“This might be precisely what some pastors had always hoped for, the opportunity to guide and shape every aspect of their congregants’ lives. But spiritually speaking, this is a doomed proposition. Pastors already struggle to provide all the answers written down inside their book. In a modern evangelical culture that punishes uncertainty—where weakness is wokeness, where indecision is the wrong decision—asking pastors to provide all the other answers is a recipe for institutional ruin. Because what their congregants crave, more and more, is not so much objective religious instruction but subjective religious justification, a clergy-endorsed rationale for living their lives in a manner that might otherwise feel unbecoming for a Christian.”
―
Tim Alberta,
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
