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Wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which, in the natural course of things, must beget riches! And riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity. Now, if there be no way to prevent this, Christianity is inconsistent with itself and, of consequence, cannot stand, cannot continue long among any people; since, wherever it generally prevails, it saps its own foundation.

—John Wesley, in the sermon Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity.

John Wesley preached this sermon in Dublin in 1789. Transport him forward through time to the parking lot of a gleaming glass and steel megachurch, amidst the BMWs and SUVs, and it's not hard to imagine him standing on the bed of a rusty pickup truck, preaching the same sermon. Is Wesley, then, a prophet for our times? Does this sermon encapsulate the story of North American evangelicalism?

At the beginning of the 20th century, evangelicalism gave up much of its wealth and social status so that it could be more faithful to the gospel. A century later, North American evangelicalism has recouped its lost wealth, and then some. In most American neighborhoods today, nearly all the new large church buildings have been built by evangelicals. The new wealth of evangelicalism is even more pronounced in the parachurch world. The largest charitable organization in the nation—with an annual budget of over $2 billion—is the Salvation Army, a unique combination of holiness denomination and parachurch agency devoted to human services. Of the nine largest parachurch organizations in the U.S. devoted to spreading the gospel, eight are evangelical, with combined 1998 budgets of $729 million. Of the seven largest communications media agencies, six are evangelical, with total budgets of $625 million. In foreign ministry and missions, evangelical parachurch agencies raise $1.5 billion per year, while evangelical denominations raise another $1 billion. Mainline denominations and the independent agencies associated with them together raise less than $500 million.

How did this dramatic change come about, and how has it affected evangelicals?

At the close of the Civil War, most northern white evangelicals were full members of the major Protestant denominations. These denominations enjoyed unprecedented wealth, social standing, and respect ability. Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Christians (Disciples), and especially the Methodists all had growing central bureaucracies, fine new church buildings, networks of colleges and seminaries, and better-educated clergy than ever before. Baptists, who in their early years were a "poor and illiterate sect" composed of "contemptible class of the people," would soon count the wealthiest man on earth—John D. Rockefeller—as one of their Sunday-school teachers. The story was different, of course, for southern evangelicals, many of whom attended poor rural churches. And the story was far different for African-American Christians, whose churches were poorer yet, and who had little social status outside their own communities.

Then between 1870 and 1930, the worldly fortunes of northern white evangelicals drifted downward. When the evangelicals of the holiness movement left Methodism, they sacrificed much property and wealth. In the Protestant Episcopal Church and the Disciples of Christ, evangelicals were forced to leave and start new, poorer denominations from scratch.

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June 12 2000, Vol. 44, No. 7