Not Very Miraculous?

Why do evangelicals fail to impact?

...the very thing which makes evangelicalism strong in a pluralistic society also dooms it to failure in making any kind of positive change in that society. That is, evangelicalism will never achieve its goals for the redemption of society because the tools in its toolkit don't work on societies.

For example, evangelicals have an atomistic view of society. In other words, they see society as nothing more than the sum of the individuals who make it up. When asked about social problems, evangelicals overwhelmingly state the answer to these problems is personal relationship. Here's the theory: if a father is beating his kids, a Christian man should befriend that man, and lead him to Christ, then he'll stop beating his kids; and once we do that with every child abuser, then the problem of child abuse will vanish from our society. One of the obvious problems with this line of reasoning is that child abuse, alcoholism, divorce, etc. are just as prevalent (or more) among evangelicals as among any other group.

When confronted with the obvious lunacy of this logic, the evangelicals interviewed had a hard time seeing that it was a problem, and when they did, they were often left speechless as to any other response to a social problem (several interviews are printed in the book).

For another example, when polled, the very things that evangelicals are most proud of about evangelicalism are the things most hated by non-evangelicals -- not a ringing endorsement from those the evangelicals are trying to convince.

[via Theoblogy]