Politics on Sunday Morning

 By Shane Morris - Posted at Breakpoint:

What’s really being preached from the pulpit, and what does it say about the public perception of the Church’s role?

Talk to the average critic of the evangelical church—perhaps someone who has “deconstructed” and now resents their religious upbringing—and one of the first complaints they have is that Christians are too political. Especially since 2016, it has become common to smear conservative Christians for being more interested in “making America great again” than in making disciples.

This perception of evangelicals (that their churches are too political) is so strong that sociologist Christian Smith cited it in his recent book, Why Religion Went Obsolete as one of the main reasons for the long-term decline in church attendance.

Here’s the irony: Evangelical churches aren’t in fact that political by the typical definition of the term, nor do their members want them to be. That public perception is basically a myth.

Summarizing several recent and large surveys, statistician Ryan Burge showed that “very few houses of worship are talking about political issues on a regular basis,” and even the recognizable pastors on social media doing a lot of culture warring are “outliers.”

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