Since the founding of the United States, white evangelicals have a had a controlling grip on American society.
In the 1960s, many evangelicals became politically active and an important voting bloc of the Republican Party. They thought that their philosophy would be the moral compass of the United States. Fortunately, that was not the case; their popularity reached a peak around the year 2005 and since then, the number of white evangelists has been declining.
Politically, they have opposed gay rights, marriage equality, abortion, the use cannabis, sex education, evolution education and lately, critical race theory.
A 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people showed a fast decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year.
In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals are also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56.
White evangelicals are not only dying off, but they’re losing younger members. As the group has become older and smaller, they have become aware that their cultural dominance on American society is disappearing.
White evangelicals once saw themselves as the owners of mainstream American culture, morality and values, now they are just another subculture.
The feeling that cultural influence is slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia which was in part the reason they gambled their future on Donald Trump. They saw the ex-president as a last hope to stay relevant.
The fight over critical race theory is only the latest battleground to stay cultural relevant. Evangelicals have also opposed sex education, secular humanism, and evolution.
The presidents of all six seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention came together to declare critical race theory as incompatible with the Baptist faith.
As the number of evangelicals continue to shrink and their doctrine is more in disagreement with the beliefs of younger Americans, they feel under attack, they have a hard time dealing with their imminent cultural irrelevance.
As America becomes more diversified and better educated, I see the white evangelical church as another small organization living out of the memory of its past glory.
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