Michael Spencer in his commentary in The Christian Science Monitor, "The Coming Evangelical Collapse," doesn't see much of a future role for the religious right within the diverse panoply that is American evangelicalism.
In fact, Spencer cites the long-term damage he believes was done to evangelicalism by its close association with the religious right. Indeed, evangelicalism, and conservative evangelicalism in particular, became all but synonymous over the course of the last 30 years with the partisan political movement that is the religious right.
Spencer writes:
Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake.... The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses.
Some of Spencer's observations come from a doctrinal or theological perspective. He sees Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism growing. He thinks American evangelicalism failed to provide its young people with a thorough theological foundation. (He's right.) And he expresses concerns about Pentacostalism, which continues spreading rapidly in numerous regions on the globe. From a sociological and economic perspect, The Economist examined some of these same trends, as featured on Religious Right Watch a little more than one year ago.
Spencer also predicts that a new anti-Christian era is beginning in America. Such a prediction is part and parcel of the religious right's talking points. That Spencer believes that an anti-Christian era is unfolding does not necessarily make him a member of the religious right, to be sure. He opines:
Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.
But, a look at the power and scope of religion throughout American history belies Spencer's lack of faith in his faith and exposes the alarmist character of his prediction of a new anti-Christian era.
What is more, Spencer seems to lump together all those who oppose the agenda of a politicalized American evangelicalism. He sees all of them as "anti-Christian," when, in fact, many are friends of faith. Contrary to Spencer's stark vision there is an alternative one of which he is unaware or deemed not worth mentioning, one which Chip Berlet summed up on Talk to Action as follows:
[For many Americans who are challenging the Christian Right,] the issue is not secular belief versus spiritual faith; the issue is how to craft a pluralist civil society that honors the dignity of both secular philosophy and spiritual faith, while insisting that theological claims alone should never dictate public policies. That's why we say we are challenging theocracy; because that's what the Christian Right is increasingly sowing: a theocratic society.
