A Columnist in the Calgary Sun has an interesting op-ed about how the press and elite who opine that churches must change with the times or die has it exactly backwards:
Anyway, we saw it all again last week after Anglican bishops by a vote of 21-to-19 decided their church would not bless same-sex unions. The laity and the lesser clergy had approved of them, but without the OK of the bishops, the church’s answer was no. The Evangelical Lutherans came to the same conclusion.
“Wise leaders know,” intoned one Toronto editorial, “that no institution can remain impervious to social change if it also remains committed to being a key piece of the social fabric. Homosexual unions are an accepted legal fact of life in Canada.”
Whatever else might be implied here, the writer himself is apparently “impervious to statistical fact.”
About 40 years ago, the Anglican Church hired Pierre Berton to critique the church from an atheist viewpoint. Berton recommended it change its traditionalist ways and become instead what he called “relevant.” It embraced his advice, and followed the march of mankind.
From that time onward, its membership has been going straight down. Today, while some two million people tell census-takers they are Anglicans, only 800,000 appear on the church’s rolls, and less than 300,000 show up on Sunday. Meanwhile, the United Church, which eagerly followed exactly the same path, has seen its membership drop from two million to 500,000. Three quarters of the members have gone.
Scott at Magic Statistics, one of this elf’s favorite bloggers, adds some excellent commentary and background links.
Where is the documentation? Other theories are more plausible and better documented. In the US context the swing from mainline to evangelical over the course of the last 40, 60, 100 years is primarily explained in documented differences in birthrates and the fact that we tend to stay in the denomination into which we are born. Meanwhile conversion to apostasy has increased amongst both the mainline and evangelical, and fewer evangelicals feel the urge to switch to mainline when they move up the income ladder. See my essay here,
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/evangelism/be_fruitful_and_teach_your_chi.php
I welcome criticism friendly or otherwise. If I’m wrong that’s useful information.
Well, I said it before and will say it again because it is so satisfying to be right every once in a while (except with my wife wherein I am wrong 100% of the time): Those who abrogate those standards which define their identity, destroy their identity as well. A church exists because it has an established identity and that means that it has established standards which – now hear this – it holds year in and year out, regardless of what’s hot in Vanity Fair.
The church may not prosper for a variety of reasons, including the dismissal of those standards by the available population. But without standards, it never has a chance to live, regardless of the wishes of the surrounding population. Whether TEC likes it or not, people hunger for standards because they hunger for identity. And here’s a solemn, irreducible truth: Where there is no identity, no standards, there is no meaning. To be without identity, is to be meaningless, and mankind cannot bear this terrible emptiness. LM
John [#1]: Fair enough to ask for more substantiation.
But as church becomes more like secular culture, why not do something else on Sunday morning?
Remember also that many mainline churches could (to my knowledge) be fairly characterized as evangelical a century ago, including the Methodists, the Southern Presbyterians, and most African American churches.
John #1. I just read your atricle. I don’t think you can prove either of the two thesises by statistical data alone. We do know TEC is in a crash dive. This was reported to EC in 2004 using TEC’s own data. The decline has steepened since 2004 (once again using TEC’s own data). And the triuth is it’s probably worse than reported because we are using parochial reports which can be (make that “are”) unreliable. For instance, the data being used to show decline are from ASA. But I persoanlly know clergy who have taken the liberty of reporting all services, Sunday and weekly, but still calling it “ASA”. When an orginazation is in decline, as TEC certainly is, one would think some level of reflection would occur. That has failed to happen in TEC. Certainly one method of reversing the trend would be to “evangelize”. In Minneapolis, we were told that VSG would bring in thousands to TEC. The opposite has occurred. If I were the PB, I would go back to basics–stop the psychobable and critical historical method, and just trust the text. “Go unto all the world…”. We haven’t, except in a few dioceses, which by the way are growing or at least holding their own, and I daresay we won’t.
“…no institution can remain impervious to social change if it also remains committed to being a key piece of the social fabric.” We(Western culture) are currently engaged in an experiment in which the Catholic Church is remaining impervious to some major social changes in liberal democracies. Will the Church cease to be a key piece of the social fabric? If the Church ceases to be a key piece won’t the liberal democracies be the worst off? Isn’t it odd that a secular institution like the Toronto editorial should say to the Church that if you want to be a player then you have to play by our rules. I thought secularists were committed to critique.
the fact that we tend to stay in the denomination into which we are born.
I’ve seen many articles that suggest we are, in fact, church shoppers, changing “brands” without much thought. Perhaps Mr. Chilton has a reference for this claim.
A piece of helpful data would be the degree to which decline such as TEC is experiencing is the result of actual defections (people actively leaving) versus attrition (a failure to replace the dying and those who become inactive). Of course, since 2003, people have been actively leaving TEC as they did post women’s ordination. That will settle down. It’s the long-term dying off that’s killing TEC and I doubt that birthrates can adequately account for that.
No institution can remain impervious to social change etc, is yet another case of turning a half-truth into dogma. Public education has under change after change in order to be a key piece of the social fabric, and thereby has made itself remarkable failure at most levels. Follow the dogma above has been a disaster for public education. For some reason, America is unable to grasp that some things ought NOT to be changed, not because they are perfect, but because they are essential or definitive. This flibbertygibbet mentality is flattered by calling it “flexibility.” What in practice it does is make the lessons of the past meaningless. LM
Spong’s diocese is a living example of the effects of “change (and) die” theology espoused by that former bishop. Remember, there is only acceleration (increasing or decreasing) it’s still acceleration. That’s the equivalent of growth in the churches cited. See PB KJS for the happily thriving ECUSA/TEC for verification.
John Chilton and KJS say that episcopalians are shrinking because they are smarter than others and less fertile. Did we take smart pills in the past 10 years. Membership was going up till then. I guess we got smarter in 2002 (small decrease) and are all becoming Einsteins at an accelerating rate after 2003. Noble prizes to be passed out at the altar rails pretty soon to the few that are left.
Could the decreasing fertility of episcopalians be due to the church truly becoming the gay church with reproduction rate of zero???
Hey, I have an idea. Why not ask the tens (hundreds?) of thousands that have left? Did the compromised theology have anything to do their leaving? Oh no, say it so, bro’ Chilton. Let’s not ask them and that way KJS and Mr. Chilton can amaze us with the pontifications.
Don’t you think the onus is on the [i]innovators[/i] before they start their new thing? Hey, show me that “full inclusion” (euphemism for homosexual clergy and SSUB’s) isn’t going to kill the church [i]before[/i] you launch into it.
I find statistics very difficult. Nevertheless, it seems hard to deny that TEC has numerical problems, as the C of E (my church) certainly has. The C of E isn’t an officially liberal church – but it is true that lots of its members think liberal and practise liberal. It is also true that growth in the C of E is mostly (not exclusively) found in Evangelical churches. The general decline of the C of E is pretty well mirrored in other mainline churches, though it is true that the RC church in England (and perhaps elsewhere in the UK) is experiencing recent growth. This, however, has little to do with its perceived orthodoxy: rather, with the considerable influx of Eastern Europeans from traditionally RC countries (notably Poland). In this general context, as in others, Evangelicals naturally infer that they are doing well (relatively – it is very relative) because they preach the faith unadulterated. Liberals resist this analysis because they think that Evangelical thinking is in many respects wrong (forgive me – I’m generalising here). What isn’t yet proven is that Evangelicalism has the capacity to create an overall growth in Christian membership, rather than just to reshuffle the cards within a generally stable or declining picture. There remains a basic disagreement about the reason for that general picture. Evangelicals think it is because the church has sold out; liberals think it is because the church hasn’t accommodated its thinking enough to other truths. The latter is my view. Failing statistical evidence, I don’t believe that the diocese of Carlisle is doing better because of the manifestly stupid views of its bishop.
# 10 – evangelicals tend: 1. to concentrate on attracting and retaining families through contemporary music styles; 2. to invest in children’s and youth ministry; 3. to stress the distinctiveness of being a Christian in the world; 4. to foster a stronger sense of spiritual belonging (‘fellowship’) and personal prayer and devotions; 5. to sponsor large scale youth events and family holidays; 6. to have larger families.
From my very limited experience, I suspect that liberal Anglican churches don’t have very adventurous ideas in reaching children and youth & so have limited appeal to couples of child-bearing age. Even less so when some of them take on a gay tinge.
Most Christians believe in Revelation–a Saviour and a message delivered 2,000 years ago to be kept alive and handed down through the ages until the end of time.. But who in their right mind can believe that a particular church is accurately transmitting that Revelation today if today the media is full of stories about that church treating its teachings as so much silly putty. On the other hand the Catholic Church and Evangelical Churches are notorious in the media for not wanting to compromise or change their message and their teachings. So people logically assume these ecclesial bodies are more likely to be presenting Revelation far more accurately than any “silly putty” church.
though it is true that the RC church in England (and perhaps elsewhere in the UK) is experiencing recent growth.
I believe Fr. Tee has stated on this blog (and I think I read it somewhere else) that ASA has declined among Catholic parishes in England from about 1.5M to about a million. Without the influx of Catholic Europeans, one supposes it could get worse. Relevant to the current discussion is the fact that English Catholic bishops are said to be “liberal” (revisionist/reappraiser/modernist). Good heavens! Why would anyone care about the lukewarm gruel of a “liberal” church. I can do social work (actually have done so) without the religious overlay. I can do “spirituality” without the demands of Christianity.
In their book, The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (Rutgers 1992), Roger Finke and Rodney Stark devote an entire chapter to the reasons why mainline denominations decline. I don’t have time to summarize it right now but a Wake Forest sociology professor offers this brief outline:
http://www.wfu.edu/~yamaned/teaching/301/docs/Topic4.pdf
Stark is a well-respected sociologist of religion as well as an orthodox Christian.
My most humble thanks to the elf for the vote of confidence.
About the claim that Anglican decline is driven by falling birth rates among traditionally Anglican demographic groups: I took a look at that a while back and concluded that the claim was inaccurate, at least as far as the Anglican Church of Canada is concerned.
There’s also the aspect that the Gospel is for all people. Here in northern Canada, Anglicans have done an excellent work in spreading the Word among indigenous peoples. If your own demographic group is in decline, why not proclaim the Gospel farther afield?
#11
Certainly something in what you say. Personally, I’d find ‘contemporary music styles’ intolerable (OK, we can all live with ‘Shine, Jesus, shine’, and, as Vaughan Williams said when revising the English hymnal, ‘it contains the best of tunes and the worst of tunes’), though if others find them helpful, that’s fine. It’s also true (I will admit it) that the church we attend is declining rather badly. But I think that’s largely due to a failure of leadership at the top and am getting the matter raised at this Wednesday’s PCC. As for ‘a gay tinge’, I don’t believe this is generally an issue in the UK (perhaps in some contradiction to parts of the US). The only way of finding this out is by talking to people and asking them and as an individual I do.
#14
Thanks. Interesting reading.
#15
Also interesting. I agree. To intersect again with #14, I think that in many respects we (with all our differences) have still got a good product, but in general (exceptions of course) there’s a dreadful lack of energy about selling it.
John brings up a point about the Anglican church that is well taken. We don’t dole out baby food. I, too, love the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams (and I pronounce it “Rafe”, as well). Our church whose rector is very well known in this blogosphere but is unfortunately leaving. He was able to buck the trend in the diocese of Colorado and grow a church, offering orthodoxy AND beautiful music and liturgy. How much more successful could he have been if had not been encumbered by the actions of the diocesan and national church. He wrote a letter discussing the severe difficulty that the wayward hierarchy caused for our local missionary efforts.
I have been to seeker churches. They are helpful. But soon people hunger for more. This is where an orthodox anglican church presence could take over. Those people aren’t going to attend a liberal, anything goes church.
#18
Thanks, robroy. I daresay if I and mine ever visited your church we would love it. One of the things debates on T19 tend to obscure is that many liberals such as myself have no desire whatsoever for anything other than orthodox music and liturgy – or, indeed, most of the time, anything other than orthodox theology. But I daresay also you read such sentiments with mixed feelings.
The thread is :”relevance” and I hope you will keep to it, although, Heaven’s knows, the subject of music is vital. “Contemporary music styles” I place somewhere near tatoos of skulls and snakes. By that I mean, the results of the debasement of taste.
The public schools went through an intense period of “relevance” 30 years ago and have never recovered from it. I lived through it but not gladly. Suddenly, solid texts in literature were out and teeny-bopper books were in because they were relevant. That they were literary trash was, however, irrelevant. And it was precisely at this point that ALL the standards began to be watered down, e.g., grading was socially divisive, judgmental and irrelevant, grade inflation spread as the preceding case bit more deeply, the teacher increasingly became a “facilitator,” and “do your own thing” became the standard formulation of no-standards.
The reaction to this in public schools has been ferocious, with a rabid intensification of AP courses, hyped credential building, and high-intensity acadmic concentration that has become socially stratified. This is “relevance’s ” most recent avatar because the upscale want acceptance at the very “Best Schools.”
What has been the upshot? That education has become a tool, not a condition of the mind, ( I take for my standard that education’s most important function is to produce the well furnished mind. See Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence.) with the result tht education properly so-called has been steadily debased.
In short, its identity has become coarsened, suborned, attenuated, and perverted (if I may use tht word). The result is a sense of drifting, of being without a rudder because the entire process has become meaningless. The question “Why are we doing this” no longer has a clear, culturally sanctioned answer.
This same process is going on in the mainline churches. TEC just happens to be relevance’s most egregious embodiment. But, like the music, the erosion of standards of excellence, means the loss of a clear identity. Multiculturalism, inclusivity, diversity are all jargon to describe this erosion of standards, and the child of this casual mating is meaninglessness. The question “Why go to church?” simply doesn’t have a clear answer. Salvation? From what? We love iPods and Idol. Sin? That is so day before yesterday. Besides all religions are the same in the final analysis so why choose? [Incidentally, see Newsweek, 7/9/07, article called The Major REligions are Essentially Alike, pg 52. I was hoping Kendall would post this.] EVerywhere the sense is that the standard religions don’t MEAN anything. The demand for relevance is a response to this obvious condition, but the cure is a symptom of the disease.
Well, what does one do. I have no use for Popes but I must admire this one. He has said this: These are our standards. We will keep them. They are often rigorous and interfere with life’s pleasures. So be it. Win or lose, this is who we are. We are not for everyone, so we are not inclusive.
How can anyone not admire this? More important, he will cleanse the Catholic stables with the hard stream of Catholic doctrine and the result will be more, not fewer, horses in the stalls. I have no desire to be a Roman, but he is right as rain, and the Good Guy Anglicans should be doing the same thing. Ladies and gentlemen, enough of this “We are so broad and inclusive; we welcome everyone.” No, no, no. We do not welcome everyone because our standards exclude those who do not confess to our intimate connection to scripture. Moslem Anglican priests? No,no and again no. People, time to assert self-restraint and self discipline when dealing with foggy-mindedness (for the TEC’s) and roiling emotionalism (for the charismatics). Toime to say, “No, certainly not. Not in my home, you won’t.” Larry
#20
Larry,
You write very well and with energy (although your sentiments are sometimes obnoxious to me; much of the above, however, I agree with). Energy: that’s what so many manifestations of Anglicanism lack.
YOu are far more liberal than I am so on the subject of homosxuality we will always disagree. But here, we are riding the same horse. If it is dead, let’s take of the saddle. If if isn’t, John, then I say let’s give it a smart touch of the whip and make this horse canter. We can do it if we do not succumb to the fears and apprehensions of those tender souls who durst not sanction the whip because it is abuse. Good character has two driving forces, courage and self-restraint. Aristotle tells us quite rightly that courage is the father of all good character; if so, then self-discipline is the mother. They are opposite forces that need each other the way a man needs a woman. Courage is outgoing; undisciplined it becomes rashness. Self-discipline is centripetal; without courage it becomes parochial aridity, the sterility of the merely self-denying. ANd the Anglican church needs some real character, but I don’t see the courage anywhere. Larry
I’m a fan of Finke and Stark and like their theories although I’m not entirely sold that they play out consistently in the real world.
Regarding the “church shopping” question above, what I should have said is we tend to stay in one of three denominational groups: Catholic, conservative and mainline. (That’s what the General Social Survey data I cited uses.) We may well shop around within those.
Shopping gets us back to the thread topic of “relevance.” It is a mistake to equate relevance with selling out to society. Relevance is looking at the social problems of the day, not turning inward but rather confronting them. If we merely turn inward we will lose at evangelism. If we sell out to society we’re just another brand of entertainment and not a terribly competitive one. Finally, If we are _relevant_, as in speaking truth to injustice and immorality, there’s no guarantee what effect that will have on evangelism and that’s OK.
Just to go back to music … There is one respect in which ‘orthodox’ music in a church context, as in other contexts, HAS to take account of ‘developments’ (actually, regressions) in popular taste since the 1960s. This is that pop/rock (and to a lesser extent jazz) have colonised people’s ears to such an extent that much ‘orthodox’ music seems unbearably slow. Most church organists play too slow. Many of the tunes of traditional hymns are flat and lack-lustre. The same applies within classical music. Listen to the ‘great’ recordings of the 1950s and 1960s and they mostly seem far too slow. OK, I agree with Duke Ellington that it’s possible (and in fact highly seductive – see Shirley Horn and pre-electric Miles Davis) to ‘swing slowly’ but very few people have that gift. This means that ‘orthodox’ people have to choose their material with care. It can be done. There are many great, great hymns within the Anglican canon and there are many great, great Methodist hymns and tunes that we can appropriate (to the extent that the Methodists are different from us). The other week, in our church, we sang as the ‘recessional’ a hymn I’d never met before (something like ‘In thee we trust’) to the tune of Sibelius’ ‘Finlandia’, which I know as a Classical piece but never (to my shame) had encountered as a hymn tune. Great tune, great words, everyone was singing away at full throttle, not a dry eye in the house (of God). It was wonderful beyond words.
#23 John’s point is well taken and entirely correct. I meant by “relevance” the contemporary use, the giving up of a practice because it is no longer fashionable and replacing it with one that is. His definition is one that needs to be addressed here, for the techno-scientific alteration in basic life process is bearing down on us like an oil tanker, and is as difficult to stop. See The NYTimes Book Review July 8, “The Case Against Perfection.” on bioengineering to “improve” the human genome. THIS is what’s coming and I see no sign that the Anglican church is even looking at this problem. How is Christianity going to confront this monster?
Instead, we have lawn sleeves meeting lawn sleeves at endless conferences, scarcely looking at what the world is up to. The human genome is ready to be altered, and we are worried about Muslim TEC priests? We have blind parents asking that their fetus be blinded so that they will not have a sighted child, and we are worried about Schori? TEC is dead to us, let us bury the body as quickly as possible. Question: What will happen when the scientists discover the gene(s) for homosexuality and develop a prenatal test for it? What then? It WILL happen you know, just as they can identify Down’s Syndrome. We need to be mindful of John’s point, and face the world with Christian solutions – if there are any. Larry
The human genome is ready to be altered, and we are worried about Muslim TEC priests?
If you mean by “we”, the Episcopal Church, you should realize that TEC has already become a marginal voice in the social body, despite all of the portentious sounding resolutions at all the meetings. Do you think matters like the Muslim/Episcopalian priest doesn’t catch the public eye? Not to mention bishops meeting at resort hotels to decry poverty? No, outside of fancy-dress liturgies, endless meetings (punctuated by wine-and-cheese receptions), sunset cruises around Manhattan, and heated blog discussions, Episcopalianism is a laughing-stock, or, at best, a quaint relic.
I hate to be this blunt, but no-one much cares what the Episcopal Church has to say about genetic engineering. To be fair, I’m not sure any religious body will have much to say. Materialism has gripped western culture to a terrible degree. There is money to be made, not to mention the hideous spectre of man making a new superman.
#26, 25
Maybe no one cares much about TEC in particular says about these things, but surely Larry is right (never thought I’d write that!!!) to say that Christian theology in general HAS to say something about these things? But I think there are Christians – even Anglican Christians – who do think deeply about such matters, though as far as I know they don’t include Evangelicals. For example, I attended a lecture last December by the great, great Keith Ward on the science-religion question and in the questions afterwards he said that if computers acquired consciousness he looked forward to baptising them.
#26: No, “we” does not mean TEC. (Shudder) I mean “us”, the good guys, the ones in the white hats – well, funny looking pointy ones, anyway.
What you say of TEC is true enough, but I ttell you, TEC alive will do us no harm, but dying, will become martyrs for liberalism if we let them frame us as the parochial bullies who have shackled Christianity to a tyrannical and dogmatic past. LM
Hey, John S., regarding Music:
did you ever see that Danny Kaye movie
libraryjim says:
July 6, 2007 at 5:20 am
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john scholasticus says:
July 7, 2007 at 1:15 am
Elves!
I forgot to put the closing quotation marks in my href citation!
:shut:
#29
Jim, thanks. I’m not sure if I’ve seen that particular movie but it is a sort of commonplace about the irruption of ‘new music’. It’s also in ‘the Benny Goodman’ story for example. I’ve lived through this, had my pop and rock phases. I’d just rather not have them in church. Other people are welcome. Space for everybody etc. (‘live and let live’ …) I’m not irretrievably dyed in the wool, just as I get older and ever more conscious of shortening time, selective.
Cheers, John.