Apologetics isn’t for the lost, it’s for the already saved.

Generally speaking, apologetics books and articles are written by Christians and for Christians, no matter who their authors claim are the target audience of their work. The only people who are ever impressed with the arguments therein are people who are already “within the fold.” I virtually never hear of people actually coming to the faith through work of an apologist. On the other hand, I know of three people in a single town who deconverted reading Lee Strobel‘s Case for Christ.

Apologetics isn’t about outreach, it’s about retention. It is an attempt to reduce the attrition rate within an embattled religious tradition increasingly assailed by the very culture wars which they themselves helped provoke through their inability to learn or grow or change their beliefs.