(By Ed Stetzer, The Washington Post). Christians recently celebrated Easter, a Sunday where many churches are robust and full. But, if current trends continue, mainline Protestantism has about 23 Easters left.
The news of mainline Protestantism’s decline is hardly new. Yet the trend lines are showing a trajectory toward zero in both those who attend a mainline church regularly and those who identify with a mainline denomination 23 years from now.
While the sky isn’t falling, the floor is dropping out.
The trajectory, which has been a discussion among researchers for years, is partly related to demographics. Mainline Protestants, which has been the tradition of several U.S. presidents, aren’t “multiplying” with children as rapidly as evangelicals or others of differing faiths. And geography matters. Places where Protestants live are now in socio-economic decline, and parts of the country like the Sun Belt are become more evangelical with every passing winter.
And as Episcopal researcher Kirk Hadaway explained in 1998, “nontraditional groups, including once-marginal Protestant churches, smaller sects and non-Western religions, have increased. At the same time, a growing number of people have shed their particular religious affiliations, saying they are just ‘religious, spiritual’ or have no religion at all.”
But I think something deeper is going on.
The data of decline
Recently released data from the General Social Survey, sorted by what is called the RelTrad, shows that mainline Protestants are in the midst of a decades-long decline, and it has intensified in its most recent survey.
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I too doubt very much that old line liberal Protestantism will go to zero as well. I have held for sometime that groups such as the PCUSA, ECUSA, UCC will move into the territory which has been occupied by the Quakers and Unitarians for centuries. Small, very small insular, iconoclastic, self absorbed sects which will bottom out collectively at about 250,000-300,00 nationally among the three groups by 2030. But prior to that you will have a series of mergers and consolations across PCUSA, UCC, CC (DC), maybe the RCAs into a unitary administrative consolidation. The Canadians and Australians went through this process 40 years ago in their “United Church” amalgamations, which covers most of self identifying liberals. And they have slowly died from there.
Now what effect that has on legacy institutions, the Seminaries, Synods, Board of Pensions, real estate, is anybody’s guess. But sooner or later dead people’s money runs out, just as live people’s money sooner or later. But not to worry, the All Agency Review and Way Forward will solve all questions.
But for many elements of the PCUSA which already have departed normative Christianity, the NEXT movement, the so called New worshiping communities, they already have had their last Easter as a faith entity, if they ever had one. Their futures as sociopolitical, domestic NGOs with a collection plate , have yet to be written.
Frank Harrington predicted 20 years ago that the PCUSA would die in 40 years. He wasn’t that far off. While it saddens me re my former church (I left the PCUSA last year and joined the EPC), I don’t grieve as I once did. An apple with a rotten core cannot survive. Jesus taught us that truth.
What I see is that there are many churches that simply relabel themselves as they do not want to be known by their denominational affiliation. The Christian church will survive as well the teachings of the Bible but the sheep will continue to look for pastures that will provide them with what they need. It amazes me that these idiots that call themselves leaders simply are totally blind to the fact the those denominations that have rejected the Bible and their own traditions, continue to go downward in their membership. Why do they want to go down the same dirt road and destroy the church?
It is hard to believe, Riolion, that the leaders of any denomination would act against the best interests of their denomination, at least until one realizes that guarding the faith and protecting the denomination are simply not anywhere near the top of the priority list for these people. They are political ideologues, and promoting their leftist ideology is the only thing that really and truly matters to them. If the faith is compromised and the denomination is damaged as a result of their actions, this is no big deal to them. The faith and the denomination are only means to an end for them, and not of any ultimate or intrinsic value. This is the only logical conclusion one can reach when looking at the way that the ideological left has decimated the PCUS/UPCUSA/PCUSA over the last half century. They just don’t care.