Is it the end of Protestant evangelism as we know it?

The Christian Science Monitor recently had an opinion piece that caught my eye. It speaks to some of the reasons I feel that I have abandoned the Protestant evangelical establishment and moved on towards Catholicism.

In particular - the following points by the author rang true for me:

1) We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent...has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

2) Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

3) Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions.
Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

Although, there are parts of the article that I disagree with - overall I think it raises some valid points. Interestingly enough, it somewhat reminded me of THIS Newsweek article I read last summer (during a train ride in India - 6 months after it had come out - handed to me by a missionary - hmm...God does work in mysterious ways)!
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The coming evangelical collapse

By Michael Spencer

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Click the link below to see the rest of the article!

The coming evangelical collapse csmonitor.com