(Note: Some may argue that conservative and evangelical
are, or should be, synonymous terms. We will save this topic for later!)
This provides me a perfect segue to discuss an article in
last week’s New York Times by writer
Ross Douthat titled Can Liberal
Christianity Be Saved? Douthat charts the increasing progressive theological
trajectory which the historic Protestant mainline churches have pursued over
the last 50 years. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-can-liberal-christianity-be-saved.html?_r=2&ref=religionandbelief
Many mainline church leaders over these past five decades
have claimed that Christianity has needed an alternative reading of the Gospel,
and that mainline denominations are responding to the need for social justice
and an increasingly pluralistic society. Nothing captures this idea better than
former Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong’s 1998 book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Douthat observes that Bishop
Spong advocates for a complete rejection of traditional Christian teachings
such as the Virgin Birth or a literal bodily Resurrection. These tales,
according to the Rt. Rev. Spong, should be seen as no more than ancient myths
which have no relevance in the modern world, and should be reinterpreted as
such. In a multi-faith society, it is arrogant and intolerant to claim that any
one religious system should be seen as the vessel for absolute truth, thus the
Protestant mainline has embraced a Gospel that accommodates multiple pathways
to salvation and rejects literal interpretations of the Biblical narrative.
These churches are also in a state of utter collapse, which,
as anyone who is even a casual observer of church and society, will recognize
as old news. What Douthat points out, though, is that mainline leaders seem to
have turned a blind eye to their impending demise. Douthat writes that many
voices blindly “hail these forms of Christianity as a model for the future
without reckoning with their decline.” He concludes with a dire prediction for
mainline leaders should they continue to ignore the reality of their
evaporating memberships: “they will change, and change, and die.”
A piece which could be considered somewhat of a companion
article to Douthat’s appeared this week on the The Christian Century’s online site. http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2012-07/rename-mainline
Amy Frykholm, the Century’s associate editor, posted an
entry titled Rename the Mainline? in
which she offers remarks on historian David Hollinger’s belief that the phrase “Protestant
mainline” should be refashioned as “ecumenical Protestants.” Frykholm correctly
observes that “so-called mainline Protestants are less ‘main’ and less ‘line’ than
they’ve ever been.” She also remarks that the term “liberal” should be discarded
when describing mainline Protestantism because it is primarily a political
term. It is a very short article and worth reading, but what I found most
interesting was one of the comments that a reader left. This person really hit
the heart of the matter with the comment: “Frankly, you guys have more problems
than just the name itself. You need to fix these problems first.”
Ouch! I agree with this person that simply adopting a new
term to refer to mainline Protestantism will not cure the ills which plague
progressive Christianity. In fact, I would answer Douthat’s question Can Liberal Christianity be Saved? with
the following answer: NO. Liberal Christianity is already dead, thus simply
renaming it is a meaningless exercise. I am not saying that these progressive
denominations are going to fade away into oblivion. Some of their individual
congregations may disappear, and church property sold off, but the Protestant
mainline – no matter what term it uses to describe itself – will always exist
in some shape or form. To use a crass marketing term, the mainline will always
have a baseline market share which will prevent its outright extinction. As for
its place in the larger Christian family, however, liberal Christianity has
ceased to be relevant in any meaningful way.
The problem with liberal Christianity is not that it has
done a poor job in telling its story, or that it has not offered enough modern programmatic
accoutrements to attract new congregants: the problem is liberal Christianity
itself. Douthat correctly points out that, unlike its conservative and
evangelical counterparts, liberal Christianity has departed from the idea of “a
personal transcendent God, the divinity of Christ” to such an extent that it does
not “seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular
liberalism.” Despite the mainline’s steady protestations, there is nothing essentially
counter-cultural that one will hear in sermons coming from progressive pulpits.
If there is indeed nothing unique about Jesus Christ; if there is no bodily
resurrection; if Jesus is to be regarded as merely a social radical, and not
the Son of God eternally begotten of the Father; if there is no salvation
through Christ’s redemptive work on the Cross; if pastors continue to talk
about evangelism and outreach but do so without Christ… then why bother going
to church at all? Until the historic mainline denominations offer something
more than what one can find in secular modernism, more and more people will continue
to not bother. Perhaps the question should not be whether liberal Christianity
can be saved, but can liberal Christianity be resurrected?