The Examiner has posted an editorial on why evangelicals must learn to think like a minority:
According to the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey, the percentage of self-identifying Christians has steadily declined for almost two decades, dropping 10 percent. During the same period, the percentage of Americans claiming no religious affiliation nearly doubled, rising to 15 percent.
Newsweek’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Jon Meacham gave a thoughtful, if predictable, response, writing of “The End of Christian America.” Yet the philosophy he attacks, that of the old-guard Religious Right, as seen in The Moral Majority, vanished 15 years ago in most evangelical circles.
The news here is not that Evangelicals must recognize their Winthropian vision of “A City on a Hill” as a pipe dream. Ask your average evangelical if they want to see a Christian takeover of government and an implementation of “Christian laws” and you are likely to hear laughter.
No. The news stirring the collective evangelical consciousness is that they must assume a new mindset in the public square. Americans’ religious beliefs are becoming more polarized, and without “minority thinking” Evangelicals may lose many of the freedoms they cherish.
The article is not bashing evangelicals–well, not entirely. Towards the end, the writer sees the challenge ahead for evangelicals:
The real lesson, the big picture, is that America is rapidly losing a shared frame of reference, and Evangelicals must think ahead. They must see through the secular stereotype of Evangelicals behind all the levers of power and view themselves as a minority that they might ensure religious freedom for all.
