Furthermore, the last available study on the percentage of minority faculty at evangelical Christian colleges and universities, conducted in 1998, shows that minority faculty made up only 3.6 percent of Christian college faculty, which was actually a drop from the percentage of minority faculty in 1995.¹⁸ A random sampling of twenty different Christian colleges and evangelical seminaries provided by the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2007 reveals that ethnic minorities comprise less than 7 percent of the faculty at those twenty schools.¹⁹ If these schools are indeed preparing leaders for the next generation, then for their students to have limited or no exposure to minority faculty mentors is to shortchange their education.

What is even more distressing is that institutes of Christian higher education oftentimes set the theological agenda for the American church. So while the demographics of American evangelicalism are undergoing dramatic change, the theological formation and dialogue remains captive to white Christianity. What we are witnessing in the twenty-first century is the captivity of the church to the dominant Western culture and white leadership, which is in stark contrast to the demographic reality of Christianity in the twenty-first century. Even if we could justify the white captivity of the church in the early part of the twentieth century, there is no justification for it now.

The Debilitating Power of Cultural Captivity

What is Jesus’ heart for the church? I once heard the perspective that Almighty God has had to endure three indignities in human history. The first indignity was Adam and Eve’s disobedience and rejection of YHWH in the Garden of Eden. The second indignity was Jesus’ suffering and public humiliation on the cross. And the third indignity was that he trusted his name to a group of humans (the church) that have brought humiliation and indignity to the holy name of Jesus. This ongoing humiliation requires repentance and reformation. We need repentance from our cultural captivity and a willingness to reform our church in the next era of North American evangelicalism.

For most of its history (but particularly in the last fifty years), American evangelicalism has more accurately reflected the values, culture and ethos of Western, white American culture than the values of Scripture. At times, the evangelical church has been indistinguishable from Western, white American culture. In the emerging culture and the next evangelicalism of the twenty-first century, we must consider how evangelicalism has been held captive to Western, white culture and explore ways that the Christian community can reflect biblical more than cultural norms. Where is the church that will uphold the name of Jesus? Where is the pure and holy bride that Jesus longs to return for? Currently, we are seeing the Western, white captivity of the American evangelical church, but we can hope that it is time for a new era of the church in the next evangelicalism.