Some elements in the Protestant evangelical churches made a conscious decision in the latter third of the 20th century to seek political power and to turn America into a Christian nation where the law of the republic is replaced by the law of the Bible. That is why they're on the defensive, and that is why Jennifer is right. Sadly, they're still winning. But these people aren't Christians. They're tyrants and political opportunists who use Christianity as a Trojan horse.
I think what disturbs me is that the bad apples can poison the bunch.
I see a lot of decent, good-meaning people whose ideas about the faith and some of their behavior is impacted by the James Dobson's and others who want to wield Christianity for political power. I know it. I talk to them. They have opinions that aren't based on any sort of thought, they just have absorbed the ideas of people who are touted as authorities.
[Sitting through lunch on Saturday with my in-laws, for example, and being told straightaway that I'm an "addict and demonically influenced" because of my particular struggles in life. Despite the fact that, if you would just measure me by any standard without knowing my situation, I would come up completely the opposite. And these are smart people, who graduated from Bucknell. You think they would collect their own evidence. But they believe these things because it's what they're taught, it's what is passed down to them.]
It's taken a good 20-30 years, for example, for the church to learn how to "love homosexuals." What's funny is that I'm not even sure why it was so hard in the first place. Homosexuals were never not people. We should love people. Why were homosexuals hated in the first place, and why did well-meaning people have to be beaten over the head again and again to learn how to treat others of other preferences and persuasions like human beings?
Even when you read the Bible, Jesus never had that issue. He never "dehumanized" people he thought were doing something wrong, so he never had to "relearn" how to love them. He... loved them from the first.
Something is very very wrong with the attitudes being passed down via authority and interpretation of the Bible, if people have to 'relearn' how to treat those they disagree with like human beings.
This is why Christianity is losing a hold in the States. Unbelievers, or those of other faiths, or disaffected Christians all can smell the taint and reject it.
unfortunately, it has created a backlash where the things Christians do that are right are being ignored as well.
The liberal intelligentsia in America constantly bend over backwards to point out that Islamic terrorists are not representative of Islam and that to blame Islam or Arabic peoples broadly is xenophobic and counterproductive. I wish they would extend the same courtesy to their Christian countrymen.
I agree with the sentiment, although I have never really been immersed in the liberal intelligentsia as a subculture and have no real idea who they are or what they truly think.
Wow, so people actually daring to bring up the manifestations of an aggressive pro-Christian (and anti-everyone else) atmosphere in the US (in some places) means Christianity has "fallen from grace"?
Well, of course I dare. I lived it for almost 40 years. It seems quite clear to me.
ETA: I'm inquiring what evidence one can use to assess that the church institutions have lost the will of the people (and if it exists, if it due to action of their making, constituting a "fall from grace").
1. Immerse yourself in conservative religious politics. THEY think they've fallen from grace. They see America as a battle they are LOSING. It's right out of the horse's mouth. It's why they've gotten more militant. They're fighting because they feel like they're being defeated.
2. Talk to the baby boomer generations. They'll complain about how awful the country has become since prayer has been kicked out of schools and evolution ushered into them. MTV. Rock and roll. Sex. Promiscuity on TV. Rated R movies. Vulgarity. Political scandal. The conservative churches (not even fundamentalist) I've been to all consider the US a fallen country, and God's favor has moved onto China and other countries around the world.
3. The whole huckabee thing? All the evangelicals were pulling for him... and they still lost. Yes, they're powerful. But in the 80's they might have actually WON. The televangelist movement and the conservative church felt very strong in the 80's. And... Reagan was president. Then Bush. Once Clinton came into office, many people in the church felt the country was lost. It was ironic to watch them all diss McCain because he wasn't an evangelical -- the was the only reason Huckabee lasted as long as he did, he wasn't really a strong candidate -- and now it looks like they're stuck with him.
4. Now Bush has been president for 8 years. He won mostly because he appealed to the Christian Right and got Bush's endorsement (and because Gore and Kerry were particularly unviable candidates). I remember being utterly turned off by how they bowed and scraped to him and touted his election as the best thing that happened to America, because he was "God's man." Talking to people in church, well-meaning people, they would still say really ignorant things about Bush, what he believed, how great he was... they just saw him as a "moral Christian who would put God back in control." (Basically a paraphrase of their thoughts.) Well, you can see where that has gone. Yet one more hope shattered, and it really didn't help their movement much because of Bush's War. This year, 2008, Dobson has lost a lot of his power, and so have the other political evangelicals. And many Christians I knew were very demoralized by the whole thing. Because once again, they "lost" ... Bush wasn't who they hoped he'd be.
I could go on and on about this. But I think my main point here is, I'm not the one saying Christians have "lost the culture"'; conservative Christians themselves have been saying it for a few decades.