Mainline Protestant Decline and Hope

on February 19, 2015

(Below are Mark Tooley’s remarks at Mt. Bethel United Methodist Church in Marietta, Georgia at the Areopagus Forum on February 18.)

This year is an ignominious anniversary for Mainline Protestantism, commemorating a half century of continuous decline since their membership peaks in the early 1960s. Fifty years ago one of every six Americans belonged to the Seven Sisters of Mainline Protestantism. Today it’s one of every 16 and plunging. Membership has dropped from 30 million to 20 million during a time when Americas population has nearly doubled. And it did so despite Gallup Poll’s insistence that overall church attendance has remained essentially the same for about the last 80 years.

In our current post denominational age, many question why this decline matters. Who cares about the Mainline except the dwindling and increasingly aged members who remain? After all, haven’t evangelical churches, especially nondenominationals, plus Catholicism, more than filled the void? Wasn’t it time for the Mainline to leave the stage, having more than played its part in American and Christian history across 4 centuries? And in the end, didn’t they deserve their own demise?

The answers are yes and no. The decline is indeed deserved and self precipitated, but nonetheless very sad for America and the Body of Christ, leaving a spiritual and cultural void that Evangelicals and Catholics, even with their increased numbers, have not been able to fill.

Mainliners literally founded America, from Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, generated its founding principles, which have become universal, and were the spiritual and cultural flagships for our nation for over 350 years. They shaped how we publicly lived out faith and applied it to our democratic process. They created civil religion, which uniquely in the world protected and integrated religion into every aspect of public life without legally establishing any particular religion.

The Mainline’s implosion in part facilitated the culture wars and polarization since the 1960s. With three centuries of experience, the Mainline knew how to lead, to unify and to challenge all at the same time. It offered continuity. It was thoroughly American yet also rooted in the European Reformation. Evangelicalism and Catholicism can’t replace it. One is maybe too much an American creation, and the other is perhaps not American enough.

Mainline Protestantism lost its way when it forgot how to balance being American and being Christian, choosing American individualism and self made spirituality over classical Christianity. Nearly all mainline seminaries had embraced modernism by the 1920s, rejecting the supernatural in favor of metaphorized faith integrated with sociology and political revolution.

By the 1960s, not in-coincidentally, too few clergy were left in the Mainline with strong educations in theological orthodoxy, hence their inability and even unwillingness to evangelize, preferring to adopt the themes of radical cultural and political change that was hyper utopian, egalitarian, therapeutic and individualistic. A 1967 survey found 60 percent of Methodist clergy, for example, disbelieving the Virgin Birth and 50 percent disbelieving the Resurrection.

The impact on Mainline membership was predictable. Absent the imperative for soul-saving and confidence in Christian doctrine, gaining new adherents became more of a sociological exercise or a bid for institutional preservation. Neither inspires great zeal.

In the 1980s there emerged a prominent Mainline prelate who embodied the new face of the Mainline.

Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong of New Jersey appeared on talk shows and wrote provocative books suggesting the Virgin Mary was impregnated by a Roman soldier, or Jesus’ body was torn apart by wild dogs instead of resurrecting. In later years he rejected “theism” altogether. Despite his clerical collar, he’s essentially a materialist who rejects the supernatural. For him Christianity is chiefly an instrument for socialization and political justice.

One of Spong’s books was “Why Christianity Must Change or Die,” its thesis being that orthodox Christianity would be rejected by rising new generations, so the oldsters needed to get hip, like he had. But he was essentially peddling an already aged form of Protestant modernism that peaked 100 years ago. Unsurprisingly, during his 20 year reign over the Newark Episcopal Diocese, there was a 40 percent membership loss. Who really wants to go to church to hear that Jesus is not divine, didn’t rise from the dead, doesn’t forgive sins, and doesn’t offer eternal life?

Several years ago an IRD staffer after visiting a liberal Methodist seminary to hear Bishop Spong, joked he could find the event by simply following the old people. Even on a college campus, Spong’s audience was all white headed, probably mostly retired oldline Protestant clergy who still can’t figure out why their theology and churches had failed.

Bishop Spong has remained active and outspoken. I’ve subscribed to his weekly email for years but rarely read them, as he has very little new to say. But recently I did read, mildly enticed by the headline “Jesus and Elvis.” A questioner to Spong compared the Savior with the musician, saying he admires both but the fans of each “freak me out.” Despite claims by “fundamentalists,” he says the real Jesus was “anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer, never anti-gay, anti-abortion and never anti-premarital sex among other parameters.”

Spong chastised the questioner a bit, explaining that Jesus “called people to wholeness,” while Elvis was “hedonistic” and died fat, addicted to drugs and booze, revealing “pretty substantial differences.” But Spong admitted both had “devoted followers and one could even say that the followers of both were unable to accept the reality of their heroes’ deaths.” Spong readily agreed that Jesus’ followers have been often quite wicked, a favorite theme of his own, but he points out that the church has at least “raised up within itself visionary voices that bear witness to unpopular truths that eventually have forced institutional change.” No doubt Spong had himself in mind but he modestly cites others like radical Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether and gay advocate Bishop Gene Robinson, another failed Episcopal bishop whose diocesan numbers plunged. In contrast, Spong noted the “followers of Elvis Presley have never raised up minority voices to purge and to purify their movement.”

Spong insisted the “Bible asserts time and again that Christianity is called to be a minority movement, but always affecting the majority. We are told in the New Testament to be the leaven in the dough that causes the bread to rise, to be the salt in the soup that gives it flavor and to be the light in the darkness that will not be extinguished.” Spong explained he’s a Christian despite the church’s sins because “minority Christian voices can and do purge institutional Christianity of its excesses and of its life-diminishing prejudices.”

Interesting that Spong cited the Bible and New Testament as definitive authorities for his views to which others should submit. Maybe he’s still rhetorically clinging to the southern “fundamentalism” of his youth that he’s expended decades mocking and disavowing. Spong sees himself and other enlightened voices as the prophetic minority witness within a large corrupt institution, the church, which has been largely failing to represent its Founder for virtually its whole history. But what higher truths above church and Bible credential Spong et al? He’s never really clear. Spong likes to cite “science” with the sneering confidence of a village atheist, but science says nothing about the moral imperatives of fighting racism and homophobia that are central to Spong’s career.

So Spong’s final authority is Spong and the kindred spirits, mostly all modernists, he finds along the way to echo his own views. It’s a narrow perspective, very captive to the here and now, and even then to a certain segment of politically correct, Western liberal opinion. But Spong soldiers onward, with fewer and fewer listeners. At least he’s remained resolutely consistent in his 35 years of scoffing critique of orthodox Christianity.

A colleague of Spong’s on the Jesus Seminar who recently passed away, although a decade younger, was Marcus Borg, another Episcopal self styled theologian who represented a somewhat newer version of Mainline Protestant liberalism. He has been eulogized in countless blogs and articles by admirers acclaiming his spiritual insights. We can pray that God comforted his family in their recent loss.

Unfortunately, Borg did not believe in the kind of personal deity, or “supernatural theism” as he derided it, who provides this kind of direct comfort to individuals. Instead, he advocated an impersonal deity understood through panentheism (distinct from straight pantheism), which asserts that all creation is a part of God. As professor at Oregon State University, he specialized in deconstructing traditional Christian beliefs about God, Christ, and the Bible.

Twenty and thirty years ago the Jesus Seminar got routine headlines for its regular and supposedly scholarly “discoveries” that Jesus never claimed divinity or rose from the dead or said much of anything ascribed to Him in the Bible. Instead, Jesus was actually an irenic social justice philosopher and activist, just like most of the Jesus Seminar academics.

Borg’s obituaries have credited him for his relative respectfulness to more orthodox Christian scholars, in contrast with the disdain exuded by many of the Jesus Seminar’s philosopher kings. His colleague Episcopal Bishop Spong specializes in sarcastic contempt for orthodox Christianity and its unwashed adherents. Borg enjoyed debate with his theological adversaries, for years conducting public exchanges with his friendly interlocutor Tom Wright, the British biblical scholar and Church of England bishop. The two even authored a book together offering their different versions of Jesus, one a divine Savior announcing God’s Kingdom, according to Wright, the other a mortal Jewish mystic later deified by the church, according to Borg.

Fifteen years ago, in a typical exchange, Borg and Wright spoke at National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., which I attended and reported. Borg of course said much of the Gospels, like the Virgin Birth and Jesus’ multiplying of the loaves or walking on the sea, were “history metaphorized.” Likely Jesus didn’t think Himself a messiah or anticipate His death. Instead his martyrdom made him like Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Borg described Jesus as a Jewish mystic or “spirit person,” whose “visions of the sacred” were “shamanic,” “peak experiences,” or “altered states of consciousness.”

Like Buddha, Jesus taught “wisdom,” and Jesus was also a social prophet who critiqued the “domination system” of His day. “Does it matter if Jesus thought He was messiah?” Borg asked. “Tom says yes. I say no.” He rejected an “interventionist God” who performs miracles or directly inspires Scripture.

Although erudite and polished, Borg could be a little snippy with traditional believers, especially if they lacked academic pedigree. One questioner in the cathedral audience asked if the Holy Spirit had guided interpretation of the Bible. “I don’t know if the Holy Spirit would be helpful in judging the factuality of the Gospels,” responded Borg. “The Holy Spirit is irrelevant in that decision making process.” Responding to another questioner, he said Jesus only became divine metaphorically in the church’s memory after Easter. And the Resurrection didn’t mean anything actually happened to His corpse. Again, more metaphor, merely showing Jesus to be “at one with God.”

Over the years I heard Borg speak on numerous occasions, usually at liberal Protestant events whose audiences were typically old, nearly all white and tied to academia or the clergy of declining Mainline denominations. Borg himself became a canon theologian at an Episcopal cathedral, and his wife is an Episcopal priest.

Even though he professed Christianity, Borg was frank about rejecting nearly all core Christian beliefs. The “pre-Easter Jesus is a figure of the past, dead and gone. He isn’t anywhere,” with talk about his corpse or an empty tomb merely “irrelevant distractions.” Only an arrogant, delusional Jesus would have claimed divinity or predicted resurrection, Borg noted, adding, “We have categories of psychology for people who talk that way about themselves.”

Accordingly Borg didn’t think God answered prayer, didn’t believe in a specific afterlife, didn’t think Christianity was uniquely true or would even necessarily persist, and did not believe in a creator God or even a personal God, concepts more suitable for children who lack “critical thinking” than for adults.

Raised in a traditional Lutheran home, Borg apparently first gained enlightenment through liberal theology at Union Seminary in New York. He at times recalled that he once believed in the Christmas story as literally involving a virgin birth, a “magic star,” and Wise Men, when he lacked the “mental equipment” in his youth to think otherwise. Only with education and post-adolescent critical thinking did he reject “childlike literalization of the personifications of God.”

Rejecting God as a personal creator who presides over creation, Borg hailed panentheism for recognizing “we and everything that is are in God. God is not something else. God is right here and all around us. We are within God.” He explained: “The best way to refer to God is You, the You who is right here.”

With this notion of self-deification, along with Jesus’ supposed “shamanic journeys,” Borg believed in “paranormal healings,” visions, and altered states of consciousness. Of course, Borg rejected notions of sin and salvation, along with conventional “moralistic” standards, preferring self-enlightenment and self-empowerment.

Christianity for Borg was only a helpful “lens” through which to view the sacred. “If we stop using the Christian lens, then we cease to be Christian and that’s not the end of the world. If humanity lasts 10,000 years, then I expect that, if Christianity lasts at all, then it will be a tiny sect like Zoroastrianism. We’re not going to last forever in the Christian tradition. The Christian lens will eventually fall into disuse.”

Bizarrely, Borg, speaking in the 1990s, thought liberal Mainline churches were losing members because they still clung to biblical “literalism” instead of embracing his idea of enlightenment. But they would have a “very bright future” once they reinterpreted their faith “metaphorically.” In contrast, “fundamentalism” had “reached its high water mark.”

Borg’s deity did not hear prayer, forgive sin, exude grace, inspire love, or offer heaven. For Borg, an abstract deity within self and nature can be reached in self-generated visions or altered states of consciousness. His panentheism ultimately incorporated even evil into the divine, making virtue and love nonsensical. Such a vision is depressing and illogical. Why it, if fully contemplated, should have inspired anybody is unclear.

Yet Borg had his fans among especially Mainline Protestants. Along with his leftist politics and critique of traditional Christians, perhaps they identified with how he clung tenaciously to Jesus as “light of the world,” even if only a metaphor. He rejected absolute truth yet also resisted nihilism. Seemingly some kernel of faith from his Lutheran childhood survived and hopefully reignited when Borg finally faced the afterlife and personal deity he had for years rejected.

Sadly the Mainline churches and clergy who have heeded Borg’s theology have suffered a terrible price in lost members, vitality and cultural influence.

Recently I was conversing with a United Methodist friend about a church we previously attended. It’s now in difficult financial straits, property has been sold, membership is down, and the minister is leaving early.

The trajectory would be familiar to many Mainline Protestants. There was a film series introduced into the adult Sunday school featuring Bishop Spong and Marcus Borg, among other radical revisionists, generating contentious debate and ill will. The lobbyist for United Methodism’s liberal Capitol Hill office was a featured guest preacher. The U.S. flag was removed from the sanctuary. The small young adult group was sent to visit an urban Reconciling congregation as an exemplar. “Transgender” and “global warming” occasionally appeared in a sermon, as did references to supposedly universal church decline across America, to which we were evidently to be reconciled. “Sexual orientation” appeared on the church website. A prayer to “our Father/Mother God” prompted me to stop attending there altogether.

All of this liberal inclusivity and diversity should have been enticing to Millennials and other sought after demographics, right? Of course not. The once strong and large congregation now may or may not survive.

That story, as I was telling my friend after worship at another United Methodist church, contrasts with another previously dying congregation in the area, which is Southern Baptist. It has a large, imposing property but the congregation had dwindled to a few elderly. Another conservative Presbyterian congregation that rents the property had been expected eventually to purchase it. But a new young Southern Baptist pastor was dispatched, and a couple hundred are now worshipping in his congregation. He has a dramatic testimony, and he is emphatic about the exclusivity of Christ and the Bible’s authority. His message and ministry fall considerably outside the parameters of political correctness. And now his once dying church has a future.

My United Methodist friend remarked upon hearing this story that in general we know what will grow a church. It’s not a mystery. The real question is, do we want the biblical message and ministry that will attract new people, or do we prefer less challenging alternatives, with predictable outcomes. Church vitality or decline to a large extent are choices. For 50 years, once Mainline denominations have chosen to decline. Some Evangelical churches have chosen to grow. The Lord sets that choice before every church and honors the decisions made.

United Methodism is the largest Mainline denomination. The year 1965 was the last year that Methodism had membership growth in the U.S. Starting in 1966, there’s been membership decline EVERY year. Our church lost almost 4 million members, over one third of the original 11 million, during a time when the U.S. population nearly doubled.

Meanwhile, other Wesleyan denominations have grown over the last 50 years, often dramatically.

The Church of God increased by two thirds. The Wesleyan Church increased by 75 percent. The Church of the Nazarene nearly doubled. The Free Methodist Church increased by 25 percent. The Assemblies of God have increased a whopping 500 percent. Growth for most of these churches over the last several years has leveled off, except for the still fast growing Assemblies. But none are experiencing United Methodism’s ongoing exodus.
Methodism had been America’s largest Protestant denomination until surpassed by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1967, whose membership is now more than double United Methodism’s.

Nearly all the Mainline denominations have declined even more than Methodism, with similar comparisons to more conservative denominations of the same tradition that have grown significantly. Thanks to Africa, United Methodism is growing globally, with nearly 13 million members, possibly the 9th largest denomination in the world. But none of the other Mainline denominations have that global advantage.

Many perhaps most Mainline clergy remain firmly in denial about the causes of decline. Some falsely and comfortingly assume all churches in America are shriveling. Others try to sanctify shrinking churches as somehow more faithful and spiritually elite. For them, church growth is idolatrous.
But there’s nothing holy about a death spiral, is there? The Gospel commands offering redemption to the whole world. All the church’s good works, rightly understood, are in service to the urgent evangelistic imperative. The fields are white to harvest.

Recently in Washington, D.C. I was walking by an old United Methodist sanctuary, one of scores of beautiful Mainline sanctuaries in the nation’s capital and countless other large cities that but sadly mostly empty on Sunday mornings. Hearing uncharacteristic music emanating from the windows, curiosity drove me inside, where I was surprised to see a full congregation of almost all twenty-somethings singing robustly as a band performed behind the altar. There being no seating left, I went upstairs to the balcony.

The congregation, of course, was not United Methodist but an Evangelical congregation tied to a Calvinist network and founded just a few years ago by a young pastor from out of town. Meanwhile, the home United Methodist congregation has virtually died off. I was glad to see the stately old sanctuary put to good use for vital worship and ministry reaching Millennials.

But I was saddened to contemplate there is no Methodist equivalent in Washington, D.C. or in most large cities. Institutional United Methodism in America has given up on cities and given up on young people, so no surprise we are declining by nearly 100,000 annually. Pockets of United Methodist vitality are typically is in the suburbs.

Sometimes over the years I’ve been asked by friends where their young adult child newly arrived in the nation’s capital might find a vital and orthodox United Methodist church. I’ve told them there really are no options. So they end up at any one of dozens of Evangelical new church plants that successfully attract young people, like the one I spontaneously visited.

Think about it. The most powerful city in the world has almost no vital, orthodox United Methodist churches. Instead there are typically small, liberal congregations that celebrate their diversity but have little capacity for meaningful outreach. The same is true for most large cities. And institutional United Methodism has no capacity to address this challenge.

The Evangelical congregation I visited this evening describes their mission explicitly and evangelistically. Their website says: “We believe in the personal, bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ. The coming of Christ, at a time known only to God, demands constant expectancy and, as our blessed hope, motivates the believer to godly living, sacrificial service and energetic mission.”

It also says:

God’s gospel requires a response that has eternal consequences. We believe that God commands everyone everywhere to believe the gospel by turning to Him in repentance and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.

In contrast, what is the mission of diversity churches? Inclusiveness, community building, radical hospitality, affirmation, etc. One United Methodist congregation in D.C. advertises its welcome to all this way:

No matter,
– Where you’ve come from or are going;
– What you believe or doubt;
– What you are feeling or just not feeling;
– What you have or don’t have; and
– No matter whom you love
All of who you are
– is welcomed into this community of faith
– by a God who loves you passionately.
Thanks be to God. Amen!

So what does that mean? And whom would it excite? All are welcome into what, for what? Most Millennials, and nearly everyone else, would respond with yawns. Hence the empty churches.

As mentioned, a recent Gallup reports 41 percent of Americans say they attend church weekly or more. This number has stayed remarkably constant for 80 years. This survey, along with Pew poll showing large majorities believing in the historicity of the Christmas story, rebuts sweeping claims that America is becoming more and more and more secular. The rising numbers of “nones” partly reflects non church goers who once may have cited their parents’ religious affiliations as their own if asked but now no longer bother. Many of them are from Mainline Protestant backgrounds,

America’s cultural elites – in academia, entertainment, journalism, social sciences, and non elected government – maybe more secular. But the American people as a whole, however confusedly and inconsistently, seem to be as religiously believing and practicing as ever.

One of the mostly untold stories about the continued vibrancy of American religion is the last two decades of successful church planting in many of America’s great cities. Tim Keller’s very influential Redeemer Church network, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America, in New York is a prime example. It, along with hundreds of other Evangelical urban church plants, specializes in attracting young professionals who have fueled a renaissance in many American cities after the several decades of decline and decay following WWII and America’s suburbanization.

Washington, D.C.’s rebirth and growth of recent years has included a plethora of new church plants appealing mainly to Millennials. One of the most prominent and successful has been a National Community Church (NCC), an Assemblies of God related network of now seven congregations, several of which are now in Virginia. Pastor Mark Batterson started the first church 19 years ago when himself in his mid twenties. It grew rapidly while meeting at a downtown cinema, and several of its congregations now meet in theaters, including a restored Vaudeville theater in the once depressed but now fashionably thriving Barracks Row neighborhood. NCC also owns a popular DC coffee house that often hosts special talks and music.

Batterson announced in time for Christmas that NCC, in its latest advance, has purchased the Blue Castle, an iconic 100,000 square foot 124 year old former trolley barn. It’s a few blocks from the Barracks Row theater and, across the street from the Navy Yard, in what recently was a dangerous, gutted neighborhood that now enjoys increasing vitality and development. This massive new church space, purchased with a $4.5 million down payment, will serve as a music and theater venue during the week, with more traditional church use on the weekend, plus children’s activities and “providing incubator spaces for like-mission, like-minded non-profits that serve the city.”

A seminal event for Batterson’s ministry was in 1996 after losing the school space where his young congregation met. He walked a prayer circle around Capitol Hill imploring divine assistance, after which he gained the initial movie theater space. He notes that the newly acquired Blue Castle is at the the same corner he rounded on his 4.7-mile prayer walk, which was the basis of his popular book The Circle Maker. The purchase letter of intent was signed 18 years to the day of his prayer walk.

“It was a miracle, 18 years in the making,” Batterson declares. “When God gives a vision, He makes provision.” He insists the “church belongs in the middle of the marketplace.”

NCC’s thriving ministry among mainly young people who are flocking to rejuvenated neighborhoods in the nation’s capital showcases the ongoing resilience of American religion, especially Evangelicalism. Batterson’s 11 books and wide social media following, with over 90,000 Twitter followers, also illustrate the changing optics and messaging of American spirituality. Some traditionalists maybe discomfited by the pragmatic styling, but the core message is orthodox Christianity transmitted through contemporary media.

Possibly Washington D.C. is experiencing more religious renewal today than it has in a half century or more. We can be grateful for how God is deploying churches like NCC and pastors like Batterson, even as the Mainline Protestants are absent from this revival.

A recent survey showed about 90 percent of members of the U.S. Congress, which meets just blocks from Batterson’s church, profess adherence to Christian churches, according to a new survey from Pew, compared to nearly 95 percent 50 years ago. Members adhering to other religions, especially Judaism, have increased, with Jewish representation going from just over two percent to just over five percent. Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist representation stand at under one percent each. Less than one percent profess no religious affiliation.

In contrast, about 15 to 20 percent of the American general population profess no specific religious affiliation, and about 75 to 80 percent profess Christianity. No surprise here. Politicians, typically ambitious extroverts, obviously are much likelier to be joiners and adherents of institutions.

Maybe most interesting, although again not surprising, is the shift in types of Christian affiliation. Fifty years ago over half of Congress was Mainline Protestant. Today it’s only about a quarter. Methodists by themselves were nearly one fifth of Congress then, now it’s less than ten percent. Presbyterians also dropped by about 50 percent, and Episcopal/Anglicans lost about a third. Congregationalists dropped by four fifths, and now comprise less than one percent, a steep decline from their ascendancy in early America.

Catholics are up from under 20 percent to over 30 percent. And Baptists increased about a quarter, now just under 15 percent. Undefined Protestants have more than doubled to more than 10 percent, probably reflecting the growth of nondenominational Christianity, although almost no members of Congress specifically professed nondenominational.

Can Mainline implosion be faulted for increased fractiousness in Congress and government? The Mainline traditions transcended party differences and mediated how Americans, especially their governing and social elites, translated their faith into governance without succumbing to fisticuffs.

Some of America’s greatest social reform movements also emerged from Mainline Protestantism. These churches gave the nation civic conscience and orderly habits for government and debate.

Mainline Protestantism across four centuries in America mightily contributed to the ethos of American democracy by not routinely becoming partisan but by affirming honest civic life, opposing corruption, and backing social reforms directly tied to public morals. Protestant social reformers have fought liquor and drug abuse, prostitution, gambling, pornography, and government corruption, all of which were typically connected in a web of social vice. These reformers assumed that democracy could not effectively survive absent virtue.

The churches also long opposed these vices because of a specific Christian anthropology that affirms human dignity, understands the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit, and believes joyful living is premised on hard work, self denial and delayed gratification. They spiritually recognized that vice breeds more vice, and that the chief victims are typically not the ostensibly consenting adults but the more vulnerable, especially children and the impoverished, who are trapped under the trash heap of social and personal corruption.

Protestant social reformers long had a vision of social righteousness that saw the hand of Providence in the affairs of nations. They inspired and hearkened to the words of James Russell Lowell’s famous 1845 hymn, which has since disappeared from some Mainline hymnals, that declared:

Once to ev’ry man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
Off’ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
‘Twixt that darkness and that light.

The original Protestant social reformers knew that humanity is spirit, and eternal, not just material, and that the soul of a nation supersedes its short term financial interests. Indeed, permanent prosperity can only be sustained by morality and justice. They also began their witness to society with the premise that the church’s first responsibility was to evangelize, disciple and nurture individual souls, guiding them heavenward, towards holiness and truth. A clean society with virtue on the throne would help lead individual souls in the right direction and in so doing glorify God before the world.

Protestant social reform understood it was fighting a perpetual spiritual war against the Devil and human sin. But they were confident in God’s redemptive power both for individuals and societies. But theological liberalism and the Social Gospel denied the spiritual aspect of humanity’s destiny and turned humans into strictly material creatures with rights to certain material goods, to be guaranteed by a coercive, engorged state.

Traditional Mainline social reform saw a righteous society as a roadway towards Heaven. Unlike the Social Gospel, which rejected Heaven and equated social justice with politically achieving God’s fulfilled Kingdom, the old Mainline witness was rooted to orthodox theology, and more accurately understood the institutional church’s carefully defined vocation for political witness.

The successes and failures of 400 years of Mainline Protestant witness in America have much to teach Evangelicals and other Christians, especially nondenominationals, of today who too often are untethered to historical traditions and are themselves very vulnerable to succumbing to hyper American individualistic spirituality at the expense of orthodox faith.

So maybe the Mainline at this point is primarily useful as teacher and warning. But we should be more hopeful still. As the implosion continues, a new generation will arise in the Mainline that will admit the failures and will seek a new direction that will lead back to orthodoxy. They will ponder the vitality of pockets of orthodoxy that will have persisted with the Mainline. And they will appreciate the witness of new denominations that emerged from the Mainline after compromises over marriage and sexuality.

Oddly, many young clergy in the Mainline, while liberal on sex, are far more orthodox on central Christian teachings as found in the ancient creeds, not at all attracted to Bishop Spong’s materialism or even Borg’s panentheism. Perhaps they will with time realize that the orthodoxy of the universal church across time and culture provides a reliable guide to both theology and ethics.

The Church as the Body of Christ endures now and forever, and no aspect of Christian practice or tradition, whether Mainline or not, can thrive except that it is firmly planted in this Body.

  1. Comment by Kyle on February 19, 2015 at 5:35 pm

    The post-Christian churches are dying, having dug their own graves.
    RIP

  2. Comment by Andrew on February 19, 2015 at 7:38 pm

    Mark, good article, but “mainliners literally founded America” won’t stand up to historical scrutiny. The Puritans who settled New England were definitely not “mainliners” of the Church of England, which regarded them as troublemakers and irritants and often persecuted them. Ditto for the Quakers who founded Pennsylvania, plus the various Anabaptist sects in that colony. and ditto for the Baptists and other Dissenters who founded Rhode Island. When Revolution came, many in England referred to as the “Presbyterian war,” due to the role played by the many Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in America, detested by their English overlords in their homeland in northern Ireland. The Church of England’s greatest vitality was always found among its dissenters, so you could make a case that the founders of America were not “mainliners” but rather the “evangelicals” of their time.

  3. Comment by Mark Brooks on February 27, 2015 at 7:44 pm

    The Separatists who settled the Plymouth colony would be considered evangelicals, not mainliners, in the 20th century. And they were even in conflict with the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, because the Separatists and Puritans had radically different versions of what relations between Church and State should be, among other things. The Puritans considered themselves the true Church of England, whatever their actual status. Alas the Bay Colony won that fight during the Restoration. So I’m inclined to agree with you Andrew. The mainline has always been in decline as soon as it became “mainline” really; look at what happened to the Congregational Church of Massachusetts when it was taken over by Unitarians in the early 19th century.

  4. Comment by polistra24 on February 20, 2015 at 4:58 am

    No mystery. Just simple marketing. When you devote 100% of your effort to attracting 2% of the population, and the 2% doesn’t want your product to begin with, you’re going to fail.

    It’s like Sizzler Steakhouse spending all of its advertising budget to attract vegans, while making it blazingly clear that beef-eaters are unwelcome in the restaurant. They would go bankrupt immediately.

    Sizzler wouldn’t make such a dumb move. Only mainline Protestants are stupid enough to do it.

  5. Comment by Jason P Taggart on February 20, 2015 at 9:48 am

    Correction, the mainline Protestants are not “stupid,” they know exactly what they are doing, driving out the orthodox Christians. They believe their own lie: liberalize the church and it will grow, but after 50 years the evidence is just the opposite (hard to argue with empty pews). Ideally, they would prefer converting all the members to their way of thinking, but they’ve failed miserably at that, so they settle for shrinking the church down to a social club for likeminded liberals. So instead of calling them “stupid,” I think “unfaithful” and “non-Christian” would be more appropriate.

  6. Comment by Thomas Mullally on February 20, 2015 at 1:41 pm

    Sizzler is on same ethical plane… 🙂 . I find Calivinistic predetermination and “the elect” to be perverse theology, ascribing man’s traits to God. However…….

    People only know the familiar, and how many of us are trying to convert them?

  7. Comment by fredx2 on February 20, 2015 at 9:44 am

    You might call Mainline Protetantism an attempt at creating an elite among Christians. They really do think they are better, smarter, and better than the average guy. Katherine Jefferts Schori talks about how many Ph.d’s they have. They think they are better bible scholars, better humanitarians, better people than everyone else. In essence, they are our modern Pharisees. They despise the average guy and want to create as much separation between the average Christian and themselves as possible. Believing in Jesus is for the little people. No wonder they fail miserably.

  8. Comment by Thomas Mullally on February 20, 2015 at 1:35 pm

    I tend to share your cultural distaste for this crowd. However let’s restrain ourselves, and err on the side of bringing them back.

  9. Comment by Kimo on March 2, 2015 at 5:43 pm

    I am not sure they are Pharisees. The mainlines are more like Sadducees, who believed in nothing but kept up appearances for social respectability.

  10. Comment by Russ Dewey on February 20, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    If the 1950s comes back, Mark will be all ready! His description of Spong as “materialistic” is so wildly off the mark that it is very revealing. Spong is, if anything, a mystic, and his 2014 lectures about the Book of John are full of erudition and scholarly insight. I see not a bit of that in Mr. Tooley’s writings. He seems more like…well, Fox News to Spong’s Obama would be a perfectly good metaphor, and it will work for everybody no matter who they sympathize with.

  11. Comment by Fundamentals on February 20, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    Ugh.

  12. Comment by Neil Bragg on February 21, 2015 at 5:54 pm

    I doubt any conservative minds your comparing Spong to Obama, or IRD to Fox News. I sure don’t! Spong and Obama are both disgraceful human beings, but as a clergyman Spong will have more explaining to do when he faces God.

  13. Comment by russellmeans on August 22, 2016 at 11:44 pm

    Oh I think YOU may have as a so called clergyman will just as much explaining to a the President of the United States of America. A man that has the guts to go through a campaign in every state in America. Get elected and then to put his hand on the Bible and say I will do my best at the hardest job in the world and you have the gall to call this man disgraceful. You have put petty politics above being a man of God. I say you are NO man of God. Run for President and win, then I will respect you. Now you are a man of Mr.Trump, that is all.

  14. Comment by dogged on February 20, 2015 at 1:46 pm

    I must add my own testimony:
    Long before the hip leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) took upon themselves to redefine orthodox sexual mores, I departed the ELCA , the church body that had baptized, confirmed and frankly imparted me with a livelong catholic understanding of the faith.
    Since the swinging 60s the once Christ-centered ELCA marketed itself as a prophetic sounding board for the leftist policies of the Democrat Party. Nuclear disarmaments & freezes, women’s “reproductive health” issues, a zealous LGBT advocacy, open borders, redistribution of wealth, racial & ethnic quotas—-You
    name it and they were out there painting a pious veneer onto some very thorny secular movements. Jesus morphed into some sort of barefoot Marxist hawking “social justice”. But the membership of Liberal Protestant bodies is in a stampede—right out the door.
    Bad karma perhaps?

  15. Comment by rdrift1879 on February 21, 2015 at 11:21 am

    I was raised in the Lutheran Church of America. One Easter Sunday morning, the pastor described in painful detail the sufferings of Christ on the cross, and then concluded, “And that’s why capital punishment is a bad thing.” As a child, sitting there, I knew this church was not my home. After High School, I left the church and wandered, until someone shared the Gospel of God’s reconciling love with me (the same Gospel we sang in the liturgy but I never heard preached). Now I am an Evangelical minister and love the Savior and His church. Never looked back…miss the music though.

  16. Comment by Thomas Mullally on February 21, 2015 at 3:39 pm

    So even as a child you were interested to reconcile state executions with the Word, and/or create defend the firewall between Church and politics? Sounds like you have contributed to the neoliberal mess.

  17. Comment by rdrift1879 on February 22, 2015 at 8:28 am

    I am trying to conceive how you could have possibly missed the entire point of my post.

  18. Comment by russellmeans on August 22, 2016 at 11:32 pm

    What did Capital punishment have to do with anything ?

  19. Comment by rdrift1879 on August 23, 2016 at 9:03 am

    Since it hurt Jesus, it was obviously a bad thing. That was the gist of it.

  20. Comment by Thomas Mullally on February 21, 2015 at 3:38 pm

    Sounds like Catholic Social Teaching. It is not politics to believe in protecting the Lambs of God, it is Christ’s Word. But Americans like to synchretize property rights and markets with divine will.

  21. Comment by russellmeans on August 22, 2016 at 11:28 pm

    O.K. Reformed. You say or should I say put Politics into the mix. Why ? Do you know that all E.L.C.A are Democrats ? No you don’t. So let’s just leave Politics out of this. I don’t or i have never seen the letters D.F.L. or G.O.P. in the Bible. All this other crap is useless. You either beleave there is a power stronger then man out there or you don’t. Not hard. All the religions of the world beleave there is. Only the Atheist does not. Are they so wrong ? Must we hate them ? I say NO. I listen to them and hope they are wrong. Then I thank them for there thoughts.

  22. Comment by Carlos on February 20, 2015 at 4:17 pm

    As the article points out, the Mainliners’ kids are not staying in church. That in itself disprove the liberals’ contention that teaching liberal theology and ethics will attract young people. Not only are they not attracting converts, they’re not even holding on to the people they have.

  23. Comment by russellmeans on August 15, 2016 at 1:22 am

    Listen up. Mainliners 90% of young people think you are talking about some drug. As far as the religion in America, about the only one that seems to be growing is the Muslims. Simply because they are the less educated. The rest of the God and Christ, are losing young people. The only reason is science is just showing that this Bible and religion is all Hog Wash. Look Christians beleave that Christ is the son of God. Well other than a Bible that others wrote down there is 0 proof of any of it. 0. So I think if Christ is going to come back and raise the dead, he best do it soon. Time is running out. People just will not buy it any more. I hope there is a after life, just do not beleave it is what the bible tell us. Remember this there is billions and billions of dollars in this religion stuff. It is in the best interest of thousands of people to keep it going.

  24. Comment by Scott on August 22, 2016 at 11:47 am

    zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    One more pissant atheist rant.

  25. Comment by russellmeans on August 22, 2016 at 11:11 pm

    No I am NOT a atheist. It is not a two choice thing. As I said, you can not convince without SOME proof that Christ was the son of God. Since God has never been seen by anybody as far back as the beginning of man. So I say Christ can proclaim he is the son of God, fine no harm in that. But for someone to say he was born on to a virgin, No this cannot happen and has never happened. Also there was no need to say that or make that up. NONE How many people back then could read ? 10% ? The Scrabis ? yes but they were not buying this at the time. Oh I hope I am wrong.

  26. Comment by Fundamentals on February 20, 2015 at 5:41 pm

    The gates of hell will not prevail against the true church. The sooner the phony dies off, the better.

  27. Comment by Kimo on March 2, 2015 at 5:40 pm

    The decline and death of the mainline denominations is the working of the Holy Spirit, or rather His absence. The word of God is clear that the Holy Spirit will not be in a place that mocks God. It is also clear He will not be in a place that engages in or promotes sexual immorality. What is going on is not a surprising to believing Christians, many of whom left the mainlines about the same time the Holy Spirit did.

  28. Comment by Abu Daoud on March 2, 2015 at 9:18 pm

    What a great article. Thank you for this.

  29. Comment by revphilhill on March 3, 2015 at 9:45 pm

    I think that the post-reformations new Protestant denominations remained closer to aspects of historical orthodoxy in wanting to reform their ecclesiology within, broadly speaking, a Calvinist framework of thought in which salvation was both personal and societal, immediate and eschatological. The evangelical tradition arose, of course, in reaction to the loss of the personal and immediate aspects of Calvinist soteriology. Currently, the mainline denominations have similarly undergone the loss of such an emphasis.

  30. Comment by Dr. Daniel Mercaldo on March 7, 2015 at 5:12 pm

    Mark, as usual a very insightful and helpful article. While serving on the Board of NAE, decades ago I watched the faithful UPCUSA ministers and leaders fight to save their denomination from the decline you sadly reported in the UMC. They lost the battle, but won the war. Out of the struggle, the PCA and the EPC were born. Just thinking…is it time for the new Methodist Church in America (MCA) to be born to save what is left of the great Methodist heritage? Just thinking…..

  31. Comment by Natalie Dormer on December 15, 2015 at 9:24 am

    I just left a mainline church, the Disciples of Christ. It was a very pretty building and had good music, but otherwise they didn’t have much to offer. Combining lefty politics with church was a huge turnoff. The remaining members are old, white, and rich.

  32. Comment by arya experienced on July 2, 2016 at 8:50 pm

    Wasn’t it time for the M******e to leave the stage, having more than played part in American and Christian history across 4 centuries? And in the end, didn’t they deserve their own demise?

    Of course they did!! In fact their church deserved to die from the very BEGINNING! M******e Protestants are worthless, EVIL people- if you can even call them “people”. I call them subhuman ANIMALS. And the reason these animals are dying out is bc they have become COMPLETELY unsuited to reproduction. They all have incredibly bitchy personalities, and the women are all masculinized. It will be a HAPPY DAY when they are all gone forever, and I do believe that even God wants them gone. If you are an “MP”, God does NOT love you, He NEVER has, and He NEVER WILL! You should just do everyone else a favor and commit right now!
    … That’s about all I have to say about the literal scum of the earth. Hopefully they will all be brutally tortured and slaughtered. DEATH TO THE M******E!!!!!! Also, they don’t shower. Thanks.

  33. Comment by Chris Madison on August 5, 2016 at 7:08 pm

    I’m a year late…again!

    I write this as a graduate of two United Methodist institutions of higher learning, and a very demoralized pastor. I retired in 2010 because I felt I could no longer do my job as a pastor. I can certainly look at myself and see where I didn’t handle conflict well and certainly could have managed myself better.

    But, Mark, here is how I saw things from 1969 when I professed faith in Jesus Christ at my home United Methodist Church in Hammond, Indiana and later in the early 1980’s after having been graduated from seminary in 1978 and having served in parish ministry til 2010.

    I was assigned to churches which were what I would call “fundamental,” or “orthodox.” By that I mean, the people in those congregations believed that the scriptures were the primary authority in the life of the Church, big “C.” Their beliefs and mine were the same regarding the major beliefs of Christianity. I was very immature and had a lot of emotional/personal growth ahead of me.

    This is how I saw things from 1974 to 1978 at Garrett-Evangelical, the seminary from which I graduated.

    G-ETS was committed to racial and social justice. The Church and the Black Experience was a hallmark ministry at G-ETS. The Women’s Movement made a marked impact on us. There were those who were uncomfortable to irate calling God “Father.”

    I had not heard of the word “patriarchy” at that point in my life, but it didn’t take long to discover that there were some angry women–and understandably so.

    These are the movements which I believe have brought us to where we are–the near death of Mainline Protestantism in the United States. By that, I mean the following (not racial justice or justice for women).

    1. The ascendancy of Reason and the use of scientific methodology in order to explore scripture. Those who embraced such viewpoints and used the tools developed to do so wanted to turn away from “superstition.” The bubonic plague was not caused by demons. it was caused by fleas, which had been carried by rats. The fleas bit many people throughout Europe and the result was the Black Death, which decimated Europe.
    2. The abandonment of the tri-storied structure of the Universe: heaven above, earth beneath our feet, and hell, or the land of the dead under the earth.
    3. Political movements beginning in the Renaissance, growing under the Reformers, and culminating in the Enlightenment leading in turn to the examination of authority at virtually all levels. This examination of authority has continued to this day with a resultant disbelief in “literalism” as a key lens to examine the scriptures. Because of the use of Reason and its worldview and tools, mainline biblical scholars abandoned a dead literal understanding of what the Bible says. And, so, we lost a sense of “miracle.” No, it wasn’t the Red Sea which Moses and the Hebrews crossed. It was the Sea of Reeds. No, Jesus didn’t raise Lazarus from the dead. The story is metaphorical. The same thing has been said about Jesus’ own resurrection.

    I think what happened was that “the baby” was thrown out with the bathwater of Reason. The baby was faith in a Living God who has been at work throughout history and is still at work across the globe today.

    I don’t have a Ph.D., Mark. I could have pursued one in Hebrew Bible or in Church History, Wesley Studies. I chose to serve in parish ministry, instead.

    Here is what I encountered:

    Congregations who were angry at the EUB Methodist merger.
    Congregations who wanted pastors who would tell them that God loves them, and be their chaplains, not rocking the boat, and not challenging them in any way. I.e., if Jesus really is who the Church of the Ages has said he is, what DO we do with his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount or Sermon on the Plain? Some of his teachings do not square with militarism or capitalism. One congregant had a sign in his business which said, “God, Guns and Guts Made the United States What It Is. Let’s Keep All Three!”

    When the apostles were described in the Book of Acts as those who had “turned the world upside down,” was this done politically? Was this done through starting an Insurrection against Rome? No. Many of Jesus followers were slaves. Though some were leading families in the cities where the earliest congregations were planted, and yes, had clout and wealth.

    And, there are those who believe that because the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, those beliefs were enforced at sword point. But, reading the Early Church Fathers, a dialogue was going on, which produced Nicea and later Chalcedon. Were these conferences simply a matter of “patriarchy” dominating less powerful groups? Were the Nag Hammadi codices deliberately buried because they were not the official teachings of The Church in the Fourth Century? Sorry. I don’t have a Ph.D.

    To make this a short reply, Mark, this is how I would sum things up. When I was growing up in the late 1960’s our pastor marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A cross was burned on Hammond Woodmar’s lawn. John Adams was that pastor. Dr. King was right to lead us in the direction he did. His “I have a dream” speech was “right on.”

    When the women’s movement raised questions about women’s inequitable treatment through the ages, were they on target? Oh, yes!

    And, somewhere about the time Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead wrote their naturalistic viewpoints, culminating in the development of Process Thought, it became fashionable to turn away from “God the Father,” and embrace God as process. And, psychology and sociology taught us that everything was “cultural.” Hence, no rights or wrongs. It became a matter of individual preference.

    We threw away being part of the Covenant People of God and turned to rampant individualism. Virtually all of Trinitarian Orthodoxy was labeled as oppressive, out of style, and unenlightened! It was assumed (in my opinion) that because they were not enlightened when they worked out their understandings (i.e., superstitious, and hopelessly sexist and white northern European male dominant) that much of what they had written and thought was no longer correct and not politically allowable and could simply be ignored.

    We threw away “sin and redemption.” Jesus was no longer God the Son or the Savior of the world, only another avatar. And, we also threw away the Cross. And somewhere after Bill Mann sang “O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done?” at North Indiana Conference’s 1976? conference, we didn’t really speak about the Cross again until Eddie Fox spoke of faith and being an “essentialist” many years later. And, a deep ache grew within me and it still exists. We threw away atonement. We came to understand Holiness as holistic “wholeness,” which it is not–theologically speaking, and we caved into political pressures out of a genuine desire to be just and fair.

    And, again, in my opinion, we lost the “soul” of the Methodist (and EUB movements). And John Shelby Spong and others in the Jesus Seminar typify this series of theological/philosophical developments. But, the problem is that their viewpoints do not represent Scriptural Christianity, Orthodoxy, and I guess if i have to use the word “fundamentalism,” I will do so–but, I have always associated “fundamentalism” with heavy handedness in the pulpit and authoritarianism in relationships. I believe that the major creeds are good thumb nail descriptions of major Orthodox Christian beliefs. And, I stand with them.

    And, so, I feel out of step with higher academia because I did not do that Ph.D. at Garrett-Northwestern under Wolfgang Roth or Fred Norwood. I’m not well educated, Mark. I only have an M.Div. I have kept reading.

    I have not abandoned Orthodoxy. I do not see God the Father as an abusive father–though I have read Proverbs of Shadows by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker. I did not and do not embrace the theological viewpoints of the Re-Imagining Conference of, oh, 1993.

    I have friends who are conservative and liberal. But, I must say after listening to different sides of this debate that at some point we will depart or have departed from New Testament Christianity. And, I am grieving, not because my belief system doesn’t seem to be embraced at my seminary any longer, and also among those in higher academia at Boston U School of Theology, and among the Episcopacy—in some cases.

    I am the son of a steelworker. I have had to learn “soft” skills and to turn away from my brash outspoken “Chicagoan” persona. But, sir, my belief in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit has not changed. Jesus is not another avatar for me. And the Holy Spirit is a person, not a force. But, my world is much more complicated than in 1970 when as a 17 year old boy who really didn’t know much of anything, I went to License to Preach School at DePauw University.

    And, I wish we really would sing Charles Wesley’s hymns again. I did practice up on “O Love Divine, What Hast Thou Done?” and wonder what Mr. Wesley would think of us today?

    Don’t have many answers, sir. Do have some heart-aches. And I have chosen to let go of some deep anger in my journey.

    I currently serve as a staff chaplain in a Franciscan Roman Catholic Hospital in Lafayette, Indiana. And, I know that I am among fellow believers and friends.

    God bless. Grace and peace,

    Rev. Chris Madison, M.Div.
    Indiana Conference UMC
    08/05/16

  34. Comment by zeitgeist2012 on August 14, 2016 at 12:04 am

    Protestants are unique followers of Christ and strict bible believers who chose the word of God over the pagan traditions of the catholic church and man paying dearly for their reformation…still do. Where so many writers fail today in hitting the mark on the cause of the destruction of white protestant America is that Jewish multi-cultural Marxism and Bolshevik crypto-Jew Jesuit social justice has poisoned our peoples minds, hearts, spirits, and sociopolitical institutions using deception and force behind pagan liberation theology. Ever hear of theSpanish inquisition, Jewish Frankfurt school of cultural Marxism, and their the Freudian Tavistock mental warfare institute in England?

  35. Comment by Christian Meneses on August 21, 2016 at 12:49 pm

    I Think the same to. Protestants only fault are biblical literalism, well some witchburner around,.. but there is much closer of Christ original speach, Catholic sincretism with pagan folklore gaining adept on the past, Christmass, Trinity, 7 Capital sins, life after death criteria and a monstrosity roman now vatican empire is the Jesus predicted world under Satans power in the Bible and incredible that this sounds is happen right now https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/41bd8a277244a9863e5ee0ee223df6b9919fccb1d9f5a96f942933e0a21cdb4a.jpg

  36. Comment by russellmeans on August 15, 2016 at 1:03 am

    Just remember taking any pill that increases metabolism also speeds your heart up. That can be very dangerious. You want your heart rate up work out !!!!!!! Do not take pills !!!!!! They can send your heart into Tachycardia. That can kill you.

  37. Comment by George on May 26, 2022 at 11:29 pm

    Good riddance. The Gospel has to be teased out of sermons on morality in such churches. Visitors can go for years without piecing it together or hearing it clearly. The Bibles in the pews are horrible versions, half of them making Jesus out to be a liar in John 7:8 and following. These churches honor the white lie and don’t even realize they make Jesus out to be a liar, thus sinner, thus not savior. These churches support Darwinism. Their children’s faith is slaughtered in college because they were never taught any truth about creation in all their Sunday school classes. Half the Pilgrims starved to death when they tried communism; yet these churches are foot soldiers for Marx, and belong to the Marxist NCC and WCC. Almost nobody is Biblically baptized in these churches. They run the risk of what Naaman the Syrian would have lost had he not followed instructions.

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