Low Church

And yet, today, Russia, still a country with low church attendance and little government tolerance for Protestant evangelism, has become a symbol of the conservative values that some American evangelicals proclaim.

It didn’t seem to matter that Russia is not a religiously unified country, or that it has a high abortion rate and low church attendance rate.

“Therefore, the likelihood of any of these missionaries having contracted the coronavirus is very low,” church officials said in a statement.

Bill Leonard, a professor of Baptist studies at Wake Forest University, said the dispute was a symptom of a larger “dysfunction” in the Southern Baptist Convention, which is noted for its low church style of worship and lack of idolatory.

If “low church” evangelicals would merely restart the practice of inviting people to kneel together in the church sanctuary, to quietly pray together, that would be a start.