Alban Weekly on ‘A New Story for the Church in the 21st Century’
Dorothy Bass, in Alban Weekly:
In the last three decades, the story of American mainline Protestantism was rewritten. Once considered the very definition of American religion, a host of late 20th century social trends and historical movements assailed venerable traditions of Protestant churchgoing, making mainline religion increasingly outmoded in a pluralistic and post-Christian society. These old-line churches lost the cultural power, prestige, and influence they previously wielded. Scholars identified, studied, analyzed, and debated the patterns of and reasons for the changes and the increasing irrelevance of America’s historic mainline denominations. Mainline Protestantism—including the story of its decline—became a sidebar in the epic of American religious pluralism, the growth of fundamentalism and evangelicalism, and the emergence of secular postmodernism. ...
Thirty years removed from the initial studies of mainline ennui, the most precipitous drops seem now to be ending and these denominations may be entering, however tentatively, into a new period of their history. In some cases, numerical decreases have slowed or stopped, mainline church attendance appears to be rising, mainline theology is demonstrating new sophistication, and higher levels of commitment and giving are beginning to register among the laity. Quietly, without much attention from either an uninterested public or skeptical scholars, reports of emerging vitality are being heard across the old mainline.
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