Here’s why people don’t take right-wing Evangelicals so seriously anymore

[whatthehey]

8. Revisionist claptrap

Evangelicals are shrinking sure BUT with two problems

They are far far away the largest group of Christians in the US (DU apologists who pretend most Christians are the kind gentle tea-sipping garden-party kumbaya type are either suffering from huge confirmation bias and/or confusing "mainline" with "mainstream". Evangelicals are darn close to twice the numbers of mainline denominations.)

They are shrinking way way more slowly than other Christian subsets. Even worse, the only rapidly growing religious subset, that of "unaffiliateds" is roughly equally split between wishy washy new age atheists who are scared to assert that much demonized and misused term, and evangelical fundamentalists so virulent they fall outside even the accepted norms of evangelical denominations; folks to whom the SBC are godless communist backsliders. It's quite likely the whole of wjhat normal people would call fundy Christianity is either growing slightly or staying stable.

The last thing evangelicals are doing is becoming less prominent and powerful. They are actively working to follow the Republican Party path of the last generation - to rebuild the brand, in their case Christianity, into a somewhat smaller but vastly more monolithic, committed and doctrinaire force without thought for compromise or nuance. They are more than willing to see the nation move from 83% as it was when I first started reading these polls to 71% as it is now to 60% as it will likely become Christian in self identification as long as they speak for that crystallized reactionary militant remainder. It's what they want. Just about every fundy I've ever come across will spout John 3:16 on command but lives loves and promulgates Rev 3:16 much more enthusiastically.