Evangelicalism is not what it used to be. Evangelicals were once derided for being uneducated, unsophisticated, and single-issue oriented in their politics. Now they profess at some of our best universities, parse postmodernity, and preach \u201ccreation care\u201d\u009d with liberal fervor. Looking at the supposed repudiation of \u201cthe religious right\u201d\u009d in the 2008 election, many pundits chortled gleefully that evangelicalism\u201d\u201dthe conservative brand of Protestantism reflected by Southern Baptists, the Assemblies of God, the Church of the Nazarene, and others who believe in the final authority of the Bible and the need for conversion\u201d\u201dis smaller than most have thought, and that the evangelical young have morphed into social liberals.<\/p>\n
In other words, evangelicals are not as powerful a cultural force as previously thought, and in the future they will be even less so. Neither of these claims is true<\/b>.<\/p>\n