In a late November column New York Times columnist Ross Douthat asked, “Is there an Evangelical Crisis?” This is a riff on his 2015 Erasmus lecture, A Crisis of Conservative Catholicism. For Evangelicals, Douthat wonders whether Donald Trump's presidency might split American Evangelicalism just as it might split American conservatism, and as it might split the GOP. Or might not. Douthat muses whether the turmoil in Evangelicalism extends no further than a small group of Evangelical “never-Trumpers”; leaders without all that many followers.
I doubt President Trump presages an Evangelical crackup. To say that, however, is not to say that American Evangelicalism is not in a crisis. American Evangelicalism has been in crisis for at least two generations. Indeed, Evangelicalism was birthed in crisis. The Fundamentalist/modernist debates split American Christianity (along with several denominations) in the first half of the 20th century. (“Fundamentalists” were so named for affirming several of the supernatural “fundamentals” of the faith, such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus.)
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