Birth rates and evangelism in mainline Protestantism
Posted by Chris T. on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
Following the unfortunate remarks about birth rates and membership numbers by Episcopalian PB Katharine Jefferts Schori there have been a number of blog posts like this one defending her bringing birth rates into the question.
I'm disappointed that both Jefferts Schori and her defenders want to end discussion with this answer. Mainliners have fewer kids than Roman Catholics and evangelicals, sure. And this may correlate with education levels and other factors in the denominations as they exist. But why not start asking why the mainline is having a hard time spreading the Gospel to people who are not white, middle-class, highly-educated, and mostly childless or past child-bearing age? There are a couple factors I think are at work that have nothing to do with liberalism, the traditional conservative answer for why the mainline is shrinking.
First is the mainline's failure at colleges and universities. More and more mainline kids are going away to college, leaving behind their families and faith communities at a critical juncture in their lives. When they arrive on campus, chances are there is no campus ministry there run by their denomination. If there is such a campus ministry, chances are good that it's underfunded, understaffed, and does not advertise itself well. In some cases, as with the campus ministry I led at SIU-C in the years before my team took over, it does not offer weekly worship and Bible study, meaning it doesn't resemble a Christian community at all. When young mainline Protestant kids are at the critical point in their lives of reassessing all the influences they received from family and community, no one who speaks to their religious background is helping them integrate Presbyterianism or Episcopalian faith or Disciples faith with what's new in their lives. These kids will either leave the church altogether or will probably convert to Catholicism or join an evangelical group. They will not return to mainline Protestantism as their parents in the baby boomer generation did. Denominations lose long-time members.
The second thing at work is a failure in evangelism across the board. These comments about numbers being tied to birth rates suggests that Christianity is an ethnic or hereditary religion — it's not. Christianity is an evangelistic religion. This does not mean Christians must proselytize. I don't think we have any business trying to steal people away from fulfilling spiritual lives in other faiths — if they are secretly unfulfilled, hopefully our loving example of the lived Gospel can be a witness to them.
But there are plenty of people who are without fulfilling spiritual lives. The Gospel preached by the mainline can reach them and bring them into fuller communion with their fellow humans and with God. Many of these unchurched people cannot be reached by other expressions of Christianity, and the liberalism of the mainline is an asset to preaching the Gospel — to divorced persons, to LGBTs, etc. However, mainliners are not really wired for doing this kind of work, because it reminds us of expressions of Christianity we don't like. I appreciate Kyle's post about his MTh dissertation. I think this mode of sharing stories that have radically changed our own lives is a great way of thinking about evangelism. Mainliners have powerful religious experiences to share, if they can find the will.
I make these comments because I care about the future of mainline Protestantism — I find myself mostly outside that community these days, but the Independent Catholic movement shares some convictions and understandings about the Gospel with those churches. I think our movement does a decent job of the second point, evangelism — we, like Unitarians, recreate our membership almost entirely from generation to generation. But we could do a better job at holding onto the kids we have (point one) and reaching out to younger members, just as mainliners could. Our primary outreach is to older de-churched persons; we could use some work on the campus ministry and Sunday school fronts.
I sincerely hope mainline bloggers stop focusing on excuses like birth rates when these questions come up. It's not liberalism that is killing mainline Protestantism — I agree with that — but it's emphatically not true that everything is just fine. Pretending that it is will just ensure that campus ministry and evangelism continue to atrophy until there's no one in the pews to pay bills and do social justice work. The primary witness of Christianity in the United States will be post-denominational evangelical groups and the Roman Catholic Church. Given the historical spiritual strengths of mainline Protestantism in the US, that's not a vision anyone should be happy about.
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7 Responses to “Birth rates and evangelism in mainline Protestantism”
Well said, good Father. I do hope that some of those mainline Christians really do have a story about Jesus to tell; I’ve met too many who just had a story about quitting baptist life.
Nice post. A thoughtful reflection on the malaise of mainline Protestantism in America. I would challenge, however, your contention that liberalism isn’t the problem. Perhaps it depends upon your definition of “liberalism” but I think that the inability of mainline churches to engage in robust and lively evangelism is at least partly due to a lack of confidence in the gospel, and a reticence to speak about Christ in the religious pluralism of our day. There is a solid theological foundation for the ministry of evangelism (the historic apostolic faith), but a theological liberalism that is uncomfortable with that apostolic proclamation will have little involvement in evangelism other than as a recruiting tool for social justice advocates. The unfortunate state of mainline campus ministry, and in many mainline churches, youth ministry, is another expression of the mainline’s loss of confidence in the gospel. I think there is a way for moderate Christian liberals to become passionate about evangelism (without turning into Bible-thumpers); but such passion will require, I think, a rediscovery of the central affirmations of the Christian faith, and a “proper confidence” (Newbigin’s words) in the gospel to transform lives and societies. A proposition, I’m afraid, the more radical elements of the Christian left may continue to resist.
You’re right that the definition of liberalism is important in this discussion, Mike. What I tend to hear most often from traditionalists (reasserters in Kendal Harmon’s terminology) is that it’s support for gay marriage, abortion, and Democrats that is driving people away. I don’t think that’s really the case.
You are probably right that pluralism has a lot to do with mainliners’ reticence to evangelize, but I’d say it’s a knee-jerk “I want people to like me” pluralism. I think a more considered pluralism that recognizes how a religion can correctly make claims to universal validity without leading to proselytism would describe how God and the world really work. But what’s at the root of this discussion about confidence is, I think, really just false politeness or political correctness. It also conveniently lets us ignore those who are spiritually hungry.
From my perspective, the problem with campus ministry is two-fold: first, there are a lot of campus ministers in the mainline (I couldn’t speak to percentages, but in my neck of the woods it was probably over 50%) who aren’t interested in ministering to students or connecting with Christian traditions regarding worship, and second, the funding isn’t there because congregations are being short-sighted.
Chris, good post. I think you’re on target here. I’d also want to distinguish between “liberalism” in the sense of being middle-of-the-road-to-liberal on things like abortion, gay marriage etc. and “liberalism” in a more pejorative sense that denies or downplays the transcendent, mysterious, numinous aspect of religion. I think liberalism in this sense can kill a church or denomination.
Another observation: I find that people who fit a certain demographic profile (white, middle-to-upper class, university educated) are loath to speak in religious terms even among people who share their faith. We simply haven’t been taught how to describe and interpret our experience in the categories of our faith without sounding like a TV preacher. Instead, we use the categories of therapy, pop psychology, or dumbed-down Darwinism, or what have you. And we are unclear how to integrate these interpretations of our experience with those of our religion. And if we can’t talk openly and coherently about our experience of God among ourselves, the chances of evangelizing others seems pretty slim.
If I were in her shoes and were one of those talented people who can think on their feet I would have spun and pushed ‘quality not quantity’ in terms of welcome, fellowship and so on - ‘we don’t proselytise but our doors are open to all’ - and left pride in one’s education or unsavoury associations of hating an ‘other’ - those ‘breeding, ignorant Romans’ right out of 19th-century hate propaganda - completely out of it.
Ahh the question of definitions! It seems to me “liberal” can only be perjorative when said with a “conservative” “agenda.” After all, Psalm 37:21 says “The ungodly borroweth, and payeth not again : but the righteous is merciful and liberal.”
I’m not really sure how churches need to be “reaching out” to college students in order to keep them. I always went to the Parish church when I was in college- where else should I go? The churches all had signs up saying “Welcome College Students” - and in my experience, they did.
In terms of socializing with peers, I was driven away from hanging out at the Newman Center because of it’s “relevance” or whatever, but did enjoy hanging out at the Luthern Center (Missouri Synod). I’m not sure either of those constituted much of a denominational “reaching out” though. Over half of us at the lutheran center weren’t lutheran, and most of us worshiped at our own churches. The Newman Center had their own mass, completely divorced from parish life (and catholic tradition.
I think the declining mainline is a false numbers game. People aren’t coming as much because they don’t *have* to. We’re left for fewer, more honest people. Of course, it would be nice to reach those other people - but the evidently weren’t being reached when they *were* coming either. Ultimately, it has to come from within themselves. We can’t *say* or *do* anything to make them realize the divine. It seems to me the best we can do is lead a good example, and then be there for them if and when they do get around to wanting to explore such things.
well, to put in my two pence worth (though i doubt it is worth even that… see my ‘liberal’ lack of confidence coming out) - it is not so much liberal beliefs as a lack of confidence in the identity of mainline denominations. the problem is ‘we’ know what ‘we’ think liberalism is (broadly speaking) but ‘they’ don’t, ‘they’ don’t have a liberal identity- just look at groups like the Jesus Seminar Movement, they have so many different perspectives on who Jesus was- ranging from a cynic philosopher to jewish prophet or freedom fighter. the question is what Christ should they call people to follow? who decides and how? why Christ rather than Buddha, Mohammed, or Krishna?
As a liberal it is not just that you are not wired for evangelism (that is true of many evangelicals and catholics) but you can’t evangelise as a liberal for fear of offending people of other religions or none. I agree that liberals can help people through divorce (arguably better than evangelicals or catholics) but to invite them to become part of your church would be tantamount to taking advantage of the situation (your position of power). the only way for you to become a mainline liberal is for you to enjoy the company of mainline liberal friends (and hang around long enough to get assimilated into their social world), for you to be born into a mainline liberal family (and continue to value that tradition), or to get hacked off with evangelicalism or catholicism and seek sanctuary with the mainliners. hence, they may complain about evangelicals and catholics having more babies but that only exposes their absence of a liberal theology of conversion: your born liberal, become a liberal by accident, or you have a crisis in your faith that leads you to give up on the narrow mindedness of evangelicals and catholics so you become a liberal, but you are very rarely converted liberal.
Interestingly, mainline liberalism has been strong in the past, largely when there was little or no challenge to liberal christian faith back then, but i fear it will struggle to exist in a pluralistic context because it won’t articulate the benefits of being liberal rather than athiest (personally i suspect some liberals to be practical atheists), buddhist, muslim, or hindu.