Something has happened within the last 25 years in American evangelicalism—what I think to be a large generational shift. I’d prefer to sketch an image of the change I see and ask for those who see it too.
First, though, let me set the scene. I take into consideration low-church Protestant traditions within the United States: churches centered on the Bible, evangelism, and private faith in Jesus; often but not necessarily nondenominational, with moderate to minimal emphasis on sacraments, liturgy, and ecclesiastical authority; and marked by a revivalist style in addition to conservative beliefs about sex, marriage, and other social issues. Historically, these congregations were predominantly white and middle- to lower-class, though not as uniformly as is usually imagined. Many were founded inside the last three a long time, and so they’re typically given to long sermons, contemporary worship, monthly Communion, and a lot of lights.
These are the churches wherein I’ve noticed what I’d call a form of loosening. This shift is essentially unwitting, or at the very least unplanned. It will not be consistent or ideological; it will not be a program or platform; it’s not even conservative or liberal per se (and my goal here will not be to render an overall positive or negative judgement on the change). This loosening consists of a broad rest of previously unspoken—or at the very least unwritten—social norms.
The most blatant example is attitudes about alcohol. For generations, American evangelicals were known to be highly suspicious of drinking, sometimes to the purpose of being teetotalers. This remained true through my teen years, and once I heard that Brother Joe or Sister Jane enjoyed a glass of wine before bed, it was whispered knowledge about private behavior. Joe and Jane weren’t drinking in public. They definitely weren’t microbrewing beer of their garage and handing out samples at small group.
Two a long time later, to date as I can tell, this taboo on alcohol has all but disappeared. Professors at my private Christian university aren’t allowed to drink with students. But only a dozen years ago they weren’t allowed to drink in any respect, and this rule change will not be an anomaly in evangelical institutions.
Now consider other timeworn taboos amongst American evangelicals: tattoos, dancing, gambling, smoking, even moms working outside the house. “Cool” celebrity pastors are removed from the one millennial and Gen Z evangelicals with tattoos. If I were to ask one among my devout Christian college students what theological reasoning informed their decision to sport multiple tattoos, they’d not offer me careful rebuttals of their grandparents’ outmoded interpretation of Leviticus 19:28. They would give me a blank stare: What does God should do with it?
Or consider entertainment. Churches and Christian parents proceed to police the boundaries of appropriate content, however the window has widened considerably. Once upon a time, Disney movies were suspect. Onscreen sex, language, and violence were known to be dangerous causes of adolescent misbehavior. But now evangelicals’ viewing habits appear interchangeable together with your average Netflix or HBO subscriber. Some even forged watching Game of Thrones or The Sopranos as a task of cultural engagement: I’m just doing my missional duty. If the gore, cruelty, and nudity offend your fundamentalist upbringing, a lot the more serious for you, weaker brother.
This loosening is going on inside the church constructing too. The American evangelicals I take into consideration traditionally looked askance at practices harking back to Catholicism—formal liturgy, vestments, sacraments, the church calendar, sometimes even creeds. These things were long seen as extrabiblical innovations that threaten to obscure the gospel, usurp the sovereign authority of Christ, or promote a dull, nominal faith.
Yet today I see an astonishing movement by every kind of evangelical institutions toward retrieving these formerly Catholic-coded practices. Christians who once refused to acknowledge Easter as distinct from every Sunday’s celebration of the Resurrection now observe Lent. Churches founded on a principled rejection of creeds recite the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds each Sunday. Churches historically committed to memorialism speak of the actual presence of Christ within the Eucharist (and so they call it “the Eucharist,” not only “the Lord’s Supper”).
The loosening even extends to evangelical seminary curricula and sermon research. Professors and pastors reference writers and thinkers outside evangelicalism and even Protestantism, drawing on Catholic priests, medieval Orthodox monks, and patristic bishops and councils. Like all my other examples, this will not be a shift in service of theological liberalism. In some cases—creedal recitation particularly involves mind—it’s a conservative change, a turn to catechesis as a bulwark against theological drift.
Now, I called this loosening a “generational shift,” and, in a single sense, it’s. But in my remark, it’s not only the under-40 crowd doing these items. If that were the case, we’d still have a vital change underway, but it surely may be nothing greater than the traditional pattern of kids unlearning their parents’ ways.
My contention, as an alternative, is that it’s not only millennials and Gen Zers who’re loosening. It’s their parents and grandparents too. Former teetotalers are actually drinking; one-time Disney boycotters are binging Netflix; erstwhile skeptics of gambling are hosting poker nights.
If I’m right, it is a seismic shift, not business as usual. What’s happening? What has led so many evangelicals in such a transient span of time to shed so many social and liturgical taboos?
Before I enterprise 4 ideas, I should acknowledge that I’m performing some speculating here. I don’t have charts and graphs to back up my sketch or prove some explanation. But just as I’m sharing my observations to see in the event that they’re widely recognizable, so I’m floating these 4 ideas to see in the event that they resonate with Christians in other corners of American evangelicalism.
First, this loosening suggests to me that American evangelicalism’s many unwritten norms weren’t sustained solely by doctrine, congregational authority, or biblical teaching. Norms against drinking, tattoos, formal liturgy, and the like were extraordinarily powerful and uniform due to the ambient culture surrounding the church.
In many cases, that outside support included the state. It’s no coincidence that this loosening has occurred while laws related to “vice”—alcohol, divorce, drugs, and once-illegal sexual activities—have been falling like dominoes across the last half-century. Sometimes law is downstream from culture, sometimes upstream, but either way, the church is a component of this social river.
Second, a less Christian and more secular culture creates recent incentives and pressures on extraordinary believers. If everyone within the non-Christian majority believes or does x, it becomes a conspicuous sign of Christian discipleship (or intransigence) to proceed abstaining from x. This leads all believers, pastors included, to reconsider their commitments: Is alcohol, in spite of everything, forbidden by God? In black and white, chapter and verse? If not, then why am I suffering my neighbors’ or coworkers’ scorn? Besides, everyone at all times knew about Joe and Jane’s wine collection. Let’s go ahead and join them.
Third, when Scripture is ambiguous or disputable on some matter while the broader culture’s position is obvious, the onus falls to pastors or the institutional church to persuade congregants to reject that wider cultural norm. And what we’ve got seen in recent a long time is a decline of pastoral authority, the death of thick denominational identity, and a crisis of confidence in Christian institutions.
The elders say so or Pastor John knows best doesn’t cut it anymore. I can vote with my feet and join a church whose pastor says otherwise. Who is Pastor John, anyway? Isn’t he the identical one who told me all believers are able to interpreting Scripture for themselves? And that no authority except Scripture should determine matters of religion and morals? And that each one matters on which Scripture is silent are “indifferent,” subject to non-public conscience?
Fourth and at last, there are not any sectarians in post-Christian foxholes. As counterintuitive because it could appear, the identical forces leading evangelicals to start out drinking, getting tattoos, and watching HBO are also leading them to say the creeds, receive ashes on their brow, and skim Pope Benedict XVI. When the world feels arrayed against faithfulness to Christ, you wish all the buddies you may get. Doctrinal differences that aren’t relevant to current cultural battles—think infant baptism, not theologies of sex and gender—might be ignored in a pinch.
This is what I mean once I say that the loosening I see is not any top-down, organized, ideological plan. It’s happening organically, , sometimes in apparently contradictory ways. For this reason, it’s hard to evaluate. I personally grew up without liturgy within the church or alcohol in the house; now I cross myself before prayer and luxuriate in a drink with my parents. On the opposite hand, I lament the colonization of believers’ leisure time by screens, whether streaming TV or apps like TikTok, in addition to the accompanying laissez-faire attitude about onscreen content.
Whether each specific trend is sweet, bad, or yet to be determined, I do know this loosening has happened throughout the same years that church attendance has decreased while loneliness and congregations’ loss—or refusal—of authority over their members have increased. What looks like gain for some (perhaps less authority means less propensity for abuse) could also be loss for others (wayward members who need strong medicine to get their lives on course).
Either way, American evangelicalism is changing, at the same time as I write. What will it seem like when this shift is finished? God knows.
Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He is the creator of 4 books, including The Church: A Guide to the People of God and Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry.
