Religious Right + SBC Fundamentalists = flight of millennials from the church?

Oklahoma's Bruce Prescott ponders the conjunction of dates. The millennials, "who were born after 1980 and came of age around the millennium," certainly grew up amid the ardent voices of the Southern Baptist Convention's fundamentalists and the others of the Religious Right. As Prescott observes:

The fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention began in 1979. The rise of the Religious Right in America dates from the same year.

Certainly Prescott is not the first to see "a link between in-your-face religion in the public square and declining interest in organized religion among young people."

While not focused precisely on the issue Prescott addresses, Michael Gerson, senior research fellow in the Center on Faith & International Affairs at the Institute for Global Engagement, made a show of discovering the relationship for himself late last year.

Somewhat similarly, Tullian Tchividjian, grandson of Billy Graham, responded to the shift in public attitudes away from right-wing political zeal and turned Ft. Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church away from its hyper-political, right-wing activist heritage.

Of course he had to fight off an attempt by the old hands to remove him from the pulpit there.

In the necessity of that fight is one answer to Prescott's closing question: Will those who helped bring the alienation about "ever realize"?

Apparently not.

More prayer on the right, and less politicking

Pulpits which thundered on the right, now turning away from the culture wars?

Sandhya Bathija, writing at the Americans United for Separation of Church and State blog, says::

William Graham Tullian Tchividjian, the grandson of famous evangelist Billy Graham and the new pastor of Ft. Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, surprisingly says he has no interest talking politics. It’s quite a change from his grandfather, and even more so from his predecessor, TV preacher D. James Kennedy.

Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church’s former pastor was a religious right leader who pursued the culture wars from his pulpit and on his radio and television broadcasts, books, pamphlets, tapes and DVDs.

That left an impression. One Tchividjian is correcting.

On Tuesday he told the Miami Herald:

''Dr. Kennedy came from a completely different generation, and my leadership by that fact alone will be different,'' Tchividjian said.

While the late Kennedy kept a hand in all aspects of the church organization, including its radio, television and print media arm, and Westminster Academy and Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Tchividjian will oversee only the main church.

''Those ministries have gone their own separate ways. They have their own presidents,'' said Coral Ridge executive minister Ronald Siegenthaler. ``The church will be more focused on the local community, as opposed to more national and international outreach.''

We feel Bathija is right when she argues that Tchividjian is in step with the Pew Forum's August 2008, survey which found that 52 percent of Americans agreed that houses of worship should keep out of politics.

If a harbinger, Tchividjian is certainly a notable one. He will, however, not be lonely. The demographics are, for many, irresistible.