Why Is Christianity Declining in America?

You might’ve heard about the new research that came out from the Pew Forum about Christianity in America. I would obviously recommend reading the article before you read my thoughts below. I don’t necessarily want to rehash all the data for you, but I just want to comment on some of the conclusions that the data leads me to believe.

First, what is obvious from the data is that the percentage of people who identify as Christians has declined while people who identify as religiously unaffiliated has increased. This is not a new narrative. We have talked about this before on this website, and people talk about it all over the Internet. The bigger question is why this is happening. In the past, people like me have attributed a lot of this to the decline of mainstream, theologically liberal Protestant churches. It is no surprise that many of these are beginning to lose the cultural power they once had, and without very much differentiation between their culture and popular American culture, they have failed to hold onto their formerly prominent position in society. However, the revelation from this research seems to imply that it is not just mainline churches that are suffering. Move the bottom of the first page, they break down the decline of white “born-again/evangelical” Protestants versus white “non-born-again/evangelical” Protestants. Both groups are declining. White evangelicals have fallen by less (3% versus 5%), but there is something of significance there. They do not provide overall numbers regarding evangelicals and non-evangelicals without being filtered by race, but it at least seems possible, given the data we can see here in the article, that this is not just a mainline issue. It seems to be impacting evangelicals as well.

What are we then to make of this? One prevailing opinion that has been put forward many times is that it is simply more socially acceptable to identify as nonreligious today than it was 10 years ago. Looking at the trendlines, the percentage of the religiously unaffiliated continues to climb. You have to assume that this indicates that more and more people will continue to meet people who identify as religiously unaffiliated. As something becomes more common, it is easier to identify as a member of that group. For you Christians in the room, you have been there before. It is a lot easier to identify as a Christian when you’re at a Newsboys concert and they are saying “God’s Not Dead” than it is to identify as a Christian when you are talking to a group of friends who all agree that a belief in God is irrational. There is comfort in numbers, so I think we have to keep that in mind whenever we look at this phenomenon. As more news articles continue to talk about the rising proportion of the American population that identified as religiously unaffiliated, a predictable consequence of that increase in prominence is about people who might have been afraid to identify as unaffiliated before might feel more comfortable doing so now.

Advancing beyond that, there is much more growth in people identifying as having no religious affiliation as compared to either atheism or agnosticism. I don’t know that we should find this particularly surprising in our postmodern culture. As a general rule, people who identify as unaffiliated do not really seem to be embracing the strong position of atheism or even the “labeled” position of agnosticism. They are simply refusing to answer the question for lack of a better word. Consequently, we really know nothing about this religiously unaffiliated group. They don’t seem to be coming right out and saying that they reject any conception of God or that they really don’t know about the existence of God. They just don’t seem to be comfortable aligning with any type of established position. They kind of want to have complete control over their own religious definition and reject labels. This is consistent with our culture. We like to reject labels nowadays, so becoming religiously undefined is simply consistent with pretty much every other trend in our culture right now.

I would like to know the content of the beliefs of those who say they are unaffiliated because part of me guesses that they are the type of people who say that they believe in some higher power, but they are not sure who that higher power is. That seems to be the group of people missing from this equation, but in the past, these types of people probably would have identified as Christian. They would have fallen on the liberal end of the Christian spectrum, and they probably would have fallen into the camp that is sometimes been called “moral, therapeutic deism.” There is a God out there somewhere; He is a pretty good guy and makes me feel better. However, we can’t really know very much more about Him than that. Traditionally, in the United States, since Christianity was the majority position, these people would probably have identified under the umbrella of Christianity. Today they don’t do that so much. Admittedly, this is a bit of speculation on my part here, but it does seem to be consistent with some conversations I have had with people as well as the way that our American cultural conversation on religion seems to be progressing.

Moving on from this, the article makes a big deal about the political affiliation of the religiously unaffiliated as compared to Christians. Christians are much more on the right while the unaffiliated are much more on the left. I don’t think this is surprising to anyone. However, when we think about political parties and affiliations, by and large, I think that we have lost a great deal of nuance. If you are a Republican, you are supposed to buy into the entire agenda. If you are a Democrat, you’re supposed to subscribe to that ideology. Consequently, part of me wonders, and again, this is speculative, but is this religious lack of affiliation simply becoming packaged with other belief systems. In the past, Christianity kind of came prepackaged with ideologies as well. It may just be that there is a shift in what belief system is coming with other ideologies. It is more along the lines of an institutional change that has an impact down the line. This is not to say that every Republican or Democrat feels a certain way religiously, but I’m just more again suggesting that sometimes people believe they have to buy into an entire narrative to be a part of a particular group. We have seen this all or nothing dynamic on both sides of the political aisle, so if it seems that one party is conforming towards one view, maybe there is some type of package deal going on for at least some people in the party. For the record, I think it works the other way as well. Some people on the right may identify as Christian simply because they are on the right, and that is what people on the right do, at least in name if not in actual belief. That could account for the changes we are seeing here in the survey data, or at least it could account for part of them.

I cannot say that I have all of the answers in this study, but I think these are a few important considerations to keep in mind when we look at what appears to be the decline of Christianity in America. I don’t really know that we are any less Christian than we ever were. However, I would say that as a culture, perhaps we are becoming more comfortable saying that we don’t believe, so we are losing those people in the statistics who previously would just say they were Christian for lack of any better answer.

Friday Night Lights and The Abolition of Man

I was recently happy to discover that Friday Night Lights is on Amazon Prime. I think it has been there for a little while, but I hadn’t watched it since it was taken off of Netflix a few years ago. As I have just restarted the first season, I feel like I am not necessarily the prime demographic for this show. It is obviously a high school drama which I would argue was probably targeted at a female audience, but I have to say that there are some themes embedded in this story that still speak to me as an adult male who really has never had much interest in teen dramas.

The first immediate, and obvious, application is the way that this show portrays Jason Street and his disability. Obviously it is dramatized, and I am sure it is a little bit over the top compared to almost any experience most people have. However, there are real issues of identity that he wrestles with. Wrestling with the world that used to bow to him and now doesn’t seem quite as subservient, I think what I appreciate most about him is he is not a perfect character. He is not simply the noble victim. We see him get mad. We see him get frustrated. He makes bad decisions. While it may seem odd for me to say that, it humanizes his character in a way that I think is important for portraying people with disabilities on the screen. I’m sure there have been articles written complaining about his character because I am sure it offended someone, but at least from my perspective, I appreciate that this show wrestles with issues of disability. It is not perfect, but they have given us a human character, and we see him wrestle with issues that many people with disabilities have dealt with.

Secondly, I identify with the portrayal of community in Dillon, Texas. I am obviously not from Texas. I have visited Texas one time in my life. I am from Vermont. We don’t care about football nearly that much as a general rule. That being said, Dillon is a small town with some very real socioeconomic challenges. I can identify with that in central Vermont. There are things that bring communities together without a doubt. For us, it is not football, but we have our own celebrations and events that draw in the crowds. Our racetrack, for example, is one of them, but my point is that there are institutions in place that bring about dimensions of community despite the socioeconomic challenges that exist for so many people in our area.

Thirdly, I am intrigued by the portrayal of religion. I have written about Christianity in Vermont recently, but the challenges that are portrayed in this show based in Texas are very different than what I experience. Everyone prays before the football game and in church before they go out to party, drink, and be with their girlfriends. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen in Vermont churches by any means. I’m not meaning to stigmatize Texas either. My point is that in many places that are not like my home state, there is a type of cultural Christianity. People go to church because everyone else does. They know how to pray because they all learned how to pray. The church is a relevant institution, but it does not always seem to be the type of place that inspires a deep degree of religious devotion to the traditional tenets of Christian morality. This phenomenon can happen anywhere, but it is fascinating to see it portrayed on screen because it is so different than my experience. Here at home, it is not uncommon for people to have little or no religious literacy. Having a prayer before a football game would seem really out of place, but in places where Christianity is more built into the culture, people just do it because that is what is done. I’m not trying to insult any state here, but looking into a portrayal of Christianity as a cultural institution is an intriguing perspective. It enters into the story here and there, but it is not a focal point of any character’s worldview most of the time.

I think that another reason this show appears to be simply because we all love an underdog story. After the tragedy of Jason’s injury, we see the quarterback position turned over to the very young and uncertain Matt Saracen. Framed as the underdog from the start that no one believes in, you can’t help but cheer for him the entire time. Of course, his journey parallels multiple other storylines that I don’t necessarily want to ruin in case any of you have not watched it yet, but you can’t help but cheer for the guy that nobody seems to believe in.

Finally, one last theme that seems particularly relevant to our age is the importance of family. This somewhat connects to my previous comments on socioeconomic challenges, but there are very few characters in the story that come from typical families. Most of them are missing at least one parent, and even among the families that are stable, there is typically a great deal of tension. Part of that is obviously because this is a drama that needs conflict in order to drive the story forward. However, the reality in our world right now is that many people are struggling with broken families, and there are real consequences on families when bad situations develop. I see that in my area, and you probably see that in your area. The breakdown of the family is one of the most significant crises in our world right now even though a lot of people don’t want to talk about it or try to diminish its importance. Obviously this is a TV show with extra drama, but the real pain experienced by broken families I think is portrayed in a way that our culture needs to realize.

Overall, I do think this is one of those shows that brings out themes that can speak to all of us. At least for me, that’s the power of a good story, and I think it causes something about what CS Lewis was getting at in The Abolition of Man. He contends that there are some objective, universal truths that people are, for lack of a better word, wired to comprehend. Societies have consistently rejected murder. However, they are not building upon each other’s traditions. For whatever reason, they seem to develop this idea independently yet consistently. Could it perhaps mean that these ideas emerge from within the human heart? If that’s true, then who put this code there in the first place?

These types of universal themes I have described above remind me of this. I don’t think anything I have written above will seem crazy to you, but that’s kind of the point. And I think it leads us to ask bigger questions about who we are, what we believe, and why we believe it. See, there is some applicability in a teenage drama, even for people like me who might not fit the demographic.

How Jonah Applied to My Life This Week

I’ve got to be honest with you guys. This has been a week with a lot of interesting things going on. I don’t necessarily want to go into detail with you all, but I think it will suffice to say that a lot of chaos that I was not thinking about a week ago right now is certainly front and center at the moment. I don’t like it there, but the fact of the matter is that is where I seem to find it right now. Some of it was admittedly of my own making, and some of it was beyond my control, but you need to be willing to take the consequences if you make decisions.

What is fascinating about this is that I am writing this post on Saturday night even though you will not read it until Monday morning. I am going to be leading a discussion at our church on the book of Jonah tomorrow morning (or I did lead a discussion at our church on the book of Jonah yesterday morning from your perspective). We are talking about opportunities and trying to discern what God would have us do. Jonah attempted to run over 2000 miles away from where God wanted him to be. Yet, a small nuance I never really thought about in the story is that while Jonah was on that ship going in the wrong direction, the captain of the ship told him he might as well pray to his God as well since everybody else was praying. Basically, it seems like the crew was of the mindset that we might as well pray to every possible god, and maybe one will respond. Even though the captain was not a believer in the God of Israel, he was at the point where he figured they should exhaust every potential resource they had.

Jonah then told them about his God and the situation. He let them know that he personally needed to be thrown overboard if they wanted the storm to stop. When they did it and the storm stopped, we see something really interesting. They convert. The crew members began offering sacrifices and making vows to God. That’s crazy.

How sincere were they? I don’t suppose we will ever know on earth. Maybe they got home and forgot the miraculous delivery of God in the midst of the storm. Maybe they forgot the power they witnessed. I don’t know, but what I do know is that they, it appears from all the information we have, they were converted by this experience.

However, think about what brought about this set of circumstances. Why were they on the boat with Jonah? Jonah was running away from God. Jonah had received a direct order from God to go to Nineveh. Some of us wish that God would point a little bit more clearly in the direction that we should go. I know I do. Jonah didn’t really have that excuse here. God told him to go to Nineveh. Jonah just did not want to go.

As a result of Jonah’s active rebellion, God brought people to Himself who may never have otherwise thought twice about the God of Israel. We don’t know what deities they followed, but we do know that everybody on board was praying to whoever they could, hoping for some type of deliverance from the storm that scared even these seasoned sailors. That is crazy as well.

We think about these situations, and they seem like such a big deal to us. Admittedly, some of them are a big deal. Nothing in my life has been life-threatening to the degree that the storm the sailors experienced was. However, I still had a few things happen that felt relatively major in my relatively average, middle-class life. Yes, I know, first world problems and all that. I don’t mean to diminish any suffering other people experience that is so much greater than mine. I’m just trying to be straight with you about my mindset.

However, we find these things popping up in our lives, and we don’t like it. These guys didn’t like the storm. I don’t like my problems. You probably don’t like yours. We want them to just disappear, go away, resolve, reconcile, or simply come to an end. Even an unresolved end sometimes feels better than ongoing problems (although I admit I do like resolution).

It takes a great deal of intellectual and spiritual discipline to step back and consider that God has purposes for literally everything in life. I do believe we have free will, and I believe that we make choices and have to answer for the consequences of the actions we take. However, isn’t remarkable how God can even use those things we do to bring about positive ends even with eternal consequences?

And, it is not just God weaving a beautiful story out of their good choices I make. Even out of the bad decisions where we lack wisdom or discernment, God uses those as well. Look at Jonah. He was in active rebellion. The fact that he was literally sailing in the wrong direction obviously does not mean much to God. God can do whatever He wants with any earthly circumstances, but I can’t help but think of the symbolism here. It wasn’t just that he was not going along with God. He was literally going in the opposite direction. He should have been going east, and he went west.

How comforting is that? It is probably much more comforting than most of us give it credit for. Obviously, we do not try to make bad choices. We do not use this as some type of Get Out Of Jail Free card as a license to sin because God will make everything work out in the end. That is not the Christian perspective on life. We try to continually become more conformed to the image of Jesus Christ which means a commitment to trying to be more and more like Jesus. That involves hopefully making better and better decisions with less and less sin.

Nevertheless, we all do stuff that we should not do. Even people who have been Christians for decades fall short. As I was thinking about my class tomorrow morning, I could not help but think how amazing it is that I can live much more courageously and try. Sometimes I may fall short. Sometimes I may not be right. But, I can live actively and try to do what God would have me to do. I may discern right sometimes. Sometimes I may lack wisdom and cause a great deal of chaos.

The fact that there is a God who is active and alive means that He is capable of even taking my failures and making them into something good. I don’t try to fail or fall short, but all hope is not lost if I do. I think that, for a lot of us, we can beat ourselves up. We get frustrated because we screwed something up, and then we shut down and don’t want to try anymore. Again, you can’t tell me that you have not been there before.

We don’t need to do that. We don’t need to be slaves to our bad decisions anymore. They happen. We need to acknowledge them, ask for forgiveness, and reconcile with those we may have hurt. However, beyond those responsibilities, we do not have to dwell on them anymore. God is faithful to forgive us our sins, and we have been separated from them as far as the east is from the west as Christians. That’s crazy.

Why then do we insist on living like we are still held captive? I don’t know. Maybe we like to beat ourselves up. Maybe we are so transactional that we think that all wrongs have to be paid for. The concept of forgiveness feels like we are getting something for nothing. The fact of the matter is that our forgiveness was anything but free. Jesus Christ died on the cross for us. Yes we have forgiveness freely given, but it is free because the price was already paid by someone else. That’s amazing.

Here is where the rubber meets the road though. We need to live like we believe this. I can write this. You can read this. You might agree with what I have said. I am not lying to you. These are genuine thoughts I have been having tonight, but now I definitely want to live like I believe them. I want to bring them into full application in my life. That’s the hard part. That’s the challenge for you and me this week.

Has America Lost Religion?

There was an article in The Atlantic this past week entitled, “Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?” written by Derek Thompson. I would recommend that you read the article before proceeding with the post I am about to write. Otherwise, you might be a little bit confused.

The article is based on a rather basic premise. For a long time, America remained remarkably religious compared to a great deal of the rest of the Western world. Europe was hammered by secularization, but America for some reason remained highly religious into the 1980s. Then something started to change. For some reason, religious affiliation started to decline at that point, so Thompson tries to explain why that is.

The numbers are pretty uncontroversial and straightforward. The religiously unaffiliated were at 9% in 1993. That number has more than doubled to 23% in 2018. The “nones” have ballooned as a proportion of the American public, and Thompson cites Christian Smith, who wrote an excellent book on the topic, regarding the three main reasons he believes this tendency has started to develop: the association of Christianity with the Republican Party, the end of the Cold War and 9/11.

The bonding of the Christian and political Right was relatively well documented and not overly surprising. Without the atheistic Soviet Union, there was not the pressure to be religious in opposition to the Evil Empire. 9/11 showed the dangers of Islamic extremism, and that caused some to begin to believe all religion was similarly dangerous.

Following these political issues, Thompson moves on to social issues. Many churches, most notably the Catholic Church, have dealt with some very high profile scandals like many other institutions, religious or not. Changes in family structure have also somewhat removed church from what had been the traditional formula of get married, have kids, settle down, go to church. Thompson interestingly mentions delayed adulthood in this passage as well. Even something as simple as Sunday brunch, a trendy thing for millennials, interferes with weekly church attendance. We might not think of it as a big deal, but it is almost an underlying cultural assumption that also might help in explaining this tendency.

Thompson then asks a very provocative question after saying all of this. I think that his diagnosis is largely right overall. He has identified many of the political and social issues that have caused people to feel more comfortable expressing their lack of faith, and this information seems reasonable. The bigger question though is what does it mean for American society. Thompson writes:

“The deeper question is whether the sudden loss of religion has social consequences for Americans who opt out. Secular Americans, who are familiar with the ways that traditional faiths have betrayed modern liberalism, may not have examined how organized religion has historically offered solutions to their modern existential anxieties.”

I do not mean to reduce Christianity to merely a useful social tool, like some type of opiate of the masses. Rather, I like how Thompson puts it:

“Although belief in God is no panacea for these problems, religion is more than a theism. It is a bundle: a theory of the world, a community, a social identity, a means of finding peace and purpose, and a weekly routine. Those, like me, who have largely rejected this package deal, often find themselves shopping à la carte for meaning, community, and routine to fill a faith-shaped void. Their politics is a religion. Their work is a religion. Their spin class is a church. And not looking at their phone for several consecutive hours is a Sabbath.”

Thompson does not really take this further, but look at the list of different things that he identifies as sort of replacement for traditional religion.

When we consider politics as our religion, we are going to take it very seriously. In fact, we are going to take it as a fundamental part of our identity. It is filling a role in our psyche that needs to be filled by something. Is it any wonder then that people get so bent out of shape about politics? As they base their entire worldview around a highly imperfect political platform (neither party platform is divinely inspired FYI), they’re shocked when their politicians disappoint them or let them down. For those of us who are Christians, we shake our heads and are grateful that we follow One who is good all the time. We follow One who is not changed by big corporate donations or lobbyists.

When we consider work as a religion, imagine how stressed out we are going to be. I think all of us understand that none of our workplaces are perfect. Again, they are full of imperfect people. Even if your coworkers are amazing, they are still going to do things that irritate you every now and then. If you put all of your hope in that type of environment, again, you are going to be disappointed. This is nothing against any workplace; it is simply human reality.

What if we consider recreation, like a spin class, to be our religion? Recreation brings about many good feelings. We enjoy getting out and doing something fun. I love playing power soccer, for example. The thing about good feelings and that adrenaline rush you get from doing something fun is that eventually you fall off of that natural high. When you are done at the gym and you go home, you no longer have that spin class pumping you up, and you are going to desire something deeper. That sense of meaning and purpose is temporary, so you continually have to pump it up by doing something else. Not only does this lead to potential burnout, but it is hard to base our hope in something that is so temporary. Christians are happy that we follow One who can give us everlasting joy that persists even in the face of temporary hardship.

I really appreciate Thompson’s take in this article because he admits something that many people are not willing to. He admits that there are benefits to religion that actually have extra social benefits. Granted, this kind of utilitarian conception of religion is far less than what Christians would argue we have. I understand that. That being said, it is refreshing to read someone who is not bent on saying that religion is worthless and outrageously out of date. Instead, he is willing to recognize that our social fabric is built on something that fills in those gaps of meaning and purpose. For many people, religion helps answer those questions. For people who are not religious, they still have a desire to answer those questions, but without religion, they need to find alternative ways to fill in the gaps. Thompson is willing to admit that that is a very difficult errand. His honesty is appreciated.

I wrote a research paper a few years ago on the rise of atheist churches. These institutions are trying to step in and fill these gaps, but the funny thing about them is that even though a lot of them started with a great deal of fanfare, many of them have really faded. They have not carried on. I don’t exactly know why. My paper was more about the rise rather than the fall. That being said, I wonder if a great deal of it is because, even trying to build in these societal benefits that Thompson recognizes religion provides, there was still something missing. There was still a gap that needed to be filled in somewhere. Something about just getting together and having an inspirational service must not have been enough. Again, my paper did not extend that far to the fall, so I am not overly well read on that portion of the atheist church movement, but is it not incredibly hard to connect the dots here. Something about atheist church just didn’t feel the need that traditional church has for two millennia.

This is a question that we all need to wrestle with as we seek to engage our culture in the 21st century. What do we do as Christians? I think our path is pretty clear. Meaning is something that we need to talk about. It is clearly something people are longing for, and Christianity can help provide those answers. Our environment is not easy, but I think if we take this direction, we will address that fundamental human issue. Certainly we have to deal with the political and social environment Thompson accurately describes, and that will color how people perceive us as Christians, but if we remember that we are able to help provide answers for that fundamental, baseline issue of meaning and try to keep the focus on not, I think we may be able to gain some traction to share our faith in the world.

You Can't Argue Anyone into the Kingdom

As people who are interested in apologetics, there is a line that you are going to hear at some point. You might hear this from even your good-natured, well-meaning Christian friend. They are going to tell you that, “You can’t argue someone into the Kingdom.” I know I have said that myself, and I very well might have written it on this website before if you go back through the archives. I’m not sure.

I couldn’t help but think about this statement today though because it seems more and more like a straw man to me. It seems like it is setting up a false image of what apologists seek to do, and it then tears down that image. Let me try to explain a little bit more about this for you.

The premise that this statement is trying to establish is that apologists use arguments to try to turn people into Christians. In essence, our arguments are our evangelistic weapons. The funny thing about it though is that if you talk to just about any apologist, when you ask them to share the Gospel, they are not going to give you a long list of propositional arguments. Most likely, they are going to share the Gospel just like anyone else. After all, the good news of Jesus Christ is drawn right from Scripture, and there should not be a lot of variation.

Therefore, the first issue is that it doesn’t seem to be the case that most apologists seem to think that arguments get anybody into the Kingdom. They would rightfully say that salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is what does that powerful work. This is how we know that this is a straw man statement, and admittedly, I am going to stop using it now. It is true that you cannot argue anyone into the Kingdom, but, really, no one I really know tries to do that. They tend to be engaged in apologetics for another reason, and they put forward arguments for a more subtle purpose.

Because it is true that the Gospel is what will get people into the Kingdom, the reality is that there are many barriers that can sometimes prevent people from choosing to make that decision to follow Jesus Christ. Those barriers can come in a variety of different forms. Some of them are emotional. For instance, it is not uncommon to hear people who had a bad experience in church as a child, so that has kind of soured them on the whole thing. Other barriers are cultural. I just finished reading Something Has To Change by David Platt, and it seems clear that there are places in the world where some people out right see Christianity as a cultural threat and therefore avoid it.

Other times, though, the barriers are intellectual. Some people will come forward and say that they cannot believe in Jesus Christ because He is dead, and dead people do not rise. Other people will say that science has shown us that there is no need for any type of God, so we can just advance without that entity in our worldview. Still others will say that religion was good for primitive people, but we have evolved far beyond that in do not need that type of psychological crutch anymore.

These seem to be the types of barriers that apologists hone in on. People are making statements, and apologists are seeking to straighten wrong thinking. It is not necessarily trying to argue anyone in particular into the Kingdom. Instead, it is using logic to try to bring down barriers. It is not like breaking down these barriers will instantaneously make anyone a Christian. That is not what anyone says. Instead, breaking down these barriers will allow people to hopefully be receptive to the Gospel.

I think that sometimes people misinterpret the purpose of apologetics. Yes, it is obviously something that helps bring people to Jesus. That is 100% true. There are plenty of testimonies out there that will affirm as much. However, it is still the Gospel message and conviction through the Holy Spirit that make the change. At the end of the day, we all understand that Christianity is more than a set of propositions. It is also a relationship with a very real person. Sometimes I think that people think that apologists reduce Christianity to just an intellectual exercise, but I simply do not think that is true.

Apologetics is the exercise of breaking down intellectual barriers. As those areas are broken down, ideally people will become more receptive to the Gospel. Apologetics plays an important role in helping people realize that they do not need to commit intellectual suicide to become a Christian. It is possible, and admittedly more satisfactory, to be an intellectually fulfilled Christian. With that barrier broken down, for some people, they are more willing to consider what the implications of following Jesus might be.

This may seem kind of out of character for me to say. After all, I have studied apologetics for several years, and I have defended the field on this website and in other places many times. However, it seems to me that it just is not true to say that apologists are trying to argue people into the kingdom. Instead, from what I have seen and witnessed around me from so many talented people is that we are trying to help people break down those intellectual barriers that they use as a justification for not joining the Kingdom. The actual conviction is between that person and God. That’s not our job. But, we can prepare the soil and do our job to help people with the doubts they may have. If those barriers are intellectual, then certainly apologetics is valuable and necessary.