Few doubt that the graying of members, low birth rates and various controversies have contributed to the diminishing numbers of mainline Protestants found in the United Methodist Church, the Evan gelical Luth eran Church in America, the Pres byterian Church (U.S.A.), the Epis copal Church, the American Baptist Churches and the United Church of Christ.
But has the slippage become precipitous, threatening to reduce mainline Protestants ever closer to remnant status? “A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States,” said Mark Silk, who helped design the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS).
That survey, which polled more than 54,000 adults, reported in March that the number of mainline Christians had slipped to 12.9 percent of adult Americans””down from 17.2 percent in 2001 and 18.7 percent in 1990””as evangelical numbers grew.
By contrast, the Pew Forum’s U.S. Religious Landscape Study, after polling 35,000 adults in 2007, reported last year that 18.1 percent of adults said they were affiliated with “mainline Protestant” churches.
The article never does seem to settle on a definition of mainline.
How about this — the demoninations associated with the Protestant ascendancy of American politics and culture through the mid-twentieth century? That would included ECUSA, Presbyterians, American Baptist, Congregational and Reformed Churches, UU’s, etc. Those were the churches of Main Street and the ‘Main Line’ — they are all declining.
Given that this article appeared in the liberal rag, The Christian Century, what’s remarkable is the author’s calm acceptance of the unsurprising fact that both the recent large scale polls cited by him provide statistical documentation for the continuing erosion of the so-called “mainline” denominations and the continued trend for envangelicalism to displace those liberal groups as the real normative form of Protestant Christianity in America. Those well-known trends, of course, are hardly newsworthy, since they’ve been going on pretty steadily for 40 years.
John Dart’s brief comparison of this year’s American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) with the Pew Forum’s 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Study (USRLS) focuses on the latter’s broader definition of “mainline” Protestants, including Quakers, the RCA, the Brethren, the MCC, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (ex-SBC). That key difference accounts for the fact that the Pew Forum study found that 18% of Americans self-identify as “mainline” Protestants, and 28% as evangelicals (a 10% spread), whereas the ARIS study found that just 13% of the population identify themselves as part of the classic seven “mainline” denominations, and 34% of them see themselves as evangelicals (a 20% margin, or twice as big a gap).
But I’m glad Dart also brings in a third survey, which I’d trust more, namely the General Social Survey, a comprehensive and rigorous study (based on in person interviews) that is the standard sociological benchmark. The 2008 GSS showed 13.6% of Americans identifying with the oldline denominations, and 28.1% with the evangelical ones (for a 15% spread, splitting the difference between the two phone surveys).
But regardless of whther you prefer to think the evangelicals have a 10%, 15%, or 20% edge over the “mainline” Christians, I think there’s little doubt that the former mainline has lost its position of cultural dominance. As Mark Silk of the ARIS rightly concludes, “A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the US.” All three studies essentially agree on that key point. And it’s a very significant one.
The fact is that the very use of the term “mainline” is misleading these days, despite its familiarity and convenience as a way of grouping together the old historic major Protestant denominations: the UCC, the PCUSA, TEC, the ELCA, the UMC, the ABC (American Baptist Covention in this context, not Canterbury), and the Disciples of Christ, on the liberal end of the Protestant spectrum. All seven of those formerly dominant denominations have been in steady and even relentless decline for four decades.
And the sad fact is, they fully deserve it. They have failed to compete in the much more competitive religious marketplace that exists in America since the 1960s, when those liberal groups chose to focus on social action and “prophetic” justice issues instead of on evangelism, disciple-making, and church planting.
Dart poses an important question early on in his article that he doesn’t dare answer honestly. The question? Has the slippage in the “mainline” become preciptous? Readers of The Christian Century surely must hope not, but the fact of the matter is that it has become precipitous.
The graying of the oldline groups can’t go on forever, as it has over the last 40 years. Right now, the AVERAGE age member of those OLDline denominations is around 60, well above the national average age of approximately 35. So what happens when the average age hits 65? 70? 75? At some point, probably sooner rather than later, the steady downward line just plummets. The liberal denomsinations simply can’t sustain the same losses for another 40 years, as many complacent “mainline” leaders seem to assume.
The Christian Century’s archrival, Christianity Today magazine, got it right with their editorial comment cited by Dart here:
“evangelicals nationwide are becoming the new mainline.”
That’s not conservative arrogance. It’s just plain reality. And that fact has immense and far-reaching implications, both religiously and socially.
But this article doesn’t even begin to examine that fateful topic. It would doubtless be very distasteful and disturbing to the readers of that liberal publication.
David Handy+
If this continues Christian Century will have to downsize to a Decade.
It’s also curious that the Pew study creates a category of “unaffiliated mainline” uh, “members” who alone make up most of the difference in numbers. YMMV as to whether this is a valid category; it is impossible by the nature of it to extract a similar category for evangelicals.