FaithWorld

Most U.S. Protestant pastors see Islam as dangerous – survey

Ed Stoddard

Dec 15, 2009 04:18 EST

Here’s an interesting survey that was released on Monday by LifeWay Research, which is the number crunching arm of the South Baptist Convention, America’s largest evangelical group.

It says that two-thirds of Protestant pastors in America regard Islam as a dangerous religion. You can see their press release here. The full survey has not been posted on their site.

But in a nut shell, the survey of over 1,000 pastors of different Protestant denominations found that 45 percent strongly agreed with the statement “I believe Islam is a dangerous religion,” while 21 percent agreed to it “somewhat.”

The survey was conducted in October, before the massacre at the Fort Hood army base in Texas allegedly by a Muslim soldier.

Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, said: “… our survey asked whether pastors viewed Islam as ‘dangerous,’ but that does not necessarily mean ‘violent.’ ‘Dangerous’ can be defined in a variety of ways, including from the perspective of spiritual influence. Regardless of the definition, the numbers tell us that Protestant pastors are concerned.”

Given the very conservative cast of the SBC and strong evangelical Protestant support over the years for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some people will automatically take the survey with a grain of salt. But the survey did include clergy from mainline Protestant denominations as well as evangelicals.

Not surprisingly, it found that: “Mainline denomination pastors are less likely than evangelicals to say Islam is “a dangerous religion.” While 77 percent of evangelical pastors either somewhat or strongly agree Islam is dangerous, only 44 percent of mainline pastors feel the same way, and 38 percent strongly disagree.”

Christian Coalition joins hunting group in climate change fight

Ed Stoddard

Oct 23, 2009 12:23 EDT

Remember the Christian Coalition of America?

Under the political operative Ralph Reed in the 1990s it was an electoral force to be reckoned with as it mobilized millions of conservative Christians to vote for mostly Republican Party candidates and causes.

It has since lost influence and political ground to other “religious right” groups such as the Family Research Council. But it remains a sizeable grassroots organization and is still unflinchingly conservative.

So it will no doubt surprise some to see that this week it has joined with the National Wildlife Federation – whose 4 million members and supporters includes 420,000 sportsmen and women – to run an ad urging the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that among other things addresses the pressing problem of climate change.

“Defending the status quo is no longer an option. We need swift action to ensure America is the world leader in clean energy technology. We can put Americans to work making and installing the clean, renewable energy technologies that reduce our dependency on foreign oil and address climate change. Senators should work together to move forward with a clean energy plan for America,” says the ad, which ran this week in Politico.

It comes as the U.S. Senate considers a bill to curb the greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming.

Texas Southern Baptists see conversion opportunities among Muslims

Ed Stoddard

Aug 27, 2009 08:08 EDT

The latest issue of Southern Baptist Texan to arrive in my mailbox has a front page story which caught my eye about a new evangelism drive aimed at the state’s Muslim population. You can see their on-line report here.

“The increasing presence of Muslims in Texas is an opportunity Texas Southern Baptists must not miss, says Bruno Molina, an SBTC ministry associate specializing in ethnic evangelism and outreach. To that end, a series of workshops—including one next month on engaging Muslim women with the gospel—and three printed resources aimed at helping Texas Southern Baptists understand Islamic beliefs, are planned for the fall and into 2010,” it says.

“We are praying for Muslims during a month (Ramadan) that they are seeking God and waging spiritual warfare on behalf of Muslims in the form of evangelistic prayer,” Molina was quoted as saying.

The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention is the state’s branch of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest evangelical denomination and one of its most conservative.

The SBC has recently been ringing the alarm bells of decline, an issue we blogged on in June. Its research arm LifeWay Research said then that its numbers, currently around 16 million, would fall nearly 50 percent by 2050 “unless the aging and predominantly white denomination reverses a 50-year trend and does more to strengthen evangelism, reach immigrants, and develop a broader ethnic base.”

In Texas, the SBTC has put a lot of effort into reaching out to the state’s fast-growing and predominantly Catholic Hispanic population — which is no doubt a good strategy for long-term demographic viability. (They would argue it is also a strategy to win over a large group for Christ).

Southern Baptists (and Republicans): old, white and in decline?

Ed Stoddard

Jun 25, 2009 12:09 EDT

The evangelical Protestant revival has been one of the most dynamic religious and social movements in the United States in the last three decades. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, one in four U.S. adults now count themselves as followers of this faith tradition.

So it may come as a surprise to some non-American readers of this blog that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) – with 16 million members, America’s largest evangelical denomination and the country’s second largest after the Catholic Church — is ringing the alarm bells of decline.

Its research arm LifeWay Research released the following projections this week at the convention’s annual meeting in Kentucky:  it said its numbers would fall nearly 50 percent by 2050 “unless the aging and predominantly white denomination reverses a 50-year trend and does more to strengthen evangelism, reach immigrants, and develop a broader ethnic base.”

“Using U.S. Census projected population figures, SBC membership could fall from a peak of 6 percent of the American population in the late 1980s to 2 percent in 2050,” said LifeWay director Ed Stetzer.

The SBC in 1951 enjoyed robust annual growth of four percent and still had two percent in the early 1970s but in recent years it has been falling about 0.6 percent per year.

The number of baptisms — which is how the SBC counts converts and is key to a group that sees bringing souls to Christ as its raison d’être — have also been in decline.

What Darwin and evangelicals had in common: hatred of slavery

Ed Stoddard

Jun 17, 2009 15:16 EDT

Back in January we reported on a new book which argued that a hatred of slavery did much to form Charles Darwin’s views on natural selection as he sought to prove that blacks and whites had a common ancestor and were not separate species or products of “separate creations” as many of the 19th century defenders of white supremacy maintained.

I did a blog at the time to draw attention to my colleague Mike Collett-White’s story on “Darwin’s Sacred Cause” by Adrian Desmond and James Moore and said that it had piqued my curiosity enough that I might be tempted to read it. I have done just that and think it raises a couple of issues that will be of interest to readers of this blog.

For starters, much of the credit for the anti-slavery movement has been taken by evangelicals and other Christians such as the Quakers, who were indeed often the driving force behind it.  There was much excitement in U.S. evangelical circles two years ago about the release of the movie “Amazing Grace” about British anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce who was an ardent evangelical. Much ink has been spilled on this topic, notably in 2005 by Adam Hochschild in his superb book “Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery.”

But no one would mistake the father of modern biological science for an evangelical. Most of his biographers agree (based on overwhelming evidence) that Darwin gradually lost his own faith. Another leading abolitionist in Darwin’s day was his cigar-smoking dining companion Harriet Martineau, who was also a self-proclaimed atheist. Darwin’s own family — which had its share of religious sceptics, notably his father, as well as devout believers– was also heavily involved in the anti-slavery movement.

So it seems that the secular humanist crowd also has an old and some would say noble tradition of anti-slavery agitation  which it can draw on — and it was an issue that united it with evangelicals. Similar bridges are being built today between secular and evangelical leaders on issues like climate change, torture and even the modern slave trade.

It is also worth noting of course that Darwin and his intellectual offspring are often a favored target of conservative evangelicals, especially in the United States. This goes beyond the trouble that many biblical creationists have with Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which is more popularly known as evolution. Some conservative Christians say that Darwin’s theories helped to inspire the eugenics movement whose advocates included Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. They therefore tie Darwin to the abortion rights movement, which Harry R. Jackson Jr, a leading African American conservative evangelical, has dubbed a “black genocide” (because of the large number of black women who seek abortions).

PETA urges Southern Baptists to go vegetarian

Ed Stoddard

Jun 11, 2008 04:16 EDT

A handful of activists from People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals (PETA) urged Southern Baptists meeting in Indianapolis on Tuesday to try the vegetarian option. “For Christ’s Sake, Go Vegetarian,” read one of their signs outside the convention center in downtown Indianapolis, where the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest evangelical denomination, is holding its annual meeting.

“The Bible’s greatest message is compassion,” said PETA campaign coordinator Ashley Byrne, who said she hoped to convince Southern Baptists to adopt a diet that was compassionate to animals by not eating them.

The SBC, like the broader U.S. evangelical movement, is divided about what action to take on “creation care” or environmental issues such as climate change.

But the culturally and politically conservative SBC, better known for its fondness of “guns and God,” probably does not have a lot of vegetarians in its ranks.

An informal Reuters survey of a few attending the meeting turned up none.

One major nationwide survey in 2006 found that 50 percent of licensed U.S. hunters and anglers were evangelical Christians — hardly rich fishing grounds for coverts to the PETA cause.

Southern Baptists hold meet amid falling baptisms

Ed Stoddard

Jun 9, 2008 01:41 EDT

America’s largest evangelical denomination, the 16-million strong Southern Baptist Convention, is holding its annual meeting in Indianapolis on Tuesday and Wednesday against the backdrop of a decline in the number of yearly baptisms.

This is serious stuff indeed for a group that places much emphasis on the conversion experience, the acceptance of Jesus as a person’s savior and the rite of passage that goes with this acceptance: a public immersion in water or baptism.

In April the SBC released its latest baptism numbers — figures it tracks closely, underscoring the importance attatched to them.

In 2007, baptisms decreased by 5 percent to 345,941 from 364,826 in 2006. It was the third straight year that the number of baptisms fell and the lowest total since 1987.

I have blogged on this topic in the past, before the latest figures, which one Southern Baptist official told me “hit everyone in the guts.”

Of course some people attend Southern Baptist churches without taking the dunk, including — at least according to many reports — presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

But this decrease in baptisms could also point to a broader slowdown in the swelling ranks of America’s evangelical movement, which now includes one in four adults in the United States.