The Rev. John Buchanan, a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the editor and publisher of Christian Century has said in an interview that the decline of Protestant denominations does not suggest that they are doing something wrong, but that the church is going through a major shift. ““I think we’re in the middle of a rummage sale. We’re trying to figure out what comes next,” he said.
His comments in the Tulsa World article include:
According to one sociologist, Buchanan said, about every 500 years the church undergoes the equivalent of a rummage sale.
“Things that are old and worn out get sold to make room for new things,” he said. “Every 500 years there’s a major shift.”
The Protestant Reformation was 500 years ago, and 500 years before that was the split between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and Orthodox Church in the East.
“So we’re due. … There’s a great shake-up going on among all Protestant denominations,” he said.
“Lots of congregations that have served wonderfully for 100 years, 200 years, are seemingly in dire straits. Their membership is down. Their membership is aging.”
He said the reasons for the decline are complex, including changing demographics.
“I think we’re in the middle of a rummage sale. We’re trying to figure out what comes next.
“And I think something new is going to emerge out of this. We don’t know what it is yet.”
Buchanan’s ideas are not new. He is repeating the thesis of Phyllis Tickle’s book, The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. Tickle argues that every 500 years the Church makes a transition and something essentially new emerges. Buchanan is characterizing that as a rummage sale.
The question then is what’s up for sale in American old-line Protestantism?
One answer would be buildings. According to LoopNet.Com, there are more than 1300 churches for sale nationwide. The five states with the largest number of churches for sale are also large geographically and demographically. The sites lists 146 in Texas, 135 in Florida, 129 in California, 110 in Georgia and 76 churches on the market in New York. But church facilities are just part of what Buchanan sees as a national religious rummage sale, also up for grabs are the historic doctrines of the faith.
The United Church of Christ (UCC), The Episcopal Church (TEC), Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA), and the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) have placed on the curb many of the doctrinal distinctives of the Protestant Reformation faiths in which they were forged. The ELCA is not recognizably Lutheran if what you mean by that is attached to theology espoused by Martin Luther. Nor is the PCUSA recognizable as a body that upholds the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the Westminster standards. Buchanan is right in his observation that there’s “a great shake up” in all Protestant denominations. But what he sees as positive progressive emergence others see as loss.
Isn’t that often the way with rummage sales? What one person sees as well-worn, worthy of preserving, and integral to the life of the household another sees as worn out, in need of replacing and utterly dispensable.
So it would seem, taking Buchanan’s analogy, that even in theology the adage holds true: one man’s treasure is another’s man trash.
Your thoughts? Is American Protestantism in the midst of a rummage sale? And if so, what’s being jettisoned in your local church to make room for the new?
Carmen Fowler LaBerge is president and executive editor of the Presbyterian Lay Committee and a member of the board of directors of the National Association of Evangelicals. Also visit Carmen at her website, CarmenFowlerLaBerge.com.
21 Comments. Leave new
“When he looks at his own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), he said, he doesn’t see a declining church, but a big, robust, faithful denomination with a great history, great churches throughout the United States and missions around the world.”
The only thing I can think of with this statement is that he just left happy hour and the drinks were flowing free.
Liberalism reflect one who is delusional and one has a mental disorder.
Demographics are partly to blame for a decline in numbers in the PCUSA. The denomination’s inability to stand for anything meaningful though is the real reason churches and individuals have left it.
Buchanan’s remarks are as bizarre as the situation he tries to describe. The pearls are being put out as rummage and the swine stay and celebrate.
If you add the reported membership of all four of those named denominations together you’re talking about maybe at best 2.5% of the entire U.S. population. All of them aging rapidly and shrinking even faster. Their potentates blabber on but their end is near. Talking of being “mainline” like it’s some great badge of distinction. More like Dicken’s Miss Haversham. Forgettable shells of their former existence. They’ve long ago abandoned the faith once delivered for all the saints.
I doubt that very many so-called leaders would accept this, but it has been an objective of the Communist Party – USA to infiltrate and do everything possible to take control of Americas major institutions such as religious and educational organizations. It’s happening.
The entire Church is in decline in the United States and in Europe. In the United States, in the years that the population went from 200 Million to 300 Million, the overall membership of the Church has declined. No denomination has grown by 50%, and those congregations that grow, do so by cannibalizing those that die. Eventually they die as well.
The answer to the question of why we are dying is quite simple: Because we want to. We are always given the choice to live or die. We have all chosen to pursue our own agendas, agendas that we know will kill us. We have not chosen to look for ways to let us live and thrive. It’s like we have all joined a death cult. And so die we will.
Actually it was the Far Right that set out to do what you describe, and it happened. Go read the Powell Manifesto and then ask yourself when the Layman started publishing and when the Moral Majority came into being.
I left the PCUSA 2 years ago and am now active in a non-denominational “mega church”. We are growing exponentially for two reasons: 1) we unapologetically teach and preach the tenants of the Reformed faith understanding that the Bible is the inerrant word of God and 2) we introduce people to Jesus Crist and help them develop a relationship with Him. People are thirsty for the truth and when Jesus is presented to them as the answer they come joyously to receive new life. That should be a message to the PCUSA. Stray from the truth, place your focus on the wrong things, trust in secularism and you will surely die. Have your rummage sale, but know that the true Church is alive and doing very well, thank you.
Normative theology as well as leadership in the PCUSA is what i would “Peter Pan” methodologies. One never really needs to grow up, all can engage in magical thinking, and as the house burns down around them all they have to do is go to ‘never-never’ land.
The only problem with that is that all the gullible folks who once paid their bills have either left or died. As you see in the 1001 communities debacle and now the Youth Triennium misdeeds, the liberals who are left are either incompetent or staff a system that is collapsing on itself. They can put that trash to the curb all they want. I doubt there will be any takers.
I believe if you check the growth of the Assembly of God, you will discover a growing denomination. The reasons are Scripture, beliefs,
dependence on the work of the Holy Spirit, a call to repentance and
conversion.
The Moral Majority withdrew because there is a higher calling than politics. There is a fine book by Cal Thomas and another author who wrote about the Moral Majority and the Christian Right: “Blinded by Might.”
The no-longer Mainline has not figured out that dipping regularly in the pool of politics is a loser. Attempting to cover politics with selected biblical verses and Liberation Theology does not work for the paying the bill members in congregations. They are wise enough to understand many denominational leaders and some pastors do not believe the validity of the Bible or its saving witness; in the historic creeds of the Church. Thus the new breed finds social work as religion
and also politics as a way of holding a shaky witness.
Just a comment on the “500 year historical cycle” theory espoused by a couple of non-historians: it is the sort of “theorizing” that make professional historians roll their eyes. Pickle and Buchanan state their observation about some supposed “500 year cycle” as if it has some explanatory power. Are they suggesting that ecclesiastical structures are somehow hardwired to “re-set” every 500 years? They have pick up a simple chronological coincidence that a big thing in ecclesiastical history happened about 1000 years ago, and another big thing happened about 500 years ago, and then theorize that we are for some unspecified reason “due” for another big thing. Honestly, those two earlier “big things” really aren’t very similar from a larger historical perspective. And from a global perspective, just how big really is what is happening to the American mainline denominations? We don’t need some pseudo-metahistorical theory to explain the collapse of the American mainline denominations. Pickle and Buchanan are simply hiding from a simple but painful truth.
Mosques, P.G.?
He has certainly has a strange idea as what a robust denomination is–considering how it has shrunk in the last twenty years, I see it as a dying denomination which refuses to look at the cause of its death: abandoning the wisdom of God and firmly holding on to the wisdom of the world.
There is a saying in Spanish which states: “There is no worse bind person than the one who does not want to see”. It therefore seems that Rev. Buchanon and others of his thinking do not want to see the reality of the demise of a once great denomination.
I am betting it’s because your new church is offering loosely bible based life coaching from the pulpit, and that most of your members used to members of other churches that are dying or already died. In other words, cannibalized. Like you. Be interesting to do a real survey.
A church that is merely treading water should have grown by 50% in the last 50 years.
The great biblical doctrines summarized in the Reformation confessions have been abandoned and left in the trash bins of the mainline denominations. Yet, they are being discovered and valued by a new generation, who find their way into smaller and seemingly insignificant Reformed churches. We are yet to see a new Reformation discovery of apostolic and evangelical truth recognizing Christ indeed as the only name by which any are saved, and the expansion of His visible Kingdom to all the nations of the earth.
Comment from Donald Denton: Buchanan and Tickle have played to the cheap seats of popular opinion and political power. Wrapping themselves in the garb of the prophets, they forget the Masters’ warning: “Woe when all speak well of you, for thus they treated the false prophets.”
Agape, meet Karl Marx. That’s what’s going on, and that’s what the new “treasure” looks like. World’s been there, done that, no thanks.