Patheos has an excellent interview with sociologist and historian of religion Rodney Stark. As with anything from Stark, it’s difficult to choose just one section to quote. But here’s the core of his claim:
When I was very young, there was a Protestant mainline and they were the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, American Baptists, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and more recently the media would include the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Once in a while they would even stretch things far enough to include the Unitarians and Quakers. These were the high prestige denominations, and when people became prominent and successful they would shed their old denomination and join one of these.
Now, the belief that these are the mainline denominations simply won’t go away. Everyone keeps pretending that these are the folks that count. But the fact is: that’s ancient history.
. . . Yet one keeps hearing about the “mainline” denominations and this “periphery” called evangelicalism. Well, the periphery is now the mainline, and the mainline is the sideline.
I also decided to write [How Denominations Die: The Continuing Self-Destruction of the Protestant "Mainline] partly because of the misperception that this transformation began in the 1960s. The 1760s may be more accurate, and certainly the 1860s, but it didn’t start in the 1960s. The 1960s is just when it began to be noticed.
Exactly. No offense to my mainline friends, but I’ve never understood why they continue to be considered mainstream by the the mainstream media. The Southern Baptist Convention has as many members as all mainline denominations combined. Yet the dying denominations get all the attention.
I suspect that within my lifetime the only mainline denominations that will continue to exist will be those that, as Stark notes, are led by clergy who are “generally evangelical in their convictions.”
Anyway, back to the interview. With Stark, I can’t ever stick to just one excerpt so here are a few more quotable passages:
I’ve had people tell me: “I quit that mainline church because, in the whole year, the minister didn’t say the words Jesus Christ.”
[. . .]
What if you went to a baseball game, and nobody brought a ball? The players just stir around for two hours. I don’t think you’d go back, would you? Likewise, when you go to church, but the minister doesn’t bother to hold church because he wants to talk about Medicare or something, why go back? Well, people don’t.
[. . .]
The denominational leaders would pass resolutions that “everybody in prison is a political prisoner,” for example, or that “everybody commits crimes but only the poor are sent to prison for it.” Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have many friends who engage in drive-by shootings and stick up liquor stores. I just don’t. (Granted, they’re a bunch of cowardly professors, but still.)
August 9th, 2010 | 10:04 am | #1
Joe: I read Stark’s interview last night. He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy, and very funny. I enjoyed the interview so much that I’m motivated, more than ever, to read some of his books.
The most interesting point I learned is that the decline of mainline Protestantism didn’t begin in the 1960s but in the 19th century. According to Stark, two factors have contributed to the decline:
I tried attending an Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara but could not stay because week after week the rector’s message was indistinguishable from the agenda of the United Nations. When I go to church, I want to hear about the Gospel – not Leftist politics.
August 9th, 2010 | 10:09 am | #2
Joe: Did you notice the Emergent grandmother (Phyllis A. Tickle) left a comment on Stark’s interview? She writes:
Tickle overlooks that the Episcopal Church, although technically belonging to the Anglican Communion, is functionally separate – and I expect, sooner than later, will be pruned from the tree. The development of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has accelerated the decline of the Episcopal Church, attracting many of the evangelical or conservative Episcopalians. Senior leaders in the Episcopal Church – perhaps even the Presiding Bishop – have thumbed their nose at Canterbury and said they are prepared to go their own way in order to lead a new movement of the Spirit (translation: Zeitgeist).
August 10th, 2010 | 2:59 am | #3
Tickle’s own contribution to that Patheos series was completely inscrutable.
The more I read from certain of the emergent movement, the more I get the sense that they simply want the world to know how much more clean they are than all those other nasty Christian religionists.
What a terrific and fruitful way to begin a movement! May they prosper, just as much as they wish all other Christians to prosper.
August 10th, 2010 | 6:42 am | #4
[...] Are Not the New Mainline (Stephen) In a recent interview with Timothy Dalrymple (found via Joe Carter), historian Rodney Stark (an interesting fellow, but odd if only in that he has a book called The [...]
August 13th, 2010 | 11:05 am | #5
[...] – Derek Ouellette ponders the “boundries” of evangelicalism. Joe Carter asks if evangelicals have become the new “mainline”. [...]
August 17th, 2010 | 8:44 am | #6
But the term “mainline denominations” no longer functions as a description. It functions as a name. So in terms of the semantics of what’s going on, it doesn’t really matter that it’s ceased to be informative. It’s like complaining that you park in driveways and drive on parkways. It’s an interesting irony in the etymology of such terms, but it’s not a problem with the language. Names often originated in circumstances that make their etymology seem ironically opposite to their current reference. The problem is not that anyone uses the term to refer to the groups it refers to. The problem is if they, in so doing, think they’re using the name as a description rather than as a name.
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