From the LA Times, I just stumbled over this article discussing the meltdown of those Protestant denominations (the "mainline churches"). Much has been written here in NH, due to the ascendancy of Gene Robinson to bishop of the NH Episcopalian church (openly gay, recently admitted to a rehap facility for alcohol abuse). As an Evangelical Baptist, I have glumly watched, sometimes in horror, as these “high” churches (for their liturgical services) have changed their doctrines to suit the times and the norms of the public culture from their original doctrines of how to worship God. This is the last place (the LA Times), that I would have expected to see these liberal churches to come under fire.
The first paragraph is a great summary:
The accelerating fragmentation of the strife-torn Episcopal Church USA, in which several parishes and even a few dioceses are opting out of the church, isn’t simply about gay bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions or the election of a woman as presiding bishop. It also is about the meltdown of liberal Christianity.
We see, almost on a daily basis lately, how the conservative parts of these denominations (specifically the Episcopalians and the Presbyterian churches here in the States) are starting to resist this trend. They are standing up for their faith instead of giving into the temptation and siren call of popular culture that demands that all bow down to it.
But has the damage already been done. First, the demographic results of this loosening of doctrine – from the article:
When a church doesn’t take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches — Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like — accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it’s more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Some of the precipitous decline is due to lower birthrates among the generally blue-state mainliners, but it also is clear that millions of mainline adherents (and especially their children) have simply walked out of the pews never to return. According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.
And when you adjust for the overall increase of the population of the US over those years, these kind of numbers should be a wakeup call of tremendous proportions. This is in sharp contrast to the gains that the conservative, evangelical churches have had lately. And not only here in the US, but also in Africa and in Asia. Why this turn around?
Remember, the first rule of finding oneself in a hole is to stop digging! However, this simple rule seems to have escaped the leadership. This is akin to the phrase from the animated movie "The Incredibles": “if everyone is special, then no one is”. The operative phrase here is "if you believe in “anything”, you believe in nothing". Just as we see in other parts of American society and culture, the theology is being dumbed down.
Again, from the article:
Instead, as all but a few die-hards now admit, all the mainline churches and movements within churches that have blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts are demographically declining and, in the case of the Episcopal Church, disintegrating.
People go to church for a multitude of reasons: friendships, raising their kids with some sort of moral compass, to study their sacred texts and ponder upon them, to listen to sermons that will inspire them to be better people. But when it really comes down to it, the one reason that matters the most is: they want to believe. Believe it or not (pun intended) people go to believe in and worship God. They go to learn the precepts and guiding principles as laid down in the Bible. Not suger coated, not watered down. I feel that most people have a real need to know the doctrine that makes up their beliefs, and that they are not subject to change.
They go to have a void filled in their lives that they know cannot be filled on this earthly sphere.
Again, from the article:
The Presbyterian Church USA is famous for its 1993 conference, cosponsored with the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and other mainline churches, in which participants "reimagined" God as "Our Maker Sophia" and held a feminist-inspired "milk and honey" ritual designed to replace traditional bread-and-wine Communion.
Without trying to be snide, I don’t think that I have ever seen that phrase in any of the translations of the Bible that I have ever read. Frankly, this is just one example of the "unisexing" of religion.
You want to have gay sex? Be a female bishop? Change God’s name to Sophia? Go ahead. The just-elected Episcopal presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is a one-woman combination of all these things, having voted for Robinson, blessed same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese, prayed to a female Jesus at the Columbus convention and invited former Newark, N.J., bishop John Shelby Spong, famous for denying Christ’s divinity, to address her priests.
[snip]
As if to one-up the Presbyterians in jettisoning age-old elements of Christian belief, the Episcopalians at Columbus overwhelmingly refused even to consider a resolution affirming that Jesus Christ is Lord. When a Christian church cannot bring itself to endorse a bedrock Christian theological statement repeatedly found in the New Testament, it is not a serious Christian church. It’s a Church of What’s Happening Now, conferring a feel-good imprimatur on whatever the liberal elements of secular society deem permissible or politically correct.
The article hits in on the head. If Jesus Christ is the founder of the Christian church (funny how that just seems to flow like that), by denying the divinity of Jesus, making Him a mere mortal, kinda dismisses inclusion as a Christian church. After all, words to have meanings, and if a Christian church is supposed to believe in Christ, but doesn’t…..
Another little detail that does seem to play a role:
It doesn’t help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches. A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence?
No, not to me. Not that I am a researcher into these types of things, but in retrospect, it fits. this is just an indication, albeit a major one, of the loosening traditional bounds of the doctrine and the theology of the church. Driven by popular culture, demands were given into – the church changed in accordance to popular demand. While it may show as sexism, this is not a sexism point – rather it is an example of tradition vs liberalism. The article shows, so far, that the liberalism, although taking control of the church’s leadership, are actually failing (as seen by the numbers).
Yet, is that what a church is supposed to be – giving in? Or standing up? What does it say when a church’s foundation is liable to the whims of those in it?
Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and "…historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents’ commitment to that faith. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women’s ordination. The churches are growing robustly, both in the United States and around the world.
Faith is faith – there has to be something there to believe in and people want to know that their belief is based on something that isn’t going to change. Otherwise, why believe when it is just going to change a little bit down the road? This article shows that when this important criteria by simple empirical evidence.
The last paragraph could almost be the normal liberal manta to we conservatives – a microcosm of both the argument and the results of hewing to the liberal ideals:
So this is the liberal Christianity that was supposed to be the Christianity of the future: disarray, schism, rapidly falling numbers of adherents, a collapse of Christology and national meetings that rival those of the Modern Language Assn. for their potential for cheap laughs. And they keep telling the Catholic Church that it had better get with the liberal program — ordain women, bless gay unions and so forth — or die. Sure.
I am afraid that as it is in the church, so is it in society at large. When the underpinnings of that society are completely mallable, the structure of society, that depends on that foundation, will fail.
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Update 1
I was just over at the Weekend Pundit, where he has a posting on the fall of Catholicism in Ireland . Although I am unsure of the state of Catholic theology being preached in Ireland currently (liberal as in my post indicates, or conservative), I believe the Posting rather, shows the effects when the leadership of a church fail to both live up to that leadership role (as some tele-evanglists here in this country) as well as the underlying spirit (as well as the law) of that doctrine.
