I saw the article that Edith Blumhofer, director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, wrote in the WSJ last week. Unfortunately, it’s locked behind the paid subscriber wall now. The article was another response to TIME’s 25 Most Influential Evangelicals. It’s interesting because a friend of mine pointed out the lack of diversity in the TIME list when it came out. It overwhelmingly highlighted white men, at the expense of women and minorities. Now, some might argue that such a make-up is simply a function of the nature of evangelicalism for the past 50 years. That may be true, but the movement has reached a point that the influence of white, male evangelicals is actually in decline. In fact, most of the men on TIME’s list are nearing retirement or death, and few of them could be described as “young”. At the same time, Blumhofer points out that evangelicals are on the rise in the two-thirds world. Here’s part of her article:

But this traditional face of American evangelicalism is changing. An ever higher number of U.S. evangelicals — perhaps nearing a third of the total — are Asian, African, Latin American or Pacific Islander. While Billy Graham would probably make their list of influential people, some of Time’s others would not. The ethnic evangelicals, having arrived since 1965, have brought a surge of fervor into American denominations … The faith of these newer Americans is — like that of U.S. evangelicals generally — rooted in the Bible and personalized by experience. It may even be more expressive and literalist than what the older forms of evangelicalism have become. But the ethnic evangelicals have little time for the much-publicized conservative interest groups that mobilize white middle-class church members. Ethnic evangelicals and their offspring are more urban than suburban; they vote Democrat as well as Republican. New arrivals are as likely to care about immigration, human rights, poverty and religious freedom abroad as about same-sex marriage or Israel — though they do not speak with a unified voice. They often pour their money and energy into programs focused on their countries of origin. These newcomers already wield influence in evangelical institutions.

It’s too bad the whole thing isn’t linkable unless you’re a subscriber. If you want more, get Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom.