Church planters from the 'Bible Belt' and denominations that lean toward Fundamentalism are often moved bombastically to proclaim their mission to Boston in the starkest of terms. They view themselves as soldiers called to fight in a war against the forces of atheistic darkness or secular humanism [dun dun DUUUN]. Take this excerpt from a promotional video for church planting made by the Southern Baptists:

"The patriots' [who fought in the battle of Bunker Hill] Commander-in-Chief said, 'Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes'. They made a commitment to engage the enemy up close and personally. This epitomizes the church planting scene here in Boston, Massachusetts. We have been losing some battles, but we have decided we can win the war. Our supreme commander Jesus Christ is leading the charge in this spiritual battleground."

They sometimes describe themselves as pioneers braving the cruel frontier of a spiritual wasteland. They will cite skewed statistics that point to a bleak Christian presence and a defunct church. Now, I'm confident this sort of portrayal of Boston is highly effective at raising money from worrisome conservatives in Alabama and Mississippi, but I'd just like to publicly proclaim that IT ISN'T TRUE.

In his seminal and prophetic book, The Next Evangelicalism, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, planting pastor of Cambridge Community Fellowship Church, writes,

"In the early 1990s I left my hometown in Maryland to begin seminary studies in New England. In preparing to move to the Boston area, my home church in Maryland took time to pray that I would not lose my faith and spiritual passion in a region of the country that was perceived as spiritually dead. Every story that I heard or concern that was raised seemed to assume that the city of Boston represented the worst of a post-Christian region, and that secular humanism had completely overtaken that city. But when I arrived in Boston I found a very different scenario. I found that Christianity was not only alive in Boston, it was flourishing." p.16

As Dr. Rah points out, the truth is: God is at work in Boston in some amazing ways. Research conducted by the Emmanuel Gospel Center, which has been featured by Christianity Today and in EGC's president Doug Hall's book The Cat & the Toaster, suggests Boston has been in a sustained revival of church growth and vitality since the late 1970s—precisely when many evangelicals around the country began to bemoan the decline of the church in New England. They've dubbed this phenomenon the "Quiet Revival" because of how often it goes unnoticed by evangelicals outside Boston. EGC's research tells a much different story of Boston than the one told by many Southern church groups. Here is merely a sampling:

• Since the late 1970s, growth in the number of churches in Boston and Cambridge has outpaced the growth of the population
   
• In 1989, there were 406 churches in Boston and Cambridge. In 2006, there were 675
   
• About 100 churches were planted in Boston and Cambridge between January 2001 and July 2006
   
• Over the last 35 years, an average of 1 new church has been planted in Boston or Cambridge every 45 days