nominal "evangelicals"-- the (supposed) threat and the (definite) opportunity

First, "the end of Christian America"; now, the death of evangelicals...

I guess this stuff sells books. Do the authors believe this stuff or are they just greedy capitalists?

Here's a response-- for those inside and outside the Church-- from the editorialists of Christianity Today...

...the potential to shape media narratives and public opinion in the way the now-discredited theocracy freakout books did. In The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, former Dallas Morning News religion reporter Christine Wicker says evangelicals have dramatically inflated their numbers, and the movement is "about to go the way of the butter churn."

Wicker has a nontraditional definition of evangelical: "those people who have accepted Jesus as their personal savior and as the only way to heaven, who accept the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and who are scaring the bejesus out of the rest of America...They're not the only evangelicals, but they're the only ones that count."

Count for whom? Wicker's attempt to deflate evangelical demography is wrongheaded from the start. She asks, "Why do 25 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they are evangelicals?" Well, they don't....Social-science surveys ask what church a person belongs to....But only a third of those classified as evangelical say they would use that label, and only 3.1 percent indicate that evangelical is the best religious identifier for them....

Indeed, we do need to do better among "unreached" Americans. Wicker's book reminds us that we need to do better among the "reached," too. Our neighborhoods—and churches—are full of nominal Christians, even nominal evangelicals, who still need conversion. Evangelical is not a synonym for "committed Christian." There is a massive difference in behavior and belief between those who affiliate with evangelical churches and those who actually attend them [and those who are disciples of Jesus]....

Real evangelicals don't see nominal evangelicals as a political bloc to be manipulated. They see them as a mission field. Wicker thinks it's a scandal that the megachurches are full of uncommitted Christians. The megachurches think it's an opportunity....