{"version":"1.0","provider_name":"Church Answers","provider_url":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com","title":"How the Rise of Evangelical Distrust Is Making Evangelism Harder | Church Answers","type":"rich","width":600,"height":338,"html":"<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"yvGD54Ql8B\"><a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/how-the-rise-of-evangelical-distrust-is-making-evangelism-harder\/\">How the Rise of Evangelical Distrust Is Making Evangelism Harder<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" src=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/how-the-rise-of-evangelical-distrust-is-making-evangelism-harder\/embed\/#?secret=yvGD54Ql8B\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" title=\"&#8220;How the Rise of Evangelical Distrust Is Making Evangelism Harder&#8221; &#8212; Church Answers\" data-secret=\"yvGD54Ql8B\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\"><\/iframe><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n\/* <![CDATA[ *\/\n\/*! This file is auto-generated *\/\n!function(d,l){\"use strict\";l.querySelector&&d.addEventListener&&\"undefined\"!=typeof URL&&(d.wp=d.wp||{},d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage||(d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage=function(e){var t=e.data;if((t||t.secret||t.message||t.value)&&!\/[^a-zA-Z0-9]\/.test(t.secret)){for(var s,r,n,a=l.querySelectorAll('iframe[data-secret=\"'+t.secret+'\"]'),o=l.querySelectorAll('blockquote[data-secret=\"'+t.secret+'\"]'),c=new RegExp(\"^https?:$\",\"i\"),i=0;i<o.length;i++)o[i].style.display=\"none\";for(i=0;i<a.length;i++)s=a[i],e.source===s.contentWindow&&(s.removeAttribute(\"style\"),\"height\"===t.message?(1e3<(r=parseInt(t.value,10))?r=1e3:~~r<200&&(r=200),s.height=r):\"link\"===t.message&&(r=new URL(s.getAttribute(\"src\")),n=new URL(t.value),c.test(n.protocol))&&n.host===r.host&&l.activeElement===s&&(d.top.location.href=t.value))}},d.addEventListener(\"message\",d.wp.receiveEmbedMessage,!1),l.addEventListener(\"DOMContentLoaded\",function(){for(var e,t,s=l.querySelectorAll(\"iframe.wp-embedded-content\"),r=0;r<s.length;r++)(t=(e=s[r]).getAttribute(\"data-secret\"))||(t=Math.random().toString(36).substring(2,12),e.src+=\"#?secret=\"+t,e.setAttribute(\"data-secret\",t)),e.contentWindow.postMessage({message:\"ready\",secret:t},\"*\")},!1)))}(window,document);\n\/\/# sourceURL=https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-includes\/js\/wp-embed.min.js\n\/* ]]> *\/\n<\/script>\n","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Distrust-vs-trust-written-on-two-arrows.png","thumbnail_width":1200,"thumbnail_height":628,"description":"The most important book written in political science in my lifetime is Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam. It\u2019s a thick volume with hundreds of thousands of words and dozens of graphs that point the reader to a central conclusion\u2013Americans aren\u2019t joining and participating in organizations anymore. The book's title comes from a simple data exercise where Putnam tracked the number of people in bowling leagues over nearly 100 years. What he found was that folks were quite simply bowling alone now. He also showed similar trends in membership in groups like the Elks, the Moose, the VFW, and the Boy Scouts. What worried Putnam the most was not just the decline in participation in these groups but the implications for society. He popularized the term \u201csocial capital,\u201d which has become part of the lexicon of social science. Put succinctly, social capital is the invisible bonds that tie us together in a local community. It makes people care about the local school system even though they don\u2019t have children. Or it motivates them to help with an effort to clean up the city park when they don\u2019t use it that often. It\u2019s the glue holding society together and what makes democracy healthy. Putnam published his magnum opus in 2000, meaning his data collection efforts only ran through the mid-1990s. At that point, American religion was still fairly robust. In Bowling Alone, Putnam contended that houses of worship were one of the last remaining engines of social capital in the United States. For anyone who has paid even a little bit of attention to the data related to religion in the last twenty-five years, it\u2019s become clear that those engines have begun to sputter as attendance has declined, and the share of Americans with no religion has continued to climb."}