If you want an engaging preacher or a flashy conference, you turn to the evangelicals. If you want to know how to think, for example, about marriage, euthanasia, fertility treatment, issues of church and state — matters which are part of a pastor’s daily diet and which are becoming more, not less, complicated — then really you have to look elsewhere for the best Christian material. None of this bodes well for the long-term institutional or theological stability of the movement.

When it comes to thinking about the future of Evangelicalism in the U.S., the major problem for the pundit is one of definition. Evangelicalism is a nebulous term whose definition is highly contested. For the sake of argument, I here take it to refer to that loose collection of churches, institutions, and parachurch organizations that identify in some sense with the Protestantism originating in the 18^th-century revivals and thus as related to, but distinguishable from, higher church forms of Protestantism such as Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and confessional Presbyterianism.

The question of the legitimacy of homosexuality is set to break the movement’s institutions and alliances apart in a way not seen since the bloody battles over feminism. This division will likely be even more profound, as the issue is one that strikes much deeper at the notions of personhood, sexuality, and morality than the complementarian/egalitarian debate. It is true that we currently witness some wrestling over the definition of homosexuality and what is and is not deemed legitimate. I anticipate, however, that the shifts on this issue in the wider world, legal and generational, will polarize the discussion and rapidly eliminate the middle ground of agnostic or compromise positions. Ours is not an age of subtle distinctions in matters of cultural policy. Churches, institutions, and individuals will be forced to stand clearly on one side or the other. And that will be very hard for those evangelicals who have thought their scholarship or their urbanity or, more recently, their urban chic buys them a lasting place at the cultural table. The wider world is coming to regard the issue of homosexuality, like the issue of race, as an absolute test of social acceptability.

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