The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience

In a new book, The Scandal of the Evangelical
Conscience (Baker), Ron Sider steps on the toes of the
body of Christ, detailing the facts of its
worldliness. When an excerpt from Sider's book
appeared in CT's sister publication Books & Culture,
it created enormous buzz on the religion blogs.
Liberal observers said the book shows that religious
folk are hypocrites after all, while evangelical
bloggers saw our reflection in the mirror and bewailed
our condition.

--------------

Title: THE EVANGELICAL SCANDAL. (Interivew with Sider)
Source: Christianity Today Apr. 2005, Vol. 49 Issue 4,
starts on page 70, 4 pages

INTERVIEWER: What troubles you the most about
evangelicals today?

SIDER: The heart of the matter is the scandalous
failure to live what we preach. The tragedy is that
poll after poll by Gallup and Barna show tbat
evangelicals live just like the world.

Evangelical Christians and bom-again Christians get
divorced just as often, if not a little more, than the
general population. And Barna has discovered tbat yo
percent of tbe born-again Christians who are divorced
got divorced after they accepted Christ. On sexual
promiscuity, we're probably doing a little better than
the general population. Josh McDowell bas estimated
that maybe our evangelical youth are 10 percent
better, Lord help us.

INTERVIEWER: So at least it's a measurable difference.

SIDER: Well it is measurable, although there's not so
much hard [data] on that question as with some of the
others. John Green, one of the hest evangelical
pollsters, says that about a third of all evangelicals
say that premarital sex is okay. And about 15 percent
say that adultery is okay.

Take the issue of racism. A Gallup study discovered
that when they asked the question. "Do you object if a
black neighbor moves in next door?" the least
prejudiced were Catholics and non-evangelicals.
Thenext group, in terms of prejudice, was mainline
Protestants. Evangelicals and Southern Baptists were
the worst.

Several studies find that physical and sexual abuse in
theologically conservative homes is about the same as
elsewhere. A large study of the Christian Reformed
Church, a memher of the NAE, discovered that the
frequency of physical and sexual ahuse in this
evangelical denomination was about the same as in the
general population. One recent study, though, suggests
that evangelical men who attend church regularly are
less likely than the general population to commit
domestic violence (CT, August 2004, p. 44).

Materialism continues to be an incredihle scandal. The
average church member [from across the denominations]
today gives about 2,6 percent of his or her incomeóa
quarter of a titheóto the church. Evangelicals use to
be a lot better [in giving] than mainline
denominations. But their giving has declined
every year for several decades, and they're now
getting very close to the norm. The average
evangelical giving is ahout 4.2 percentóabout
two-fifths of a tithe.

Six percent of the "horn-again" people tithe; nine
percent of evangelicals do. Our income has gone up
fabulously over the last 30-plus years. The average
household income now in the U.S. is $42,000-plus. If
the average American Christian tithed, we'd have
another $143 billion.

-------------

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
Received on Fri Mar 25 13:19:42 2005