There's lots of hand-wringing these days in conservative Christian circles: According to recent polls, "Nones" have overtaken the number of Evangelicals, and more recently even Catholics in the United States. The trend toward nones is even more heightened among young adults. There's also the rise of the Christian Left in the public eye and in politics. And, of course, the clergy scandal—both in Catholic and Evangelical circles. All have been taken to point to the eclipse of the Christian Right.
The thing is, this has been coming for a long time. While the rise of the Religious Right among Evangelicals in the 1970s and 1980s was taken as a resurgent movement of conservative Christians, it actually betokened the weakness of the Evangelical Church in the U.S.
The story of the rise of the Religious Right is told by all sides as a story of moral reaction to the 1960s and 1970s. That misses a critical part of the story. A morally lax culture does not threaten the Church. The Church has survived for centuries as integral communities in larger cultures that do not share her distinctive moral practices.
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