Maybe not. Ross Douthat’s reflections on what ails the mainline churches in the United States (though a bit stale now) generated a round of responses about the nature and viability of the Protestant mainline. I plan to return to this discussion, particularly in relation to a parallel one among historians about ecumenical Protestants. But for now I draw attention to the response to Douthat by Diana Butler.
On the one hand, the New York Times columnist cannot but help connect the dots between liberal Protestants’ capitulation to sexual promiscuity and declining church membership. Case in point, The Episcopal Church (no longer the ECUSA and be sure to capitalize the definite article):
. . . instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.
. . . liberal churches are not the only ones declining. It is true that progressive religious bodies started to decline in the 1960s. However, conservative denominations are now experiencing the same. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention, one of America’s most conservative churches, has for a dozen years struggled with membership loss and overall erosion in programming, staffing, and budgets. Many smaller conservative denominations, such as the Missouri Synod Lutherans, are under pressure by loss. The Roman Catholic Church, a body that has moved in markedly conservative directions and of which Mr. Douthat is a member, is straining as members leave in droves. By 2008, one in ten Americans considered him- or herself a former Roman Catholic. On the surface, Catholic membership numbers seem steady. But this is a function of Catholic immigration from Latin America. If one factors out immigrants, American Catholicism matches the membership decline of any liberal Protestant denomination. Decline is not exclusive to the Episcopal Church, nor to liberal denominations–it is a reality facing the whole of American Christianity.
As much as this looks like a “well-your-glass-is-half-empty-too” retort, Butler goes on to suggest that liberal churches are healthier for having experienced decline earlier than conservatives. She also believes that given the mainline’s ordeal, liberal Christians are discovering resources that constitute them as the site of unexpected spiritual vigor among Protestants (talk about counter-intuitive):
Unexpectedly, liberal Christianity is–in some congregations at least–undergoing renewal. A grass-roots affair to be sure, sputtering along in local churches, prompted by good pastors doing hard work and theologians mostly unknown to the larger culture. Some local congregations are growing, having seriously re-engaged practices of theological reflection, hospitality, prayer, worship, doing justice, and Christian formation. . . . There is more than a little historical irony in this. A quiet renewal is occurring, but the denominational structures have yet to adjust their institutions to the recovery of practical wisdom that is remaking local congregations. And the media continues to fixate on big pastors and big churches with conservative followings as the center-point of American religion, ignoring the passion and goodness of the old liberal tradition that is once again finding its heart. Yet, the accepted story of conservative growth and liberal decline is a twentieth century tale, at odds with what the surveys, data, and best research says what is happening now.
To back up this contention, Butler cites a study by the erstwhile pulse-taker of the Protestant mainline — the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership and Professor of Religion and Society at Hartford Seminary. According to the press release linked in Butler’s post:
Innovative Worship: The surge in contemporary worship continued, to more than 40 percent of congregations that always or often use electric guitars or drums in their worship in 2010. Also, both innovative and contemporary worship are catalysts of spiritual vitality.
Religion Goes Electronic: A third of congregations reported that their use of modern technology grew more than 10 percent. The more a congregation uses technology, the more open it is to change.
Racial/Ethnic Congregations: There has been a dramatic increase in racial/ethnic congregations, many for immigrant groups. In 2010, three in ten congregations reported that more than 50 percent of their members were members of minority groups, up from two in ten in 2000. One clear impact of the increase in minority congregations is that they inject a strong dose of growth and vitality into American religious life.
“Congregation is More Than Worship”: Despite the overall erosion in congregational vitality and size from 2000 to 2010, there has been a slight increase in member-oriented and mission-oriented programming.
Financial Health: The number of congregations with excellent financial health declined from 31 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2010. Eighty percent of congregations reported that the recent recession negatively affected their finances.
Congregational Conflict: Almost two of every three congregations experienced conflict in 2010. In a third of the congregations, the conflict was serious enough that members left or withheld contributions, or a leader left. Conflict is corrosive – it leads to attendance decline and financial stress.
Demographic Details: The average percentage of participants over 65 has increased at the same time as the average percentage of 18-34 year olds has declined. Racial/ethnic congregations buck this trend, with significantly higher proportions of young adults among their participants than white congregations. Among historically white congregations, the membership of the typical Oldline Protestant congregation is much older than that of Evangelical Protestant congregations. For 75 percent of Oldline Protestant congregations, less than 10 percent are young adult. This aging of congregations is significant because as congregations age, their capacity for change erodes.
Interfaith Engagement: A little more than one in ten congregations surveyed in 2010 indicated they had shared worship across faith traditions in the past year, 13.9 percent in 2010 versus 6.8 percent in 2000. A special report on congregations’ interfaith engagement is available at http://www.faithcommunitiestoday.org.
The Electoral Process: There has been a reversal between Oldline and Evangelical Protestantism in political action, through voter registration or education programs, in the past decade. While the use of the political process declined from 2000 to 2010 among Oldline Protestant Congregations, to 11.9 percent, it surged among Evangelical Protestant congregations, to 25.8 percent. The Black church also continues to use the political process, with 55 percent saying they offer voter education or registration campaigns.
Church Attendance: The average weekend worship attendance at a typical congregation declined from 2000 to 2010. Median weekend worship attendance at the typical congregation dropped from 130 to 108 during the past decade. More than one in four American congregations had fewer than 50 in worship in 2010.
Spiritual Vitality: Fewer congregations report high spiritual vitality – from 42.8 percent in 2000 to 28.4 percent in 2010. This decline in spiritual vitality is true across the board – including denominational family, race and ethnicity, region and size. Among the trends that negatively impact spiritual vitality are decreasing financial health, shrinking worship attendance, aging membership and high levels of conflict. One unexpected finding is that spiritual vitality rises considerably higher at the liberal end of the theological continuum than the very conservative end.
I am no sociologist, so I don’t have credentials to crunch the data responsibly. But how do you look at the figures on finances, controversy, church attendance, membership, and vitality and then conclude that liberal Christianity is making a comeback? I understand Butler’s need to cheer lead for her peeps. But the director of Hartford’s Center, David Roozen, cannot summon up the positivity that Butler taps. Even his conclusion, “Despite bursts of innovation, pockets of vitality and interesting forays into greater civic participation, American congregations enter the second decade of the twenty-first century a bit less healthy than at the turn of the century,” sounds like a reach.
Old Life 
I too had to reread the statement that Butler was citing those statistics in SUPPORT of her argument about three times.
Next time I need a laugh I’m going to go watch over age 65 theological liberals grooving to electric guitars and drums.
The Mainline was, is, and will remain a pathetic joke. Machen was correct.
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Or as my wife calls him – “Machem”…
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The mainline churches are decaying corpses. Those still in them are merely parasites living off the endowments of past generations.
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They are mostly a real estate play at this point.
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They are mostly a real estate play at this point. Kind of
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Now that I’ve got you in suspense…
They are mostly a real estate play at this point. Kind of like Sears.
Stupid internets…
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Erik,
Great analogy!
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You might call John Shelby Spong the Edward Lampert of Liberal Protestantism.
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Erik Charter wrote: “The Mainline was, is, and will remain a pathetic joke. Machen was correct.”
GW: Very true. “Mainline” churches are fast becoming “sideline” churches (indeed, many already seem to be on the sidelines). Regrettably, though, it seems that many of the unchurched and under-churched in America still associate Christianity with mainline liberal religion. And in my own experience some of the most difficult individuals to reach with the gospel message are mainline/liberal “Christians” who are active in and commited to their local mainline churches and mainline denominational agendas. (Yes, I know they are a dying breed, but they are still out there; at least lots of them can be found in the area where I minister.)
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Their rummage sales are way better than evangelicals or fundamentalists. Catholics have fabulous rummage sales, too. Speaking of that the St. Thomas Aquinas sale in Ames is coming up around Labor Day…
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Benjamin P. Glaser: The mainline churches are decaying corpses.
RS: If they are dead, then they are no longer churches. At some point (going hardline on the mainline), if we are going to go back to Machem (nod to Eric’s wife), it is Christianity AND Liberalism. They are not the same thing. If a professing church is liberal, it is not Christian. If a professing church is Christian, then it is not liberal.
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If we try to correlate the decline of mainline churches with theological trends, I fear that we miss the point. Simply put, theology was never central to the mainline church’s identity. Machen, after all, was not suspended because of his theology; he was suspended for establishing a rival mission board.
The mainline churches were an extension of WASP culture. Through the 1960s, membership in a mainline church signified that one was tied into the WASP establishment. To cement these ties, one would also join a number of other civic and social organizations.
But since the 1960s, being tied to the WASP establishment has mattered less and less. As this has occurred, the institutions that greased the wheels of the WASP machinery have faded in importance.
Of course, evangelicalism is not immune to similar trends. Evangelicalism is largely tied to the cultural values of right-of-center Baby Boomers. In some ways, the Culture Wars are nothing more than an attempt to re-litigate the battles of the 60s and 70s over and over and over again. Younger generations have little interest in these battles. So, I suspect that something different will emerge in its place.
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Good observation, Bob.
I’m warming up to teach D.G.’s “Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America” in Sunday school in September so I’m thinking about these issues again.
That book will always be cemented in my mind because I read most of it on planes to & from the North Carolina/Duke basketball game a few years ago. It was a very memorable 36 hours.
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Dr. Hart,
I have a question that I would appreciate your confirmation on. Are the comments under DGH your comments on this blog?
http://www.swordandploughshare.com/main-blog/2011/8/18/a-two-kingdoms-hart-attack.html?currentPage=2#comments
The blog itself I have very little interest in. I am just asking if the DGH in the comment section is you.
Thanks for your response.
Randy Martin Snyder
These are not necessarily in context so please don’t just lift these without context. I just want to know for reference if Dr. Hart actually wrote these about a year ago.
You can email me also Dr. Hart.
puritancovenanter at gmail dot com
quotes from the comments below the blog…
“Brad, I don’t see that the gospel is about changing lives, or that the Bible is chock-full of moral imperatives. I see that everywhere else, sports-talk radio, New York Times, Fox News — plenty of stuff about how to live good lives. What the Bible offers is forgiveness.”
“In the end, I think we disagree about what difference Christianity makes in the Christian. I have been in church circles long enough to see that believers have no monopoly on being good spouses, being charitable and patient, being considerate or decent. So to use your logic, if Christianity doesn’t make Christians morally superior, I suspect it won’t help with art, medicine, or political theory. In fact, it seems to me that when Christians try to make Christianity change these cultural endeavors, they produce inferior artifacts, at least because they take something that is supernatural and try to fit it into something that is supposed to be simply human.”
“Don Frank, if you read Ken Myers’ book, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, you wouldn’t be surprised by my comments or ties to Mars Hill (though I never served on the board). Ken’s approach to Christ and culture then had Meredith Kline’s fingerprints all over it.BTW, it seems to me that the continuity argument — Christ leads to better culture — is fundamentally fundamentalistic because it shows no capacity to handle something in between the holy and the profane — something that is common, good, and provisional.
Steven, looks to me like The Wire is a huge confirmation of Ecclesiastes. But do you really think that Christ would fix Baltimore? If Jimmy, Omar, and Carcetti all came to Christ, what would change (except that they might be less interesting)?
Brad, but we do know something about the new order and it all points toward discontinuity. No marriage, no procreation, no church, no sacraments. But when 2k critics of transformationalism bring this up, they are accused of being fundamentalists.
As for Calvin, Hooker, et al as superior to Aristotle and Cicero, can you really assert that theologians are better political theorists than political theorists? This really sounds like special pleading, the kind with which I grew up in an fundamentalist church, where we all knew that Christians were really better than the pagans and so never read the pagans or appreciated their insights. But what about the harder question of something like The Wire. What Christian has produced something that amazing, or what author has let Christianity be the guide for such a production? Shakespeare? But I suspect that case would again rely on special pleading.
In the end, I think we disagree about what difference Christianity makes in the Christian. I have been in church circles long enough to see that believers have no monopoly on being good spouses, being charitable and patient, being considerate or decent. So to use your logic, if Christianity doesn’t make Christians morally superior, I suspect it won’t help with art, medicine, or political theory. In fact, it seems to me that when Christians try to make Christianity change these cultural endeavors, they produce inferior artifacts, at least because they take something that is supernatural and try to fit it into something that is supposed to be simply human.
August 23, 2011 |
dgh”
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Randy M.S., dgh is I.
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It sure sounds like DGH to me. If it wasn’t him I would advise him to take credit anyway.
“Special Pleading” – Special pleading is a form of spurious argument where a position in a dispute introduces favourable details or excludes unfavourable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.[Wikipedia]
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Thank you Dr. Hart. I moderate a theological forum and if you don’t mind I would like to ask you some questions about the quotes privately. I hate it when things get too open and mud starts getting slung around out of context. Would you be so kind as exchanging emails with me. I refuse to share private messages with others unless I am permitted and unless the author of said messages agrees first.
Thanks
Randy
you can put att.net at the end of puritancovenanter.
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dgh
It’s a trap!
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I’d agree about the trap.
Frankly, Randy, if you think that the gospel of Christ is about moral reform, you’ve mistaken the Gnosticism of Finney and Edwards for true Christianity. You’re probably also missing out on a lot of good whiskey.
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Bob: I’d agree about the trap.
Frankly, Randy, if you think that the gospel of Christ is about moral reform, you’ve mistaken the Gnosticism of Finney and Edwards for true Christianity. You’re probably also missing out on a lot of good whiskey.
RS: Edwards was nothing like Finney and he was not guilty of Gnosticism. Finney was a Pelagian from beginning to end. As far as whiskey goes, be filled with the Spirit rather than the spirits.
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Erik, do you enjoy seeing Roy Williams cry after taking credit for a loss? As much as I do?
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Mark – Roy and I have a long history. I am an Iowa State fan so I rooted against him when he was at Kansas for many years. He moved to North Carolina and recuited Harrison Barnes who played at my old high school (Ames, Iowa) and played for the All-Iowa Attack AAU program that my boss runs. Because of Barnes I was a UNC fan for the past 2 years. Now Barnes is in the NBA so I am neutral on Roy again. It would have been interesting to see what they could have done if Marshall had stayed healthy. Seeing that UNC at Duke game was something I will always remember.
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Randy Martin Snyder posts D.G.’s comments from a blog above. It is interesting to go back and read the comments from Brad Littlejohn that D.G. is commenting on. Littlejohn studied at New St. Andrews in Moscow, Idaho, I believe, which means he is most likely steeped in the postmillennialism that is held to pretty much across the board in the CREC. This explains his disbelief that the gospel will not lead to changed cultures. Anyone can correct me if I am wrong in my assumptions about Littlejohn, New St. Andrews, etc. I briefly flirted with the CREC, postmillennialism, etc. until I settled into an amillennial URC church. Looking back I think my postmillennial views were mostly wishful thinking. I have heard hundreds of Doug WIlson’s sermons and lectures and the only scriptural support I can really remember hearing for PM is “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” It just seems like these guys kind of all take PM for granted and off they go from there. It’s as if the Christian life isn’t worth living if we can’t look forward to some future, glorious fruits here on earth (even if it’s still thousands of years off). I think it is definitely an over-realized eschatology slash theology of glory much like that of our RC friends that we are often debating with here. There are still things I appreciate about Wilson, but I have a hard time listening to him these days because his PM drives so much of what he does.
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mark mcculley: Erik, do you enjoy seeing Roy Williams cry after taking credit for a loss? As much as I do?
RS: Proverbs 24:17 Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles;
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Doesn’t that “do not rejoice” thing only apply in the “in my heart kingdom of the Redeemer” and not in “the public natural-law kingdom of the creator”?
I am trying to make a joke. If you take the “hating” out of my sports, I just couldn’t watch basketball anymore. And my wife asks, would that be a bad thing?
Since I don’t vote, I watch political campaigns with the same kind of “private” contempt and cynicism. It’s too bad both sides can’t lose, and then we could do without. But at least there’s the pleasure of the one guy’s “agony of defeat”. I am thinking Harrison Barnes will be out of the league in three or four years.
One of the many self-righteous things about old Roy is how he takes credit. To make that much money, you have to be a politician. The weather was bad today, I apologize for that.
But perhaps this is “somewhat about me”. Should I be confessing my public sins in public? How can I make it sound like I am really sorry in my heart?
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mark mcculley: Doesn’t that “do not rejoice” thing only apply in the “in my heart kingdom of the Redeemer” and not in “the public natural-law kingdom of the creator”?
RS: However you want to split it up, I doubt that verse applies to you any more than “you shall not lie” applies to athletes who “lie” to the opposing team by faking as if they were going one way and then going another. I don’t enjoy seeing Roy cry, but I do enjoy seeing him lose. As long as one does not really hate Roy in the heart I cannot see that it is wrong to enjoy his losses. At least I hope not.
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Eric,
As a wrestling fan, I would have been far more peeved over the departure of Sanderson to PSU than Williams tinkering in IA basketball… if I were a ISU alum.
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Mark – I think H.B. will be in the league for a decade, mainly because he has such a good head on his shoulders and because he is a winner. Ames high was undefeated his last 2 years and I think they probably only lost about 5 times his 4 years in high school. It helped that the last 2 years Doug McDermott (now at Creighton) was on the team. I talk to H.B.’s mom Shirley fairly often. She did a really nice job raising him as a single mom. They went to a Baptist church in Ames. He is the kind of guy you want to root for.
Jed – That was a huge loss for ISU. Sanderson has led PSU to two NCAA championships & ISU is not doing well at all. I saw him wrestle a few times and he was amazing. Very dominant. I don’t know what he saw in PSU over ISU but it has definitely worked out for him. At least he didn’t go to Iowa.
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Erik
I don’t know what he saw in PSU over ISU but it has definitely worked out for him.
It was probably the rich recruiting grounds of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, which have stellar high school and youth programs. With his star power in wrestling and his coaching abilities, he’ll have a good shot to have the pick of the proverbial litter.
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If you want some data a few diagrams and some good links I have a 3 year old article on my blog:
http://church-discipline.blogspot.com/2009/07/michael-bell-on-inflows-and-outflows.html
The big change is that mainline churches are recruiting from evangelicals faster than evangelicals are recruiting from mainliners and for Catholics there is no comparison. Every group in America are losing members to the 5 main non-religious “sects”: Atheist, Agnostic, No religion, Don’t know their religion, Don’t care about religion. But the group that’s losing members the slowest are the mainline denominations.
So while its entirely possible that non-religious intergenerational retention stays in the 70% range and the US becomes a majority non-religious country over the next 2 centuries. It is also possible that non-religious intergeneration retention returns to traditional American norms (around 30%) in which case the demographics are rather positive for mainline.
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CD – The demise of Religion has been predicted in the U.S. for quite awhile. We aren’t becoming Europe yet. I have no idea how the Mainline churches could be growing. The PC-USA readily admits they have shrunk for like 40 years straight. I’ve read it in their own publications. I don’t think I’ve known a single person in my lifetime as an Evangelical or Reformed Christian who left one of those churches for a Mainline church. Well, maybe one couple from the URC to the CRC but I don’t know if the CRC counts as Mainline yet.
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. I don’t think I’ve known a single person in my lifetime as an Evangelical or Reformed Christian who left one of those churches for a Mainline church.
The mainline churches are at the end of a 2 generation cycle of losing members. The data as its exists for the last 2 years looks far better than for evangelical or Catholic churches. I link on my blog to the data.
As for you not knowing anyone my guess is you do, but haven’t discussed this with them. Remember what conversions look like when we start talking millions of people are 2nd or 3rd generation disgruntled members that marry out and then convert to their spouse’s religion (or group). Say Andy is married to Alice and they are in the 20s in 1970 in a CRC church. They like being part of an Evangelical church but are appalled with the southern conservatism that is becoming the political norm. They like Dewey, Rockefeller, Nixon these southern moral crusades make them antsy.
As their children get older it is the mid 1980s and they consider the moral majority and Christian coalition to be scams and a betrayal of the church they love to Southern evangelical / Baptist culture. They are still religiously conservative and certainly don’t want to join the PCA but they don’t fit in their own church and they start to build their social life outside of church. Because of that their kids drop out youth group and are diminishing their involvement.
Say Bethany is one of those kids and she marries another CRCer Brian. They both have alienated parents and attend their church rarely. They often think they should look for another church home but don’t really bother to care very much. They stay in the CRC but don’t care enough to be angry about the changing culture. Brian and Bethany have a child Clive whom they encourage to be Christian in a sort of non descript way. When Clive goes to college he attends a PCA church a bit. Later when he gets married to Carol a member of the United Church of Christ and Clive joins. Clive thing UCC is a bit liberal and it is way more liberal than Brian or Bethany could tolerate but they are thrilled that Clive and Carol are even members of a church and happy.
That’s what out conversion looks like by the millions. Talk to older people in your church and ask them what churches their grandchildren are members of.
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Southern conservatism in the CRC? We should be so lucky…
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CD – Your website is wild. What church do you come out of? How did you find Old Life/D.G. Hart?
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Southern conservatism in the CRC? We should be so lucky…
Possible the analogy doesn’t work. I don’t know the CRC that well. I was trying to just point out the multi generational aspect and how it might be hard to know the people that are leaving in large numbers when you start tracking people because religious defectors are mostly people that were rather marginal to begin with.
Your website is wild. What church do you come out of? How did you find Old Life/D.G. Hart?
Oh I went though a bunch of churches on my way out of Christianity. Grew up evangelical what I call non-denominational baptist. As far as finding Old Life… There was a web link to an older article. I saw “Called To Communion Hype and Roman Catholic Reality” on the main page which I was glad to see someone actually talking about. In real life: Catholics don’t focus on the disagreement with Protestants on justification they disagree with Protestants on the importance of community, how to relate to sexuality and sensuality in daily life and even stuff like how to eat bread. Missing the ethnic / cultural aspects of Catholicism is, ironically in a debate asserting the absolutely uniqueness of the Catholic church, to reduce Catholicism to another brand of Protestantism. Also I’d never seen Bryan Cross in an extended debate where he doesn’t get to control the flow (i.e. not on a friendly blog).
But I saw your question about regulation, and enforcement of norms of therapy on pastors and decided to jump in. As for D.G. Hart, prior to you asking the question and me looking him up I didn’t know who he was. In terms of my own personal opinion on Hart’s thesis (or at least my understanding of Hart’s thesis given a 5 minute read on Amazon):
I think he’s right that Evangelicals are uncomfortable with the degree of economic conservatism in the Republican party and wrong that this problem is fixable. Economic conservatives are a small fraction of the electorate (about 20%) including among social conservatives. The “natural” parties for America given the positions of the electorate on the issues are a socially conservative / economically liberal party and a moderate party (i.e. the pre-1964 Democrats and Republicans). So I think Hart is right, that as the parties split less on economic interests (voters vote their interests) and more on social interests (voters vote their values) the Republican party will get dragged to the left economically. The only thing preventing that from happening now is that the Republican party for fund raising has become highly dependent on a small group of eccentric rich people who are hugely focused on deregulation and military adventurism.
The Republican party has some choices as it goes left, but frankly I think the best interests of America are served by it eventually, over the next 1.5 generations, ending up to the left of the Democrats on most economic issues and becoming the pre-1964 Democrats: a pro working class, religious party whose tied to industries of the pre-information age: like energy, agriculture and manufacturing. I think the tensions we’ve seen over the last week with the Romney campaign and Medicare reform are indicative of dysfunctional the current setup is, and I see no reason to believe this structure of Reagan’s 3 legged stool can last for long.
I could go into more detail on the politics, but I’m not sure this is the right thread for it.
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Psalm 58:10 The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.
Well, I love to root against T Bow and also against his evangelical Arminian false gospel.
But now that Jeremy Lin has been traded to Houston, I might be willing to root for him. I kInda like those Harvard elite guys….
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“As for D.G. Hart, prior to you asking the question and me looking him up I didn’t know who he was.”
D.G. will be crushed since this site is “all about him”
CD – You stick around here and maybe we can win you over to Reformed Theology. It’s a great thing.
Mark – Jeremy Lin will enjoy Royce White. He is a strange dude. He was a tenant until he moved to Houston.
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On that “win you over thing”, I hope you guys can indulge a little Monday Morning sarcasm.
the thing is when you visit evangelical and liberal churches, you needn’t worry much about them not thinking you are a Christian, because they think God can save people without them knowing the gospel and also on top of that they think pretty much anything counts as gospel, is close
enough, maybe not Mormons or Catholic but who knows?, and most likely this evangelical church is a “bible church” which means it’s not credobaptist, which means it has no convictions at all about
baptism or the Lord’s Supper.
and yes, the gospel you hear in an evangelical church might sound a tad Arminian, might sound more like law, but depending on the situation, the gospel can be adjusted with just the right amount of legalism, like for example we make the distinction law-gospel-law, so you see that means the part there in the middle has to be the gospel, right?, and if that part in the middle sometimes sounds a little law-like, well, don’t think about it so much, it just means that you can’t keep justification and sanctification straight like some of us can, sure we disagree with Catholics about justification, but all of us agree even with the evangelicals that faith alone is not alone and that regeneration will cause you to obey the law and vote Republican.
Now Some evangelicals will only baptize people that have made what they consider to be a valid profession of faith. But we of course will only baptize children if their parents have made what we consider a valid profession of faith. Of course you might experiment and go to a liberal church where they will pretty much baptize any child no matter if their parents go to church at all. Some of these liberals might tell you that the righteousness sealed in the sacrament is not about any one individual, and therefore they think the sign can be given to just anyone. But we now know
that the sacrament signifies that one of the parents has a valid profession of faith, not that we infallibly know that, and also we take comfort that the water baptism is not only an objective sign but reminds us that our own children will have God as their God, and are ingrafted and regenerated, not that we know that for sure in every case, but it’s way more likely to be the case with those
in the covenant, so we get comfort from God in the sacrament, we are not doing anything ourselves
For us it is more about what God does for the children of believing parents than it is what a new believer does for God. And when we say what God does for our children, we are not right now thinking about God casting out the son of Abraham who had the bonds-woman mother. Of course we can’t deny that covenant curse is one example of what God does for the children of believing parents. I mean, but if you want to be technical, when the ordained clergyman says “you” it doesn’t mean “you all” does it?, because some who are in the covenant might exclude themselves. And yes, technically, we say our children but we don’t say ALL the children. Truth is, for some of our children there will be more sanctions than for children not born to believing parents, but let’s not get into that, we would rather talk about covenant than about election.
Thanks in advance for your patience for the cranky.
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Mark —
I agree with your point, most evangelicals haven’t thought about these issues enough to have strong enough opinions to even be “winnable over”. They would casually affirm doctrines that range from the Semipelagian through Arminian through the Reformed without thinking twice. That being said… though most people only think about fragments of their theology. Reformed focus on 5 points because they live in an Arminian country and this is where their daily battle is.
Which brings me to a reverse point for most evangelicals:
, and most likely this evangelical church is a “bible church” which means it’s not credobaptist, which means it has no convictions at all about baptism or the Lord’s Supper.
IMHO “Bible churches” are mostly credobaptist but tolerant. I think most evangelicals find the doctrinal implications of paedobaptism morally offensive, and often the act itself questionable. On the other other hand, for people who themselves were baptized as children the idea that they are need of baptism seems to be a barrier they can’t overcome. So most bible churches have moved reluctantly towards a policy of tolerance where rebaptism is no longer required for membership, but still encouraged. When I was in a bible church I had no problem considering paedobaptism it to be outright blaspheme, even while I would have supported this compromise (my churches adult baptism was an absolutely requirement). Compromise doesn’t demonstrate a lack of conviction.
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