Many know “Reconquista” through Redeemed Zoomer, a Gen Z youtuber who advocates not leaving but restoring orthodoxy to theologically liberal Mainline Protestant denominations. He has a following of mostly young men who believe American Christianity needs the historical continuity and institutions that Mainline Protestantism offers. Many critics doubt that Mainline denominations can be salvaged for orthodoxy.
On a recent episode of the American Reformer, editor-in-chief and podcast host Timon Cline interviewed Pastor Jake Dell of The First Congregational Church of Woodbury, Connecticut on his experience and perspective on Reconquista. Cline and American Reformer advocate for a Christian confessional state in America, with which Dell seems to sympathize, although most participants in the Reconquista likely do share this perspective. Dell’s church is part of the United Church of Christ, now a very progressive denomination but historically heirs to the New England Puritans.
Dell described Reconquista as a generational answer to a question that has been asked for years: “How did these [Christian founded] institutions get so far off track”? To Dell, colleges and churches were infiltrated by progressives focused on turning Mainline institutions into platforms for social issues, rather than remaining faithful to the original purpose and values for which they were founded. Simultaneously, Dell grieves over how he has not seen any effective response from the conservative side in the last 30 years. [Editor’s note: All Mainline Protestant denominations had very active and often influential orthodox renewal groups over the last 30 years. These groups ended their campaigns when the Mainline denominations liberalized their sexuality teaching.]
Cline pointed out that most evangelicals today have no experience in a Mainline denomination, and he asked Dell to share his experience in the United Church of Christ. Dell described the historic nature of Mainline churches and how “there was a fundamental unity of the Christian ecclesia, the church, and the civil order that grew into what we know today.” He stressed the importance of engaging with Mainline churches, because “to minimize the importance of the Mainline denominations … is to basically ignore the role of Christianity in the American experience.”
Dell described the character of the Mainline denominations as “subverted.” Drawing on 20th Century Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen’s book Christianity and Liberalism, Dell recalled the infiltration of unitarianism into the Mainline that reduces Jesus “to a mere man”, allowing one to “put Him on par with other great moral teachers, [like] the Buddha,” thereby naturalizing Christianity. As a result, Dell described how “within a generation or two [the Mainline churches] started even to deny the basic morality of Christianity.” Today, Dell says there is no “daylight really between the progressive cultural agenda and your typical Mainline pulpit.”
Historically, Dell described how people were members of Mainline churches for philanthropy or social prestige. However, Gen X was really the last generation to reap these benefits, and today these reasons no longer hold any weight. Cline therefore asked, “What’s the impetus for Reconquista? … What can really be accomplished by it beyond getting the buildings back?” Dell referenced the importance of symbols: “[We’re] allowing the other side to control a set of symbols for their own agenda that are contrary to what they stand for.” He argued we should care about this symbolic manipulation for two reasons. First, these churches remain under judgment and Christians should care about their spiritual livelihood. Second, to prevent progressives from ruling us orthodox believers must remove the means through which they can assert their authority.
In response, Cline highlighted how Mainline progressives demoralize orthodox Christians. He noted Mainline churches in Annapolis, Maryland with “…rainbow flags which were massive [which] is very demoralizing … So even if you just owned the real estate to do that, it’s like they could have bought a billboard, but they don’t do that … ” To Dell, these symbols are not merely passive but potent, detrimental forces: “[They] are actively trying to subvert you and destroy things that you care about. They are the moral equivalent of open sewers … ” And just like sewers, Dell sees these churches as harmful to the public good. He highlighted how certain state constitutions, including Connecticut, theoretically prohibit churches from promoting licentious behavior. To Dell, these churches are not just toxic but breaking the law.
Given the problems engendered by progressive, Mainline churches, it seems odd that conservatives are broadly unconcerned, Dell noted. He explained this passivity in terms of the American migratory spirit. Cline concurred, citing William Wolfe, Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Baptist Leadership: “When institutions failed or they fractured there was always more space, always westward to go.” Conservatives have been largely uninterested in Mainline churches since they are simply able to break off to attend or form their own faithful, orthodox churches.
One of Dell’s main concerns is that these Mainline denominations are becoming “real-estate investment trusts” – they have a lot of dying churches in marketable areas and try to sell them to mosques or low-income housing developers. Dell argued that many of these churches and institutions have historical clawback clauses which would prevent them from using donated funds for an non-Christian agenda, and these stipulations need to be brought to light: “Some of that money needs to be clawed back and put to the original intent … which would mean to raise up and train godly men for biblical ministry in those towns.”
So, what are the next steps? Dell suggested that we need to find an existing party who has been grieved by the actions of these Mainline institutions in order to advance Reconquista. He also suggested looping in “sympathetic attorney generals at the various states levels who are willing to go after this,” given some state constitutions preclude churches from promoting licentious behavior. [Editor’s note: It’s very unlikely that state governments would seek to enforce such long unenforced demands on churches, nor would courts likely abide state coercion of churches.]
Dell insisted: “I’m optimistic for the first time in my adult life.” But a Reconquista of the Mainline denominations remains a daunting task.
More from IRD:
Reconquering Mainline Protestantism?
Comment by Jason on November 5, 2025 at 9:18 am
I believe in Common Grace and Free Markets. If an old Episcopal Church is bought out by an evangelical church that problems the Gospel it is a “win”. If, otoh, it is turned into low-income housing which we also need, it is also a “win”. So long as they are no longer spreading heresy. “Reconquering” these denominations themselves seems unlikely if for no other reason many of the bureaucracies are largely funded by trust funds at this point. Were it simply about donations from people in the pews, it is unlikely many like the UMC or PCUSA would have ever gotten as liberal politically much less theologically as they did.
Comment by Gary Bebop on November 5, 2025 at 11:33 am
As unlikely as Reconquista success may be, it’s uprising is a refreshing anomaly. A jaded Protestant reality has reached a turning point (which a prescient Charlie Kirk aptly foresaw). There may be a surprising pivot.
Comment by Qohelet on November 5, 2025 at 1:24 pm
Reconquista is a good name for these people. It refers to the period of time over which Christian terrorists attacked and destroyed what most historians consided to have been one of the most educated, tolerant, and morally upright of all societies: Muslim Spain. Muslims, Christians, and Jews were studying Plato in Toledo whilst in Christian Europe monarchs were conspiring with their mothers to murder their fathers and expand their crowns. (Read about Richard and John of Robin Hood fame if you don’t believe me.) Once their terror was completed the Spanish Empire expelled all its Jews and then proceeded to spread genocide and pestilence all up and down the Americas. This is what these people are proud of? This is what they want to attain? 16th century Christianity in newly “liberated” Spain included burning dissenters at the stake.
Anyways, I thought “orthodox” Christians wanted to hang the ten commandments posters in every classroom. Why do you bear such false witness? The constant lies are unbecoming of any Christian, but especially holier than thou ones. No mainline church is “promoting licentious behavior.” We just allow LGBTQ people full rights in our churches. That gay people are more licentious than straight people are statistics I have not seen.
Comment by Wilson R. on November 5, 2025 at 2:50 pm
Yeah, what Oohelet said. “Reconquista” is a really curious choice of labels, and not ONLY because of what the represented in Spain. (The term that historians apply to the tolerance of Jews and Christians that prevailed over most of the time of Muslim rule–convivencia, or “living together,” is much closer to a Christian ideal than conquest.) Conquest in so many ways is the opposite of the way of Jesus and the early church, which by necessity relied on invitation and persuasion.
And yet again we see this phenomenon: conservatives define the erosion of mainline Protestantism in terms of LGBTQ acceptance, as if no other issues matter to them. It’s so predictable but nevertheless amazing.
My critique of mainline Protestantism is different. I think it began degrading well before the sexual revolution. Mainline Protestantism in the 1940s and 1950s accommodated itself to American materialism and consumerism. It became very comfortable with mammon, and it started teaching individual salvation, in line with American consumerism, at the expense of talking about community.
Comment by Cal on November 7, 2025 at 3:29 am
In my town, a declining UCC group sold its building and now meets in rented space in an equally leftist UMC group’s building. The former UCC building is now occupied by a thriving evangelical church, and an evangelical college. I think that is another good model of reconquista – the leftist-captured orgs dissolve, then their building be taken over by orthodox people. In some cases, it will be a slow process because the leftist groups have millions of dollars of dead men’s money to play with and keep their show on the road for years more.
Comment by Rick Plasterer on November 7, 2025 at 2:15 pm
Qohelet,
In my understanding, the thesis that Islamic Spain was a paradise of tolerance and enlightenment in happy contrast to dark, medieval Europe was originally advanced by Voltaire in the eighteenth century as part of his anti-Christian and anti-Catholic polemic. It has been carried forward by Enlightenment liberals and now multiculturalists ever since. But it has been severely criticized. In Spain as elsewhere, Christians and Jews were dhimmis, or inferior communities, with a varying measure of toleration, but harassed and humiliated as a matter of Islamic doctrine and practice. The harsh Pact of Omar applied in Spain as elsewhere, forbidding the building or repair of churches or synagogues, imposing the jizya or special tax on non-Muslims intended to humiliate, wearing of distinctive clothing, etc. There were occasional massacres and persecutions. Additionally, there is scholarship noting that cultural development in medieval Spain must not be assumed to have occurred under Moorish rule – at least partly, it occurred in reconquered portions of Spain. Two recent books treating the subject are Al-Andalus: The Art of Forgetting, 2010, by Serafín Fanjul (a Spanish Arabist), and The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise, 2016, by Darío Fernández-Morera (a specialist in Spanish literature at Northwestern University).
Rick
Comment by Wilson R. on November 7, 2025 at 5:41 pm
Rick Plasterer:
I don’t think historians have suggested that Muslim Spain was a paradise for non-Muslims. That claim gets attributed to them, falsely and derisively, in an attempt to discredit them as “Enlightenment liberals and multiculturalists.”
As you note, non-Muslims had to pay a special tax as the price for their religious freedom. But that reality also undercuts a false Christian narrative of forced conversions. The Moorish rulers of Spain actually tended to discourage conversions because it deprived them of this tax revenue.
As you also note, there were occasional massacres and persecutions. But the key word there is “occasional.”
And the other point is that it’s all relative. Relatively speaking, Andalusia was a lot more tolerant than Christian-ruled lands. Spanish Jews had been so badly treated by Christian Visigothic overlords that they welcomed the Arabs as liberators. And as soon as the last Moorish lands were reconquered by Christians in 1492, the Jews were expelled or forced to convert. (Likewise, Jews lived in relative peace in Jerusalem under Arab rule; when Crusaders took the city in 1099, the Jews were massacred.)
A fairly recent (2008) overview of the subject is historian David Lewis’ “God’s Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe 570-1215.” Here is a link to review from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/books/review/Ormsby-t.html