As I’ve watched evangelicals decline in numbers over this past 10+ years, I’ve been witness to some of the most spectacular cope explosions on the planet. From the very beginning, they’ve been trying their best to spin loss after loss as the prelude to full recovery. Even now, they’re still at that ‘bargaining’ phase of grief, it seems. Today, let’s cruise into the evangelical world to see the straw they’re busy spinning into gold.
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 11/7/2025. They’re both available now! From introduction: A Calvinist review of Thom Rainer’s “Simple Church.”)
SITUATION REPORT: No, it’s really still just decline and not renewal
On October 28th 2025, Malcolm Foster wrote for Religion News Service about the young women leaving evangelical churches. His headline asks, “is it decline or renewal?”
I thought I’d help him out by answering his headline question. No, this is still the regular decline evangelicals have been experiencing for many years now. However, he interviews a number of women who think otherwise.
Amy Hawk, an author critical of modern evangelicalism, tells him: “I think God is raising up women to speak out [. . .] God is allowing this so that we can see the corruption and step away from it.” And Sheila Wray Gregoire, who often criticizes the male-dominated, power-obsessed evangelical system, said: “I think that’s where we are, where people are dissatisfied with the church as it is. What’s coming hasn’t come yet. And we can’t see what that’s going to look like. But it’s an exciting place to be.”
They’re talking about inroads and renewals in more mainline and progressive flavors of Christianity, but their still-evangelical peers are talking exactly like them. What’s more:
Everything I’m hearing now, I’ve heard before. Evangelicals themselves may have the memory of mayflies, but we heathens sure don’t. So today, let me show you that what is old is new again—and again, and again, and again.
In the wild, Part I: Evangelicals coping about their decline, 2024
In May 2024, Kevin Martin wrote for The Living Church (an evangelical Episcopal site) about a bishop who told her church, “The Church isn’t declining, it is transforming, and that is a good thing.” To his credit, Martin felt her statement reflected denial.
At the end of 2024, Carey Nieuwhof outlined five “disruptive” church trends fueling evangelicals’ decline. Somehow, at the end of the post he still manages to say: “The future of the church, of course, is bright. It gets brighter still if our generation of church leaders sees the moment we’re in clearly and responds accordingly.”
(Bonus topic crossover: He also believes the false narrative of the so-called “Quiet Revival,” which we discussed recently!)
A December 2024 sermon from G3 Ministries (a hard-right Calvinist pastors’ resource site) assures evangelicals: “[P]ress forward, knowing that Christ has already secured the victory [. . . ] The victory is certain.”
But then, something remarkable happened that gave wings to all the hopes that evangelicals still entertained.
In the Wild, Part II: The bombshell 2025 copium hit
In February 2025, Pew Research ran an analysis article saying that Christianity’s decline seemed to have leveled off for now. Once teens and young adults get older, though, they expect the decline to start up again—these young folks tend to be less religious than older ones, so they’re unlikely to join Christianity later in life.
That cautionary note didn’t stop a lot of evangelicals from firing up the cope train in earnest.
In March 2025, Firebrand ran a post talking about that Pew Research article. Their writer concludes, “The church will not die. It cannot die [. . . W]e need to change the narrative from decline to expectation.”
The next month, in April 2025, The Gospel Coalition (a hard-right Calvinist site) discussed the Pew Research article. They noted that the pause in decline is likely only temporary, but declared of it: “We should therefore view this pause not as a reason for complacency but as a God-given opportunity for renewed mission.”
Finally, in July 2025 Ed Stetzer did an interview with Biola Magazine. Biola is an evangelical Christian college, one we’ve discussed before, along with Ed Stetzer—who has his own site tag! In the interview, Stetzer brings up research created by private, for-profit evangelical companies (red flags galore there) that he thinks indicates that the decline will soon reverse. He says: “It’s a gospel opportunity, and I’m hoping pastors and ministry leaders will learn from the current situation and seize the gospel moment that’s there.”
(Spoiler alert: They won’t.)
The prequel years of evangelical cope
It’s all so very, very familiar to me. I’ve seen this kind of coping before. Ten years ago, many of these same voices were saying the same exact things to the same exact audiences. Let me rewind the tape for you:
In his groundbreaking 2009 post for Christian Science Monitor, the Internet Monk (Michael Spencer) made various predictions about future of evangelicalism. (We evaluated them here.) He ends: “We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born.” Unfortunately, that prediction didn’t come to pass.
In 2012, Ed Stetzer—yes, the same guy talking up revival turnarounds in 2025—predicted that once all the fakey-fake fake “cultural Christians” left his precious churches, evangelicals could really get to work again. He wrote: “Christianity is not collapsing, but it is being clarified. [. . .] Christianity in America isn’t dying, cultural Christianity is. I am glad to see it go.” And I bet he was—right up until evangelicals didn’t so much get clarified as politically radicalized.
Trevin Wax is a Gospel Coalition writer who contributed a chapter to the book we reviewed a few years ago, Before You Lose Your Faith. In 2014, though, he was busy declaring that evangelicalism wasn’t dead: “Contrary to popular belief, the evangelical church is not dying. Declining, perhaps. But wherever grace-driven repentance is preached and an out-of-the-mainstream lifestyle expected, people are still coming to faith.” Maybe, but not in any particularly-impressive numbers.
In 2015, Rachel Held Evans—at the time, not chased out of evangelicalism quite yet—wrote an advice column for CNN about how evangelical churches could get Millennials back into church. She ended it: “Church attendance may be dipping, but God can survive the Internet age. After all, He knows a thing or two about resurrection.”
Between 2015 and 2024, of course, nothing “resurrected.” Pew Research published their landmark 2015 Religious Landscape Survey right as Rachel Held Evans wrote her CNN post, and it detailed the decline so well that even evangelicals couldn’t deny it. During the ensuing 10 years, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) alone lost about 2.5M members. (We’re about six months away from seeing their numbers for this year, but I don’t see any reason to expect dramatic improvements.)
Why none of the predictions panned out and none of the cope should be taken seriously now
At this point, evangelicals are an ultra-authoritarian group. Like any similar high-control group, their leaders value conformity and obedience over any other virtue in their followers and lieutenants.
Innovation is the enemy of authoritarian leaders. They don’t want young whippersnappers coming in and making changes to the systems they’ve built and maintained for years. Any young leaders will be mini-mes at best, obsequious sycophants at least, and nobody even knows how bad “at worst” can be.
(Oh, the tragedy of a pastor’s teenage son getting primed for ministry! It’s like watching Brother Dawn desperately trying to mimic Brother Day in Foundation.)
That’s why evangelical evangelism leaders haven’t come up with anything innovative in decades, if ever at all. They can’t. Any shift in culture-war priorities, any change in predatory tactics, will anger and alarm the flocks.
So evangelicals still have absolutely awful retention, especially among young adults. When you look at pictures of excited-looking teens at evangelical youth revivals and events, take out your mental Sharpie and cross out all but about 15% of them.
And as we discussed recently, now even senior citizens are exiting churches. Evangelicals are getting squeezed from every direction. This plateau won’t last too much longer, I don’t think.
Coping with decline is now a beloved evangelical cottage industry
There’s no changing evangelicalism now. The existing power structure won’t allow it. Even if powerful evangelical leaders threw their weight behind a vast restructuring and accountability move, most of the pew-warmers would revolt and leave. They have the church and religious structure they want, more or less.
But evangelicals won’t stop coping with their decline. They won’t stop predicting that a return to dominance is right around the corner. Their leaders talk like this for one very simple reason:
Evangelicals are so power-obsessed and narcissistic that they can’t imagine losing. Authoritarians like these won’t want to support a losing cause or a losing team. No matter how bad things get for their end of Christianity, their leaders can’t entertain even the thought of mentioning failure.
There’s something deliciously satisfying about seeing such terrible people have to dance to the tune of their followers. And they won’t be stopping any time soon. They’ve created monsters in their own image, and now they must bunk down with them.
NEXT UP: Ahhhh! The SBC’s full 2025 Annual Report finally came out last month (linkylink), and we are going to check it out. See you soon! <3
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