Since the first Protestants rowed to shore in Jamestown, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, they’ve been in charge. As recently as the 1950s, the president as well as seven of the nine members of the Supreme Court were Protestant Christians. Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal and other so-called mainline Protestant leaders called many of the shots on civil rights, school prayer, immigration, education and other key issues of the day. Then, in the late ’60s, their numbers began to dwindle.
Today, only one member of the high court is Protestant (John Paul Stevens), and President Obama appears to have stopped attending church altogether at least outside of Camp David. Instead of dominating public debate, mainline Protestants find themselves struggling to reach a quorum. Half of their churches have fewer than a hundred members, and in nearly six of 10 congregations, it’s the Church of the Blue Hair. Or No Hair. A quarter or more of their congregants are 65 or older. That’s three times the number for their more conservative Evangelical cousins.
So what happened? How did America’s most influential religious group become so marginal?
The conventional wisdom has been that the more conservative Catholic and Evangelical churches simply won over the hearts and minds of the American people. And, if there is a culture war, these more liberal Protestant groups surely must have lost.
But not so fast.
There is, or was, a lot more to Mainline Protestantism than the paint-by-numbers post war liberal agenda Thomas claims for it. That agenda always had more support among the clergy and leadership than the laity. Now that this “moral agenda has been co-opted by the state and … assimilated into the broader society” the less liberal laity have naturally found churches that are willing to reassert classical Christian values in a society to them. While “broader society” sees little reason to seek church support for a moral agenda that it correctly recognizes as essentially secular.
It’s sad that Thomas doesn’t value the Mainline contribution to the classical Christian tradition. As the ages roll, few will remember who signed what petition in 1955, when it cost something, much less who issued what statement in 2010 when it could only help matters with your colleagues and peers. But the Church will remember the Niebuhrs, a Robert Jenson, and the other 20th century mainline greats.
This guy couldn’t be more wrong. His recipe for reinventing the mainline protestant churches simply amounts to a new religion, not Christianity, and those denominations will continue their march into a well deserved oblivion.
[i]Where have all the Protestants gone?[/i]
Into atheism. Surprised?
I ran into this hang-wringing school of thought when I was in seminary. Many of the professors and, subsequently seminarians, largely bought into this authors train of thought. Their answers tended into the “We need to be more progressive and attract people” or the skin crawling banality of the “we need to be more relevant” line of thought. But regardless of whatever the projected solution was or might be, the discussion was always inbred. That it was Christianity itself that was somehow out it sync.
I would always pose the question (usually to the sound of crickets chirping in the background) of that which was posed in the political science book, Bowling Alone, that came out in the Mid-90s. I think that author made the correct assessment (although from a completely secular standpoint) that just about any civic or social group from the Kiwanis to the Masons to “mainline” churches to community bowling leagues had this issue of most members being “Blue Hair.”
I would argue, as Robert Putnam does in Bowling Alone, that the “problem” of the mainline decline is that it is the end result of the “me” generation that can’t see past its own individualism. Most people in the post-baby boomer “Gen X” grouping range have historically had little to no interest in any form of community organizations, be it church or civic group. They might just as well be called the drop out generation.
I have more hope for the Millenials or “Gen Y” crowds. They seem to be more into community volunteerism and social groups. In fact, at the Masonic lodge I am a member of, most of the current officers are 34 or younger. I think this phenomenon bleeds over into the church. This is a good thing that they are tending toward being a Rebuilding Generation, seeing as the baby boomers are leaving that generation a gargantuan national debt that their kids are still going to be paying for.
I think what attracts so many people to the Evangelical mega-church phenomenon is the fact that they cater to this idea of the individual, where it’s all about my individual relationship with God, my worship as my entertainment, and a church that meets my needs (a liturgical frappicino-mocha, hold the whipped cream, with a side of small-group-bible-study-with-people-who-look-and-vote-exactly-like-me to go.) And maybe that isn’t a bad thing. Certainly, many mainline churches like to present a one-size-fits-all presentation in a buffet world. I think mainlines might learn something from that.
Just my three cents…price adjusted for inflation.
TEC’s inclusive doors are wide open, but no one is coming in. This is clear in the charts revealed today of attendance under Schori, Bruno and Chane. In fact, they’ve knocked out the walls to make it as wide as possible. The end will look like the church in Europe. That is the logical result.
Liberal Christianity becomes “liberal Christianity” becomes universalism becomes “I think I will skip church and go to Lowe’s.”
An article like this actually confirms the Catholic attitude toward Tradition. A True Church must have a strong prophetic streak and that can only come from a clear-eyed look at what its bedrock traditional moral values are. There is little prophecy when churches go to bed with current forms of sin or immorality favored by society and the state.
“With Jesus as their tutor, successful churches in post-modern America must be willing to affirm that all theology is provisional in light of the mystery of God.” Especially the ones named in this article as absent, declining, and insignificant. They might consider that it is their vapidity which results in their decline, not some further assimilation to culture which says thay have changed it. The culture appears to have changed them into its image and thus they need not get up on sunday or any other day to worship what they have. Their kingdom has arrived.
It is a bit lacking in the eschatalogical reality, but, hey, … sleep in, man.
The “Mainline” churches are now reaping the results of perpetuating (since about 1960) two egregious errors that have become what amounts to bad spiritual DNA:
a) By assuming a functionally Universalist theology, the need for personal salvation was pre-empted, with the result that “evangelism” became a matter of upgrading the coffee hour in place of offering anything resembling solid soteriology.
b) By attempting to find the mid-point between God and the world, in order to “bridge that gap,” the church has for decades moved farther and farther from the God of the Gospel. The Mainline churches are now probably farther from God than was secular society a mere half century ago.
The more they try to make Christianity “relevant” the more it becomes something other than.
I will be the last to accept the thesis that the fault is with Christianity. It is not. The fault lies with those who want Christianity to bend with the wind and go with the flow.
The 60s came and those who claimed they knew what they were talking about declared and proclaimed the death of “organized religion”. Now we know better.
Things change. But TRUTH is constant.
Fr. Kingsley Jon-Ubabuco
Arlington, Texas
The decline is less about theology than about how the mainline has spent its resources, although there does seem to be a connection between liberalism and a lack of commitment. I suggest, however, that the conservative virtues of tenacity, resilience, rootedness and tradition have been undermined by a culture that loves to buy the most recent toy and takes a dim view of anything dull or limits desire. But, who wants to change capitalism?
There was once a time when the church offered social status and networking; it was a part of the various social activities provided for in a community. The church resembled, economically, a family. If you didn’t like it, you still stuck around.
Now churches compete. We’re recreational. It’s the market. What kind of product do we have to offer? Liberation from hell?