Revival of the fittest: are evangelicals really dumbing down American religion?

• Author: Sullivan, Amy
• Position: The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith - Book Review

I was a Jesus geek before being a Jesus geek was cool. In the Midwestern Baptist church where I grew up, we had quite a personal conception of the Lord and Savior. On Christmas, in addition to celebrating with more traditional deserts and carols, we baked a birthday cake and sang a rollicking tune called "Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus." Mrs. Crain, my Sunday School teacher, talked about getting "Jesus bumps" instead of goose bumps. And during the "praise and petitions" part of the worship service that preceded prayers, it was not unusual for someone to offer thanks to Jesus for the recovery of a purse left in a dressing room at J.C. Penney's. Catholics may have a saint for lost causes, but we had a deity, for lost pocketbooks.

In the days before Veggie Tales, we read Christian versions of Archie comic books, in which Betty, Veronica, and the whole gang traveled the world proselytizing. We sang praise songs displayed on overhead projectors, flocked to Amy Grant concerts, and (Lord help us) performed rap songs with puppets, using the baptistery as a stage in order to recruit kids for youth groups. We listened to countless sermons that boiled down to essentially the same point: We were doomed unless we asked Jesus to save us.

In his latest book on the nature of American faith, The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith, sociologist Alan Wolfe calls this kind of evangelicalism "tacky." He also says it's the future of American religion, a "religion [that] has been so transformed that we have leached the end of religion as we know it."

The cause of this transformation, according to Wolfe, is the competitive need to appeal to "switchers," those who change religious traditions and whom he compares to free-agent athletes looking for the best deal the market can offer. As Wolfe undoubtedly knows, but does not point out, competition among churches is not new. Protestant churches have angled for ways to attract parishioners ever since towns offered more than one denominational option--Max Weber described this American phenomenon at the turn of the 20th century. In addition, the rise of church potlucks in the 1950s was partly an attempt to woo potential suburban congregants by offering the best tater-tot casserole or ambrosia salad or themed "Luau Night" in town. While this trend is not new, Wolfe hones in on the fact that it has been accelerating in recent decades.

Today's religious communities face competition not only from other denominations, but also from other religious faiths and from the siren call of secular society. While a 1955 Gallup Poll found that only 4 percent of Americans had switched from the religion of their childhood, by the mid-1980s, that number had risen to over 30 percent. Even that figure does not reflect those who, while not switching religious traditions, fall away from the faith in which they were raised. It is efforts to attract these "unchurched"--or, more...