The word for mainline Protestants these days, apparently, is progressive. I guess this is what happens when you are no longer mainline. This isn’t gloating. How could an Orthodox Presbyterian ridicule progressives for joining the sideline? For a while (maybe 1890 to 1970) they were the mainline. The OPC (and the rest of NAPARC, TKNY’s presence notwithstanding) never was mainline.
Still, Carol Howard Merrit’s reflections on celebrity culture at various Protestant conferences do an injustice to what the mainline was.
In Progressive Protestant circles, David Heim makes the case that we don’t really have celebrities. We’re uncomfortable with them. We assume that if they have glitz then they must be shallow. And if they have an audience then they must be dumbing things down.
The post in question from the Century’s editor, David Heim, makes a similar point:
Occasionally the Century editors sit down to talk with experts in magazine marketing. They sometimes tells us that we need to do more with celebrities–feature a celebrity on the cover of the magazine, for example.
No, they’re not pressing us to feature Brad Pitt or Lindsay Lohan. What they have in mind is featuring the celebrities of our world, that is, the celebrities of the mainline Protestant world.
We usually respond: “But mainline Protestants don’t really have celebrities.” When the experts look doubtful, the editors look at one another. “Well, we might come up with a few living semi-celebrities–but that would take care of only two months worth of covers.”
The absence of a celebrity culture seems like one of the healthy things about the mainline Protestant world, even if it limits marketing opportunities. We tend to get uneasy when a person’s charisma or accomplishment is the focus of attention. Adulation seems not only naïve and credulous but also ignorant of the mysterious and paradoxical ways God chooses to work.
Nothing wrong about this, but I wonder if the editors of the Century were concerned about the health of the mainline churches when the likes of Henry Sloane Coffin (1926), Reinhold Nieburh (1948), Henry Pitney Van Dusen (1946), Karl Barth (1962), and Eugene Carson Blake (1961) adorned the covers of Time magazine. Once upon a time the mainline did have celebrities and those celebrities were responsible for giving the mainline coherence and brand loyalty. And you can chart the decline of the mainline by Time’s covers. Jerry Falwell made it in 1985, Billy Graham in 1993, 1996, and 2007.
To be sure, that kind of dependence can be damaging to the spiritual health of the church. So the change at the Century is a welcome development. But is revisionist history to say that the mainline has no celebrities or that progressive Protestants have always understood healthy churches this way (though it is indicative of how difficult it is to maintain celebrity status in the former mainline when those former celebrities don’t measure up to today’s progressive standards and so are dispensed in the dustbin of dead white European men).
Old Life 
“These were the days when Christians literally beat down the doors to get into church. “Crowds Smash Door: Near Riot to Hear Fosdick” ran the headlines of a 1924 newspaper. It was not uncommon for people to wait in front of the church for more than two hours in what they called the “bread line” so that they could be fed at Fosdick’s table. Church members were ticketed to ensure seating, but others had to find fragments of nourishment where they could, with some sneaking into already packed balconies through fire escapes and other evasive subterfuges, and with Fosdick’s own seat filled by a standee as soon as he entered the pulpit. The carnationed, gray-gloved ushers, or what Fosdick termed his “Guard of Honor,” were really the city’s best-dressed bouncers and bodyguards. “We had a hectic time yesterday in the ushering business,” one memorandum from a head usher reported. “One lady fainted. Two ladies crawled under the ropes on the pleas of wanting to go away and then beat down the center aisle. Mr. Lawton held them up. The crowd in the south gallery was dense and passing the plate was difficult and lengthy, as every one wanted to chip in — bless their hearts. This explains why the other chap and I had to sprint down the aisles to catch up with the procession.” Liberal causes found patrons in wealthy benefactors like John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who was ubiquitous in Fosdick’s career, and prominent public-relations experts like Ivy Lee, who retailed Fosdick like breakfast cereal through market analysis, mass distribution and image-building.”
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1933
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As to the name “progressive” I think it also symbolizes a theological turn. Mainline Protestantism had Evangelical, Neo-Orthodox, and Liberal wings.
Now there’s a bunch of liberation theologies grouped together as “Progressive.”
Oh the humanity! St. Schleiermacher hear our prayer!
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Thanks, Dan H — that Fosdick stuff is chilling:
‘Fosdick offered no “sustained articulation of his understanding of corporate worship.” Children were not welcome, or even safe, in worship. And one of the greatest preachers America has produced pooh-poohed the traditional role of preaching, redefining it in more acceptable therapeutic terms as “personal counseling on a group scale.”‘
One wonders what DGH could do with a biography of HEF.
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When we discussed our fall conference we shrunk back from making it a “2K debate”. In light of that I must conclude that this session has stones the size of boulders:
http://cpcvandalia.com/refconf_2013.html
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Speaking of Mainline, our local UCC minister wrote a decent piece in the local paper defending the existence of God. I found his blog, which reveals that when the UCC says they are tolerant they are not afraid to back it up…
http://theflamingheretic.com/the-virtues-of-the-ames-gay-community/
I’m actually going to their annual rummage sale at 4:00 today.
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Add Harry Emerson Fosdick and Norman Vincent Peale to the list (although I don’t know that they made a Time cover).
I’m selling a biography of Martin Luther by Fosdick that was part of the Random House Landmark Books series (for young people). It has a bid.
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“Progressive” is the term of choice for the left these days now that “liberal” has fallen into disrepute.
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Erik, what is the golden misrep in the Fosdick bio on Luther?
If you can narrow it down to one.
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This Time list of the top 25 evangelicals might be a bit dated
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1993235_1993251_1993326,00.html
But 4 on the list are supporters of Evangelicals Catholics Together: Colson, Noll, Neuhaus, and Packer. Another is a guy who has failed to tell the truth about his role in writing speeches for our most recent “evangelical” decider-in-chief. if Santorum and Neuhaus are “evangelicals”, does that mean that the Supreme Court is now an “evangelical” institution?
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Erik,
This ain’t, my, my daddies, or my granddaddies liberalism:
Click to access WestarProgressiveArticle.pdf
If George Tyrrell came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
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Hey, what if D.G. Hart were to qualtify as a celebrity? That would sure put him in a tough spot. He might have to create an alias and criticize himself.
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To catch you up on the “what would you do if you too became a big deal” question
https://oldlife.org/2012/04/is-carl-losing-his-edge/
it’s a little like:
What would a pacifist do if (hypothetically) they really believed in the wrath of God, and if (hypothetically) they lived in the real world, and if (hypothetically) they were president of the empire, and if (hypothetically) everybody was a pacifist?
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Muddy, is your gal pal, MM, still terrorizing small children?
We have a special cellmate for the ‘don’t taz me bro’ contingent; Bogs.
Darryl, keeps tormenting the CtCers with actual historical circumstances. The more he torments, the deeper the philosophical spiral spins. We’re effectively down to algebraic code. But it’s not any textbook religious codification, it’s there own nomenclature. Which is great, because somehow we’re still the “that’s like your opinion” crew but they’re the official unofficial mouthpiece of the fideistically appraised vicar of Christ. This interweb thing is awesome. It’s the only place in the world where you can tell a YUP historian; “we’ve effectively rendered the historical chain of succession over at our website” I about peed myself in a fit of happiness.
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Um… was that Fearless Fosdick we’re talking about?
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Kent,
I haven’t read it. It would be about #1,054 on my list.
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Sean – We’re effectively down to algebraic code
Erik – No kidding. I had to pull out my slide rule to decipher Liccione’s last post. You know it’s gotten bad when you find yourself pining away for Bryan Cross.
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When Jesus said we must become like little children to enter the Kingdom he obviously meant we must become like child prodigies…
Reminds me of a funny story.
My daughter is an 11th grader. One of her friends was in Algebra II class and she was sitting next to a 7th grader who is several years advanced from his grade level in math. The high school is in a different building about 1/2 mile from the junior high. She asked the boy, “How did you get here?” (meaning, did you walk? Did someone give you a ride, etc.) He replied, “I am eager to learn”.
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Erik, looks like Fosdick made it a couple times, Peale not.
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McMark, at First Things, maybe. At CTC, hades no.
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Erik, I’m saddened but in a way happy that you didn’t read that book.
DGH is a celebrity already, at least amongst 6 or so of the least fun people to interact with on the internet…
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There are current mainline celebrities with media attention. The names John Spong, Desmond Tutu (in the news just recently) and Jim Wallis come to mind. The Episcopal Church is festooned with celebrity gay clerics like Robert Taylor (former Dean of St. Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle) and Gene Robinson (retired Bishop of New Hamshire). The latter two got loads of gushing press.
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typo: no offense intended to the Granite State.
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