How Evangelical Christianity is Unraveling from Within

Robert Preston Morris started Gateway Church, a prominent megachurch located in Southlake, Texas, in 2000, and served as its senior pastor. Morris was a member of a 25-person evangelical executive advisory board for Donald Trump’s winning 2016 presidential campaign. He also welcomed Trump to Gateway Church in June 2020 and was present at the White House Rose Garden ceremony in September 2020 for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Morris was formally charged with five counts related to inappropriate acts involving a child and plead guilty to all charges in October 2025. This spiritual advisor to Donald Trump is now in jail and will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Yet the general reaction I’ve heard has been more, “of course,” or an occasional yawn than screams of outrage. People seem to expect that evangelical pastors are reprehensible.

Evangelical Christianity is facing a crisis from within. It is destroying itself through four intersections of hypocrisy: a political alignment that contradicts Jesus’ core teachings, a growing perception of inauthenticity among younger Christians, repeated scandals including sexual abuse and an insistence on biblical inerrancy. I’m not opposed to such collapse, though I’m concerned that mainline faith could also suffer some secondary damage in the short run.  

Let’s look at some of these four betrayals and consider how as mainliners, we can present a more authentic faith.

Political Alignment with Christian Nationalism Over the Words of Christ

One would think that an evangelical Christian would be most concerned with spreading the Christ’s words – evangelism is supposed to be the act of sharing the gospel after all – than identifying with a country or political movement. Yet many prominent evangelical leaders, universities and other institutions are publicly supporting political agendas that are in direct opposition to the Gospel’s throughline of compassion, protection of the vulnerable, peacemaking, humility and generosity. Many, like the sex offender mentioned at the top of this blog, have gone out of their way to provide public endorsements of candidates and positions that emphasize the consolidation of political power against the marginalized, even though such positions contradict Jesus’ own words.

This creates a situation where the lines between church and self-interest are puzzlingly blurred. It jeopardizes the very credibility of the faith and our own moral witness. When a part of the church, even this unruly and defiant group that calls themselves evangelicals, appears to be more invested in wealth, racial privilege, and political influence than they are in the values of Jesus, the moral authority of the entire faith is called into question. Most human beings judge us by our authenticity, our love, our generosity and rootedness, not the pursuit of temporal advantages and partisan gains.

This is particularly true for young people who are disillusioned by moral inconsistency. When religious leaders defend positions that are in conflict with faith or commit outright crimes, trust in the faith is eroded. Evangelical Christianity is alienating a generation that cares about things like healing racial divides, climate change, authenticity and justice. Evangelicals have lost the plot on all the issues that matter both today and to our Lord. It’s too late for them, but mainline denominations still have work to do to reexamine what political action actually means in God’s kingdom and recommit to the moral principles that got Jesus killed in the first place.

Inauthenticity in Social Issues

Evangelicals appear inauthentic to most younger Christians, especially regarding social issues. If you are serious about Jesus then you would want to align yourself with love, care for the poor and marginalized and responsible stewardship of our earth and resources. Issues like welcoming immigrants, protecting the environment, gun control, opposition to the death penalty, providing a social safety net and support of universal health care seem directly connected to Jesus’ teachings.

However, instead of championing causes that focus on the vulnerable and marginalized, many evangelicals seem to take the opposite positions. Why would someone participate in a faith that doesn’t live up to its own scriptural ideals? It is natural for people to leave this kind of empty faith. If you’re more concerned about borders and tax cuts than you are justice and mercy, maybe you should stop calling yourself a Christian altogether. Many evangelicals seem stuck not just on these issues, but also in their refusal to engage thoughtfully with science and history.

It’s no wonder that evangelical churches are losing young members in large multiples compared to mainline denominations.

Scandal

As a blogger on theological topics, I spend a lot of time in my own head. But perhaps the most devasting issue facing our faith is more viscerally understood. Many Christians, but it seems like a lot of the evangelical and SBA types in particular, are involved in scandals. Often these scandals involve sexual abuse of minors. As more high-profile cases emerge on a regular basis, including a pattern of cover-ups, financial misconduct and coordinated efforts by evangelical leaders to shield perpetrators from accountability, it would be natural for young people to assume Christianity is empty with no ability to transform our moral imaginations. The biggest example of smoke-screened equivocations is the support of Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist. Where wrongdoing deserves to be confronted and victims deserve transparency and compassion, our current evangelical-supported administration offers insults, stonewalling, suppression and dishonesty. The Independent reports that emails and documents exchanged between FBI officials in March, recently obtained by Bloomberg, show that agents across multiple departments communicated consistently about sanitizing the Epstein records, racking up more than $850,000 in overtime work between March 17 and March 22 alone. And yet, there are more pictures of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein than there are of me and my own mother. Unfortunately, this isn’t just about Trump’s increasingly apparent guilt. This is a pattern that has played out across many prominent evangelical organizations. What is the real priority here?

I’m not talking about the kind of mistakes most people in most churches make, like wasting money, being rude to each other, gossip, or ignoring the tough issues in favor of friendliness. I’m talking about far-reaching consequences that happen when trust is abused and moral credibility is flushed away. Once trust is lost, you can’t restore it through public statements, apologies, sermons, thoughts or prayers. When you undermine your own integrity, all is lost. These organizations seem much more interested in power, privilege and self-preservation than justice and compassion and that is the word the world is hearing about evangelical faith.

I often hear my progressive friends say things like, “we need to be sensitive to those who have been hurt by the church.” I completely agree. I also confess that I haven’t fully appreciated the level of that hurt. It’s enough to be told your marriage is invalid, your reproduction choices are sinful, and your music is too loud. It’s an interplanetary distance away, however, to be sexually abused by a pastor or American president and then watch as other pastors support the abusers over your harm. Who wouldn’t distance themselves from their churches in these situations? Even worse, these scandals have a lot of collateral damage to faithful Christians and leaders. Leaders who could help us lead the church into a new age of renewal have themselves lost their faith. Again, as far as I’m concerned, evangelical Christianity can and should die out, it does more harm than good. It truly is destroying itself from within. But we need to protect the mainline church from collateral damage, too.

Insistence on Biblical Inerrancy

Whatever the Bible is, it is certainly not inerrant. We can’t ask our faithful to study scripture and then ignore the obvious things they see inside of it. For many years, evangelicals held to biblical inerrancy as a norm. But historical-critical scholarship has escaped the seminaries and is camping out on YouTube and TikTok. If you truly love your scripture, then you truly love diversity because diverse viewpoints are all over the place inside of the Bible. Evangelicals turn a blind eye to these complexities. So many who were raised evangelical choose to leave rather than rock the boat. They don’t know about the existence of the old mainlines and their embrace of doubt, nuance and a sophisticated approach to scriptural interpretation.

Smart evangelicals face a real identity crisis. If inerrancy is the gatekeeper to evangelical doctrine, and thus a gatekeeper to who is in the group and who is out of the group, then there is no option but complete destabilization of evangelical faith. Without honest scholarship, the whole thing unravels. Many choose to leave Christianity entirely if inerrancy is all they know. Mainline denominations offer paths to explore diverse and robust theological ideas with honesty and searching. Meanwhile, evangelicals have lost their intellectual credibility. It’s bad enough to promote cringeworthy ideas like intelligent design. But when you claim the Earth is only a few thousand years old, there was a real universal flood and you otherwise ignore historical contexts, science and emerging contemporary understandings, you are not worshipping Christ, you’re worshiping a particular narrow-minded idea of some ancient writings. Young people rightfully want to thrive in a modern world, and they deserve a faith that progresses with the rest of humanity.

Mainlines to the Rescue

Clearly, I’m biased. But I think the answer to protecting the faith from the implosion being experienced by evangelicals is straightforward. We need to lean into our authenticity, not avoid it. Preach Christ and the dangers in following Christ in a modern age. It’s honest. Young people are returning to Jesus more than GenX and Millennials, but they are seeking the real Jesus approached in honesty and with historical context. They aren’t seeking entertainment; they are seeking meaning through Christ’s presence and guidance. That’s a cause for celebration.

Let me be clear: I am not saying we avoid political discussions. I’m instead saying that we assert our Christian identity that is independent from the kingdoms of this Earth. Following Christ means you will come into conflict with short-term political movements. That just means you’re doing it right. It is our prophetic duty to point out injustice.

Moral consistency means modelling the teachable links between Jesus and our society. Christians can, should and always have taken very public stances on poverty, immigration, environment, health care, violence and love. The next generation of Christians is leaving evangelical churches because they are ignoring or contradicting these values. We need to build a church that trains them how to articulate social protections, theological priorities and fight hypocrisy.

Mainlines have real advantage over evangelical churches, especially these pop-up non-denoms you see all the time. Denominations have seminary trained pastors and structures to enforce protection and accountability. They provide a robust theological education with rigor and honesty. Mainline seminarians learn about history as a part of their formation, not just a list of conservative apologetics. They are encouraged to hold onto mystery and doubt so that all followers can be encouraged to stay, but explore, not leave the faith entirely.