Thread by @dianabutlerbass

If liberalism was the source of mainline Protestant decline, why are the Southern Baptists in decline?

Because it isn't.

Seeing this old narrative rear its head in mainline churches is discouraging because it has been challenged & corrected for almost 20 years now.

If you are still seeing the demographic changes of American religion through the lens of a book written in the 1970s and championed ever since by theological & political conservatives, you haven't done your homework.

In mainline churches, numerical decline is the result of several intertwined factors:

1) misunderstanding mid-20th membership and making that the normative standard;

2) continuing the patterns of racially exclusive and even racist practices in churches, even while America was becoming more racially diverse;

3) not clearly teaching or communicating profound, innovative, and theologically rich understandings of the Gospel even to their own children and defaulting instead toward soft-fundamentalist positions on doctrine;

4) letting others control how the mainline story has been told in the public square; instead of a story about courage and transformation, it has been told as a story of conflict and fear (nobody wants to join conflict-riven, fear-based churches, btw);

5) not understanding that 19th century structures of doing business were holding the churches back since the 1970s;

6) not being able to tell the difference between wise policies and procedures and ones that maintain privilege of a those who have held power over time;

7) adopting the evangelical numbers games of church vitality;

8) rewarding conformity instead of risk;

9) using institutional advancement, pension funds, and career tracking as systems to punish creative actors, especially women and people of color;

10) a real failure to recognize and respond to larger cultural trends in favor of believing comforting church myths (like "the young people will come back when they have children")

11) a fear to proclaim our convictions in winsome, joyful, and compelling ways;

12) displaying and embodying genuine love, real respect, and mutual regard for one another and, instead, acting like pretty much any other group of self-interested political actors when in conflict or under stress;

12 continued: to be clear -- we've FAILED to display such creative love.

13) blaming and scapegoating others for the decline; especially regarding previous generations or younger ones (this is a particularly insidious move that divides faith communities);

14) thinking that when you and your group are finally in power, you will fix everything and restore the church to its previous glory or have it march triumphantly into the future;

14 continued -- that's a theological version of Trumpism, even if you hate Trump and no matter how progressive or never-Trump you may be politically.

14 continued - Nostalgia isn't a strategy for Christian renewal. Period. Whether you pine for the early church, the Reformation, 19th century, the 1950s. THAT IS THE PAST. I'm a historian. I like the past. But we live now. Their wisdom is important for now, but not the last word.

15) finally (but not comprehensively) change happens. Christians have lived in myriad cultures over 2K years in all sorts of circumstances of success, failure and everything in between. There is a beautiful mystery of trust & faith to it all...

...leaning into that mystery, into our best selves of wisdom and generosity and trust, of committing to the beautiful web of grace that is community and the earth -- these things will save us.

God is with us. Because God.

Be good to one another today. As the prophet said, "Do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

Follow Jesus.

(A PS: I also think economic factors - inequality, anxiety, uncertainty, pensions, health care, real estate are HUGE and have begun addressing them in event Q&As - these factors tied to "earth" factors - climate change, weather shifts, etc are the elephants in mainline rooms.)

And, as always, please forgive typos, syntax, spelling in my little extemporaneous threads. My passion gets the best of my fingers -- and my now aging eyes. Grateful to you all for reading!

There's another way of thinking abt this - in effect, the religious eco-system that supported mainline churches collapsed; now the larger religion eco-system is collapsing, too. In its place a new "ecology" of ethics, spirituality, faith, religion is forming, we're still adapting

Some data, from Public Religion Research (from 2016; % of white Xians in all 3 categories are now lower; unaffiliated is higher -- but these show the trends clearly)

And note: the generational % of white mainliners and white evangelicals for those under 30 is identical - 8%. The difference btwn mainliners & evangelicals overall is due to larger % cohorts in older groups as well as a boost from immigrant & communities of color.

Given this data and the generational shift, it is fairly easy to make the argument that white evangelicals are actually doing worse than the mainline (the mainline lost fewer people from a smaller baseline) -- and white evangelicals are NOT liberals.

The data shows that white conservatives are losing more people from a higher population % baseline than are white liberal-leaning groups.

So, you might say that conservative white churches are actually declining more significantly than liberal ones.