy over evangelization. Both have lost adherents because of their choices.
American Christianity needs clergy who cannot be deceived to turn back to fight a paper tiger nipping at their heals. American Christianity needs leaders fearless in the face of Pharaoh with the faith to guide followers out of Egypt through the stormy sea into the promised land. American Christianity desperately needs a prophet-physician prescient enough to deliver an accurate diagnosis, a hopeful prognosis and an effectual treatment to heal the despondent heart of America and mend the self-inflicted wounds of its Christian faith.
Stuart C. Reid is a former Utah state senator who lives in Ogden.