(RNS) — In the Trump years, white evangelical Christians deepened their association with political power and doubled down on their social conservatism, even as — and some observers would say because of — a “precipitous drop” in their overall numbers. Evangelicalism’s 23% share of the American population in 2006 shrank to 14% in 2020.
Despite this decline, evangelicals comprise a large and prominent segment of the population — one too large to be static or monolithic. The makeup of this group has been shifting, and as younger generations take up leadership roles, they’ve grappled with how to reconcile the tendency toward right-wing politics with more progressive approaches to social issues.
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Now, a rising cohort of evangelical pastors is looking beyond partisan politics and messaging based on fear of straying from a narrowly defined path. Bishop Robert Stearns is part of this shift. The pastor of The Full Gospel Tabernacle, a thriving Assemblies of God church in Orchard Park, New York, near Buffalo, Stearns said in an interview late last year that evangelicals are waking up to the reality that “the ground underneath their feet has shifted.”
“Younger evangelicals are just leaving the church,” said Stearns. “They might still call themselves spiritual, they might still have a real affinity for Jesus and his teachings, but there are aspects of evangelicalism that have disappointed them and that they no longer trust.”
That distrust was sown in part by evangelicalism’s emergence on the national stage. “The 1980s and 1990s was the era of institutional evangelicalism,” he said, pointing to the rise of “The 700 Club,” Regent University, Liberty University and other organizations that purported to represent and speak for evangelicals. Not everyone in the movement liked what they saw.
Then social media came along and challenged the Goliaths. “It empowers the charismatic individual to have massive influence,” Stearns said. “It gave a platform to individuals who heretofore would not have had that kind of reach.”
Another transformation that was aided by technology is the growth of what used to be the very small liberal arm of evangelicalism. Before, he said, “to be evangelical meant you were right-wing on a whole host of issues, so you didn’t have to have conversation or exploration. Now you have many, many different voices.”
And though many people are leaving the church, those who stay “are viewing issues of climate change, human sexuality and the politicization of religion in America … through a more critical lens.”
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The question now, Stearns said, is: “Will the true evangelical please stand up?”
The answer depends on how the younger generations think about what they believe. “The big pivot that we need to make is in how we express our theology,” he said.
