Mainline Protestant pastors driving support for same-sex marriage: LifeWay study

From Christian Post-

Last week, the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan consecrated its first openly lesbian bishop, the Rev. Bonnie A. Perry. Anna Stania, director of Communications for the diocese, told The Christian Post that Perry’s candidacy received no opposition because of her sexual orientation. “We have experienced an overwhelming outpouring of joy, grace and excitement since her election and consecration.”

The study also indicates that white pastors (27 percent) are more likely to see nothing wrong with same-sex marriage than African American pastors (15 percent) or pastors of other ethnicities (6 percent).

It further suggests that those with a doctorate (27 percent) or a master’s degree (32 percent) are more likely to support same-sex marriage than pastors with a bachelor’s degree (9 percent) or no college degree (6 percent).

The survey results also show that pastors of churches with fewer than 50 in attendance (33 percent) are more likely to support same-sex marriage than those at churches with 100 or more in attendance (19 percent).

More here-

https://www.christianpost.com/news/lifeway-research-mainline-protestant-pastors-driving-support-for-same-sex-marriage.html

Off the Shelf: When WASPs Sting

From National Review-

I’ve been thinking about Protestantism lately. Not so much high-octane Calvinism, which in its present form is a pursuit for bookish men who quite like fractious intellectual argument. That has always attracted me to some degree, but no, I’ve been thinking about something you might call “elite Protestantism” or “Mainstream Protestantism.” A number of things have conspired to remind me that what is often called Progressivism is a mutation of Protestantism.

It started a few months ago when I listened to a First Things podcast in which Michael Doran discussed the theological traditions that inform debates about foreign policy. Doran identifies William Jennings Bryan with a populist-Evangelical tradition of Jacksonian nationalism, and H. L. Mencken with an urbane, Mainstream Protestant or secular tradition of international cosmopolitanism:

The Progressive persuasion conflicts with its Jacksonian counterpart in crucial respects. Though both accord the government a vital role in protecting “the common, everyday fellow,” the deepest concern of the Jacksonian is individual liberty, whereas the Progressive focuses more intently on destroying inequality. The Progressive, moreover, is eager to embrace “collective” initiatives, which in practice means government initiatives. Though some of these will pass muster with the Jacksonian persuasion, the Progressives’ embrace of centralizing government power, even when legitimated in terms of the interests of the common man, often appears as a threat to individual liberty. For the Jacksonian persuasion, the Progressive vision quickly turns into the oligarchy of experts that so troubled William Jennings Bryan.

More here-

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/off-the-shelf-when-wasps-sting/

Save the Mainline

From The New York Times-

OUR intervention in Syria required me to be fully serious last Sunday, but now it’s time to return to this column’s ongoing series of implausible proposals, Easter Sunday edition. Which means I’ll be proposing — yes, I’m that predictable — that many of this newspaper’s secular liberal readers should head en masse to church.

But not by converting to my own religion, Roman Catholicism. Of course that’s what I really want, what the sinister albino monk at my shoulder keeps muttering about, what the mimeographed orders from Catholic central command expect me to eventually achieve. (All those “disagreements” I keep having with Pope Francis are just classic papist trickery.)

For now, though, let’s talk about a smaller leap of faith. A large share of well-educated liberal America is post-Protestant — former Methodists, ex-Lutherans, lapsed Presbyterians, the secularized kids of Congregationalists. Their ancestral churches, the theologically-liberal mainline denominations, are aging and emptying, with the oldest churchgoing population and one of the lowest retention rates of any Christian tradition in the United States.

More here-

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opinion/sunday/save-the-mainline.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=0&referer

Mainline Protestant Denominations in Freefall, Touting Secular Agenda and Masquerading as Christianity

From CNS-

It may look like a church, sing like a church, have stained-glass like a church, and call itself a church, but be careful: It might not be a church.

The big religion story of last year? Christianity is in decline in America. The sensational headlines were based on data from the Pew Research Center. But as Ed Stetzer of Lifeway Research observed in the USA Today, the folks writing the headlines must not have read the study.

More here-

http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/john-stonestreet/mainline-protestant-denominations-freefall-touting-secular-agenda-and

Why mainline pastors should read Rachel Held Evans

From Christian Century-

I put it off for a while. I don’t like to read people who are so popular, so trendy. Furthermore, I’m a United Methodist minister teaching at a PC(USA) seminary—why would I want to read a story of a young evangelical who has a few doubts and then joins the Episcopal Church?

What have you to do with me, Rachel Held Evans?

But this sense that I should read someone who a lot of people are talking about—this curiosity—got the better of me. So when I saw a good deal on her newest book, Searching for Sunday, I bought it and read it. I’m glad I did.

There are few places where her story and mine would connect. Many of the doubts she is having in her early 30s I had as a freshman in college, the year I made my way back to Methodism after a two-year sojourn among evangelical Baptists (a return occasioned by my evangelical Baptist girlfriend breaking up with me). While Evans grew up evangelical, I wasn’t evangelical long enough for the culture to seep into my bones. Unlike her, I still have to Google snatches of scripture stuck in my mind to locate them in the Bible—the tragedy of being raised in the mainline.

More Here-

https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2015-09/why-mainline-pastors-should-read-rachel-held-evans

On the Clock: General Theological Seminary and the Fate of Protestantism

From Patheos-

In conversations with my students at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, I’ve been asked, “Why does the crisis at The General Theological Seminary matter?  Doesn’t The Episcopal Church have too many seminaries anyway?”  The answer, of course, is, “Yes, it does.”

Even if the in-coming class of seminary freshmen in The Episcopal Church was divided by the number of seminaries that the church has and those students were then assigned in equal numbers to the church’s schools, that strategy could not possibly guarantee the future of theological education at each of those locations.  And even though no institution of higher education can be sustained by tuition alone, none of our seminaries have the kind of endowment that would make the math work.

Read more:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/whatgodwantsforyourlife/2014/10/on-the-clock-general-theological-seminary-and-the-fate-of-protestantism/#ixzz3GDC6eLVM

Denominational restructuring won’t work; local churches must innovate

From Religion News Service-

After 50 years of decline, mainline denominations are reinventing themselves, or at least “re-imagining” what the church might look like, as an Episcopal Church task force calls it.

What can the “central office” do to stem the ebbing tide? What can national conventions and agencies do?

The answer is: precious little.

In an earnest 3,000-word letter to the church, the Episcopal task force acknowledged that “innovation and adaptation” are already under way at local levels, where the church’s fortunes actually are shaped. “With or without” action by churchwide bodies, the new is breaking in.

The report is well-written, cogently argued, filled with fresh language and insights formed in wide-open discussion. This isn’t an old guard restating its longtime purpose.

More here-

Glory days?

From Christian Century-

You know the story: America’s mighty mainline Protestant churches once stretched from sea to shining sea, embracing the vast majority of American people who worshiped week after week, filling glorious churches with their hymns of praise. But, alas, they are now reduced to a handful of aging folks who can scarcely pay to keep the church furnace running. In a few weeks they’ll all be gone.

Martin Marty has written that the story of “mainline decline” is so hackneyed by now that we should just reduce it to one word—mainlinedecline. It is a narrative that has dominated the interpretation of church life in America’s older Protestant denominations since 1972, when Dean M. Kelley wrote Why Conservative Churches Are Growing.

But it may have a seriously faulty presupposition. 

More here-

http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2014-06/glory-days

The Protestant Mainline Makes a (Literary) Comeback

From Religion Dispatches-

The Protestant mainline, by whatever name, was bound to make a comeback—at least as a subject of academic discourse.

The “mainline” is usually identified with seven Protestant denominations, it was always a small group, and shortly after it acquired its name, it began to shrink. After the shrinking began, journalists lost interest in liberal Protestantism, except to retell the story of mainline decline, and the academy lost interest in it, except to sneer that “liberal religion” is oxymoronic and no match for the fundamentalist Right.

Now, as the New York Times recently noted, the books on liberal Protestantism and liberal religion are coming fast. Some are about the overlooked legacy of liberal Protestantism and some are about varieties of liberal religion in the United States. As a social ethicist and theologian I have a stake in both subjects, and a track record of worrying that make-up-your-own-religion yields shallow and self-absorbed spiritualities.

But the new books rightly emphasize that liberal Protestantism played a sizable role in creating the spiritual-but-not-religious sensibility that pervades the North American middle class, and they do so with a mostly appreciative attitude.

More here-

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/7233/the_protestant_mainline_makes_a__literary__comeback#.UgDwcZVms_s.facebook

A Mainline Collapse: The Twilight of Liberal Christianity?

From Christian Post-

In 2006, the Episcopal Church's presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, told the New York Times that Episcopalians were not interested in "replenishing their ranks by having children." Instead, the church "[encouraged] people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion."

"Stewardship of the earth" and having children are not incompatible, but if Schori's goal was a principled extinction, she's about to succeed. The Episcopal Church, you see, is in a statistical free-fall.

Since 2000, the Episcopal Church has lost 23 percent of its members. At this rate, there will be no Episcopalians in 26 years.

My friend and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat noted that the collapse occurred at the same time that the church was transforming itself "into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States.

Read more at

http://www.christianpost.com/news/a-mainline-collapse-the-twilight-of-liberal-christianity-78685/#x84OpkKbmWdDyZoe.99

Why is church attendance declining?

From Wyoming-

Pastor Eric Snyder steps down from the dais at Zion Congregational Church.

As he makes his way to the center of the room, he asks for names of those in the congregation who have died this year so that he can include them in his service. He collects the 12 or so names in his careful handwriting, checking the spelling of each before retreating back to the dais to read before a moment of silence.

His list is slightly longer than he expected, and the moment of silence is a heavy one.

Snyder was only recently selected as the pastor at Zion, a congregation founded in 1923 in south Cheyenne. He is fresh out of seminary and just 31 years old. Of the 50 or so regular parishioners at Zion Congregational, most fall into the 65 and older category. Gray hair dominates the room, making Snyder's close crop of red hair distinctive as he moves among the pews.

Next door to the church, Snyder's wife runs a small Bible study during the service for the handful of young children with relatives in the church. Snyder's daughter, age 3, and his 1--year--old son make up about two--thirds of the group.

Between 2001 and 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that membership in congregational churches like Zion dropped from about 1.3 million in the U.S. to about 736,000.

More here-

http://www.wyomingnews.com/articles/2011/11/13/news/01top%2011-13-11.txt

Mainline churches divided about more than homosexuality

From California-

For years, debates over homosexuality have dominated headlines on divisions within mainline Protestantism.

First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Redlands began splitting apart shortly after its national denomination approved the ordination of noncelibate gay and lesbian ministers in 2009, and most of the people who left nearby Trinity Episcopal Church in 2006 opposed the Episcopal denomination's consecration of a gay bishop.

But, reflecting what religious experts say is true nationally in mainline Protestantism, current and former members of the Redlands congregations said homosexuality is only part of far broader theological differences that are the real root of the divisions. Local congregational matters such as a pastor's personality and worship style also factor in, they said.

"It's a much bigger picture than one issue," said the Rev. Greg Wallace, who left First Lutheran and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America denomination in November to form a more conservative congregation. "It really comes down to a theological split between the left and right in mainline Protestantism."

Mainline Protestantism encompasses the establishment churches that were at one time dominant in the United States, including denominations now known as the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Episcopal Church.

More here-

http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_lutheran13.1b86270.html

Americans becoming less religious, study shows

Several Stories on the same subject- LA Times

Americans are becoming less religious, increasingly turning away from many denominations that once served as their spiritual homes, according to a major national survey released Monday.

The percentage of people who do not claim a religious identity has nearly doubled since 1990, growing to 15% of Americans last year, researchers with the American Religious Identification Survey found.

Mainline Christian denominations, once bulwarks of the religious landscape, have suffered most from the drift.

Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians are among the denominations that have seen their ranks decline.

Although 86% of Americans identified as Christians in 1990, just 76% said the same last year, the result of onetime adherents rejecting organized religion, the survey con- cluded.

The broad falloff has occurred as some groups, including Catholics, have seen their overall numbers rise.

But despite growing by 11 million new members since 1990, Catholics now account for a smaller percentage of the U.S. population than they did then -- 25% compared with 26%.

The survey's principal investigator, sociologist Barry A. Kosmin of Trinity College in Connecticut, described the overall trend as an erosion of the "religious middle ground."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-religion10-2009mar10,0,2852705.story

London Telegraph-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2009/03/10/at_last_the_truth_about_america_its_becoming_less_religious

ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7041036&page=1

AFP-

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i9oUKRzJYBlPk0hhLOMaxzxw9_SA