Evangelicals Today

Evangelicalism is a mode of being Christian, more missionary movement than official church. As a result, the 250 million or more evangelical Protestants in the world can be hard to pin down. All the more reason to take a look at the Global Survey of Evangelical Leaders recently released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelicalism took place in October 2010, in Cape Town, South Africa, bringing together more than three thousand evangelical pastors and lay leaders from all over the world. Pew’s researchers surveyed the participants, and the results provide a clear picture of what evangelicals are thinking these days”or at least what their leaders are thinking.

There are no great surprises. It turns out that almost all the evangelical leaders surveyed agree that Christianity is the one true faith, the Bible is the Word of God, and abortion is always or usually wrong. But there are a number of interesting nuances.

Evangelicals from what the pollsters call the Global North and the Global South (the geographically unsatisfactory but now standard names for European-dominated societies”the West”and the Rest) view themselves somewhat differently. Most agree that the Global South exercises too little influence within the evangelical movement, but those from the West are more likely to think that way (78 percent) than those from the non-Western World (62 percent).

Does this discrepancy suggest a post-imperialist guilt complex? Perhaps. But it might also reflect an exaggerated sense of self-importance among Westerners in general. After all, one must see oneself as supereminent in order to condescend anxiously. It’s very likely that the Korean and Nigerian evangelicals have the more accurate view: Westerners are rich and powerful, but not as much as they think.

The survey asked evangelicals to identify the greatest threats they face. Secularism and consumerism, as well as sex and violence in popular culture, top the list. Way down at the bottom? Catholicism. Only one in ten think that Catholicism is a threat to evangelicalism. Ecumenical goodwill in the post“Vatican II era? I hope so, though I find myself wishing for just a bit more anxiety born of worries that Catholic missionaries will beat the evangelicals at their evangelizing game.

Close to a majority of evangelicals identify Islam as a major threat, and those who live in Muslim-majority countries especially so (nine in ten). Moreover, 82 percent of those living in countries with Muslim majorities view Muslims as unfriendly toward evangelical Christianity. Unsurprising, perhaps, but things get interesting. The very same evangelicals from Muslim-majority countries were asked about their views of Muslims as opposed to their views of Muslim views of them. Although a majority of evangelicals worldwide view Muslims unfavorably, evangelicals living in Muslim-majority countries view them less unfavorably.

Come again? Evangelicals in Islamic countries think Muslims both more threatening and more congenial? There can be no doubt about the depth, significance, and sometimes violence of the clash between Christianity and Islam. But perhaps common enemies”secularism, consumerism, degraded popular culture”encourage sentiments of mutual respect. The survey results suggest that the closer one gets to Muslims, the more one feels the religious threat of their convictions”and the more one appreciates the strength of their convictions.

There’s another interesting set of findings, these about gender roles, that, like the crisscrossing views that evangelicals have of Muslims, is initially puzzling. When asked if men have a duty to serve as religious leaders in marriage and family, 79 percent answered in the affirmative. This strong affirmation of male headship reflects what St. Paul teaches in his Letter to the Ephesians: Wives are to be subject to their husbands, for just as Christ is the head of the church so the husband is head of the wife. Yet, 75 percent of evangelical leaders say that women can be church pastors. Only half say that men should be the main breadwinners, and just a third say that women should stay at home and raise children.

The results”on the one hand a traditional commitment to male headship of the family and on the other hand a broad affirmation of modern changes in the roles of women in society”suggest that global evangelicalism encourages what University of Virginia sociologist Bradford Wilcox calls “soft patriarchy,” a pattern of domestic life that seeks to harmonize biblical principles of male headship with contemporary realities of female empowerment (that are in some cases themselves the upshot of other biblical principles).

Over the years I’ve found that, at its best, evangelicalism is both fiercely biblical and eminently practical, often boldly experimenting with forms of worship and piety that blend traditional faith with modern realities. I’m often anxious that the blend tends to be too ad hoc and unstable. But that’s the high-church Catholic in me, I suppose. In any event, whatever one thinks of the cogency or practicality of “soft patriarchy,” the seemingly odd combination of gender attitudes reflected in this survey suggests an experiment we all need to be making. Modern feminism has achieved a great deal of lasting importance, but for the most part it has come to a dead (and often sterile) end. It’s time, as I suggested above, to find a way forward.