Asbury UMC Rainbow Flag
Asbury United Methodist Church flies the rainbow flag with the American flag for LGBTQ solidarity. (Creative Commons photo.)
Religion Unplugged believes in a diversity of well-reasoned and well-researched opinions. This piece reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily represent those of Religion Unplugged, its staff and contributors.
(OPINION) What has long been called “Mainline” Protestantism suffered inexorable shrinkage this past generation, eroding so much of its once-potent U.S. cultural impact that the news media tend to neglect these moderate-to-liberal churches. Yet a new Public Religion Research Institute poll reported what it argues is a sudden comeback and indicates Mainliners even outnumber the rival conservative "evangelicals" widely thought to dominate Protestantism.
True? I assembled devastating statistics that raise questions about that claim.
U.S. religion's hot number-cruncher Ryan Burge is even more doubtful and notes the Harvard-based Cooperative Election Study found a recent rise in Americans who self-identify as "evangelical."
READ: Why It’s Unlikely US Mainline Protestants Outnumber Evangelicals
As reporters ponder that debate, they should also play out longer-term Mainline scenarios, for instance for the Episcopal Church and United Methodist Church.
The headline on another Burge article proclaimed that "The Death of the Episcopal Church is Near."
"I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to believe that Episcopalians will no longer exist by 2040," he contended.
His gloomy forecast relied partly on a stark, candid piece from the blog of the Living Church magazine. It reasoned that annual marriages and baptisms foretell how the denomination will fare. If trends continue, the former would fall from 39,000 in 1980 to 750 as of 2050, and the latter from 56,000 to 2,500, over decades when average worship attendance would plummet from 857,000 to 150,000.
Similarly, in 2019 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's research agency projected that this now-sizable denomination would dip below 67,000 members by 2050 and average Sunday attendance would hit 16,000 by 2041. Two years before that, Wheaton College's Ed Stetzer notably warned that Mainline Protestantism has "23 Easters left."
With the large United Methodist Church (UMC), religion writers are well aware that the next General Conference, delayed by COVID-19 until Aug. 29- Sept. 6, 2022, will vote on a respectful, orderly schism "protocol" to end debilitating disputes over the Bible, and centuries of doctrine about sexual morality in particular. But things are starting to unravel even beforehand.
Conservative congregations have long wanted to depart but were stuck due to the denomination's power to confiscate their properties. Now some impatient congregations that advocate full LGBTQ+ inclusion are quitting. On June 28, leaders with the Love Prevails caucus declared "we cannot counsel anyone of good conscience to remain in this denomination."
The liberal UMForward movement has effectively split in two. One faction formed a de facto breakaway denomination, the Liberation Methodist Connexion to welcome "God-given identities" that include varied gender expressions and those who are "non-monogamous" or use drugs. The second entity, Liberation Project, will work from within to alter UMC policy.
Conservatives are citing one prominent liberal's public call for future openness to "kink folks, poly folk, gender-fluid folk …" ("poly" means multiple simultaneous sexual partners).
Good News magazine urges fellow conservatives not to depart prematurely unless necessary, as with the high-stakes feud at 10,000-member Mt. Bethel Church in Marietta, Ga. The bishop removed its popular pastor without the usual procedures, including consulting with the congregation, and hopes to seize all assets because members resisted the move. This is precisely the kind of strategies some conservatives have anticipated for years.
On the assumption that liberals will control the ongoing UMC, the U.S. evangelical wing plans to depart and merge with conservatives overseas, largely Africans, creating the new "Global Methodist Church."
The media have given far too little attention to this global, racially diverse, mold-breaking concept. With few exceptions, U.S. Protestant denominations whether left or right exist in one nation. But what if a successful new denomination unites millions of U.S. evangelicals with millions in other nations? The projected church is committed to women's leadership, and could counteract U.S. conservatives' drift toward nationalism and isolationism.
Strategists would be wise to give every interested U.S. pastor a copy of the "Africa Study Bible" edited by John Jusu, a United Brethren in Christ pastor and professor at Kenya's Africa International University, working with 350 African contributors from 50 nations. Endorsers include Bishop Mvume Dandala, former head of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and of the All Africa Conference of Churches.
Also, the media should be pondering what it will mean for the United States if the old "Mainline" churches continue to fade away. Here I refer colleagues to a perceptive July commentary at The Week by George Washington University political scientist Samuel Goldman. He notes that conservative Catholic Joseph Bottum, among others, thinks the Mainline at its best provided coherent thought balancing "faith and reason, progress and history, American patriotism and transcendent justice" that exercised important influence in culture and education.
Goldman thinks neither evangelical Protestantism nor Catholicism "seem capable of occupying the middle ground of American life" in that way. Evangelicalism is "deeply rooted in American experience" but resists institutions and does not consistently provide the necessary "intellectual and cultural substance." Catholicism offers those riches, but in a nation that remains doggedly Protestant (or post-Protestant).
His conclusion: "If America is to have a religious center, it must be Protestant and must be more or less "Mainline.' But there is no guarantee that we'll have a center at all."
Richard Ostling is a former religion reporter for the Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine. This piece first appeared at Get Religion and is republished here from Religion Unplugged.