Four particularly toxic ingredients make it especially hard for some (many?) Evangelicals to maintain their belief system beyond a few decades.

Christianity, in the West at least, is certainly experiencing a “great falling away”: churches closing, memberships dropping, people leaving the faith entirely. Some might conclude they’re leaving in order to better enjoy “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” But a closer look reveals that their departure has so much more to do with simply being unable to hold on to something that just produces so much doubt, internal conflict, cognitive dissonance, and challenges to personal integrity. And a variety of forms of religious abuse have certainly helped people out the doors.

We certainly found this to be the case for the four of our listeners whom we interviewed over the past four weeks. We learned that all four of them have rejected the form of Christian faith that they grew up with and held quite comfortably for a couple decades. Two of them no longer go to church at all, while a third one attends as an atheist. And none of them would again embrace the label “Evangelical.” But all four are still always listening, reading and talking about ….. Christian things. They’re still “scratching the itch”! In this episode, we distill some themes, commonalities, and lessons learned from those four conversations. Points that we covered include:

the strange beliefs of their original Christian faith seemed to be so normal and acceptable at the time, but now they see moral atrocities, unscientific claims, philosophical paradoxes, and theological conflicts
there are four “toxic ingredients” that need to be revised or gotten rid of:
- inerrancy and infallibility of scripture
- hell theology (esp. eternal conscious torment)
- Penal Substitution
- Christian exclusivism
too many people don’t correctly understand in detail the origins of the Bible, and its human input
inerrancy and infallibility is never mentioned in the Bible; Jesus often turned scripture upside-down; even people who claim to adhere completely to inerrancy/infallibility don’t take many parts of the Bible “literally”
Peter Enns (episode #57) and Mark Elliott (episode #116) had no concerns about Luke’s claim that the Bible is more like a human diary or notebook, than a Divine dictation
the origin of the doctrine of inerrancy/infallibility is very recent, and rooted in politics and religious control
the origin of the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy and Infallibility
what did Jesus mean by “not one least stroke of a pen will disappear from the Law before all these things are fulfilled”? This is often a proof text for people who defend inerrancy and infallibility
for many people, Christianity is all about avoiding hell
the great difficulty in believing God could be as brutal, judgmental, and vindictive as that
Penal Substitution: the horrible idea that God just NEEDS to see blood spilled before he can forgive and forget, even the blood of someone who has nothing to do with the “crime”
Christian exclusivism: that all other religions, and even many strands of Christianity, are on the wrong path and will find themselves in hell
Evangelical Christianity has many beliefs that are equally “off-track” as any other world religion (the “prosperity Gospel”, Penal Substitution; Christian Nationalism; anti-gay/anti-trans Christianity)
Jesus is the basis for salvation in the sense that he held up a model for us to follow that we need to strive for … the “Good News,” or Euangelion
many atheists and adherents to other world religions are doing a better job of living out that Good News message than many Christians
In addition to the four “toxic ingredients,” there’s another ingredient that may not be toxic, but is still very problematic … the ideal of having a “personal relationship” with the Divine
does autism impair ones ability to experience a “personal relationship”?
if one still finds value in the Bible and strives to follow the teachings of Christ, but drops those four toxic ingredients and the problematic one, is that still a truly Christian faith? Orthodoxy versus orthopraxy: showing one’s faith through their works … the parable of “the sheep and the goats”
listener feedback on our FaceBook Discussion forum:
- Doug, Merv and Lori: “please give us more of these interviews …. we can relate to these people”
- Doug: Scott’s comment about nihilism being the next stopping point for those who give up Christian faith … finding ultimate meaning
- Mi K.: Christianity is not monolithic …. there are many forms which bear no resemblance to each other …. having problems with one form should not require rejecting all of them
- Nichola: “Evangelical” is a label which can’t be rehabilitated
is the arc of Christianity approaching another inflection point? … will 21^st century Christianity look as different from 20^th century Christianity, as the latter looks from 10^th century, or 5^th century, or 1^st century Christianities

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #14, where we first talked about four core problems with Evangelicalism. More specific points that we skimmed over were discussed in greater detail in episodes #19 (Penal Substitution), #42 (“personal relationship”), and #88 (Hell).

Episode image from Pixabay.

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