“Millennials’ religious practices depend largely on how the actions make us and others feel, whether the activities are biblical or not” (5). Much like liberal cultural elites, they will not tolerate intolerance: “Popular liberal evangelical writers and preachers tell young evangelicals that if they accept abortion and same-sex marriage, then the media, academia, and Hollywood will finally accept Christians. Out of fear of being dubbed ‘intolerant’ or ‘uncompassionate,’ many young Christians are buying into theological falsehoods” (6).

Data on church growth over the past several decades reveal that churches accommodating to secular culture lose members, many of them in fact. Pick any random number of churches that have lost significant membership and check out their acceptance of liberal theology, including as it relates to social issues such as same-sex marriage (notable American examples are the United Methodists, Episcopalians, and United Church of Christ). In Canada, the United Church of Canada, the formerly large Protestant denomination with strong evangelical roots, is now on life support dealing with a massive loss of church membership (in 2012, average weekly church attendance across Canada was less than 159,000).

Sadly, today there is a sizable group of young people raised in evangelical homes promoting the redefinition of marriage and other ideas more acceptable to secular humanists. Even at the cost of declining church memberships and weakened evangelical institutions, they are apparently fine with the idea of evangelical churches and schools traveling down a path inconsistent with what the Bible teaches. If the evangelical anarchism of these young evangelicals takes over, one can expect fewer Bible-believing institutions in the future. Seriously, why would Bible-believing parents seeking a biblical foundation for their children support churches, schools, and colleges which do not honor the authority of Scripture?

One young evangelical who seeks to expose cunning and harmful liberal ideas in the church community is Chelsen Vicari, evangelical director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Her book Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel and Damaging the Faith (2014) is a welcome introduction on how “progressive” leaders are deviating from historic, biblical Christianity. The stakes are high since a passive response to the undermining of biblical truth means giving “up on the next generation’s walk with Christ” (7).

In an engaging manner, Vicari covers a broad number of topics in three parts: The Crisis, Digging Into the Issues, and Preventing the Collapse. Early in the book, one learns that Vicari grew up in an Assemblies of God church and fell under the spell of liberal Protestant “feel-good” doctrine during her college years. A dazzling Christianity replaced “old-fashioned” conservative evangelicalism.

Classic Christian orthodoxy was less appealing: “Millennials’ religious practices depend largely on how the actions make us and others feel, whether the activities are biblical or not” (5). Much like liberal cultural elites, they will not tolerate intolerance: “Popular liberal evangelical writers and preachers tell young evangelicals that if they accept abortion and same-sex marriage, then the media, academia, and Hollywood will finally accept Christians. Out of fear of being dubbed ‘intolerant’ or ‘uncompassionate,’ many young Christians are buying into theological falsehoods” (6).

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