Christianity must change or die, but not like Gene Robinson suggested

I've been told that the church must change in order to continue as a living organism. But the people who tell me that, usually belong to churches that are dying, exactly for implementing the changes they suggest to me.

Ross Douthat, has written a good piece dealing with this issue in the New York Times, where he deals with this issue. Liberals have been telling us for years that the church must change in order to stay alive, but the churches lead by liberals are the ones dying because of their misguided change.

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?IN 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise. Thus their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States. 

As a result, today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.

Spong was wrong then, and is wrong now. He wants to kill of Orthodox Christianity, so it doesn't stand in the way of his sinful life, but at the end, he seems to had inflicted a wound to his own type of christianity. The issue was then, and is now, that those who should have known better, did nothing, instead went on to dismantle the Episcopal Church in order to be in the good graces of today's society and culture.  So there's no interest in defending the truth of the Bible against a society that needs it so much, rather, picks up their political fights, which contradict the Gospel at its core.

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

Well, there's nothing they can offer but the same thrush that the young people are facing outside the church. We don't see a great increase in the audience they intended to target. In Australia, the Uniting Church, is experiencing something similar. Yet, the churches it was meant to replace, seem to either thrive (the Methodist), or at least survive (the Presbyterians).

This decline is the latest chapter in a story dating to the 1960s. The trends unleashed in that era — not only the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism — threw all of American Christianity into crisis, and ushered in decades of debate over how to keep the nation’s churches relevant and vital. 

Traditional believers, both Protestant and Catholic, have not necessarily thrived in this environment. The most successful Christian bodies have often been politically conservative but theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message.

My sentiment as well. But I wouldn't call prosperity Gospel people "traditional believers". They are as far from the Gospel as the Mormons or Jehova Witnesses. They have a total different religion. These churches thrive, not because they are Gospel driven, rather, because they are money driven. People want money and wealth, so they go to these churches to get a hand of how to obtain it, or make it.

But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance. Within the Catholic Church, too, the most progressive-minded religious orders have often failed to generate the vocations necessary to sustain themselves.

Not all Methodist, Lutheran or Presbyterians are going the way of the dinosaurs, but those denominations that have adopted the Episcopal way, are going the way of the Episcopal church.

Both religious and secular liberals have been loath to recognize this crisis. Leaders of liberal churches have alternated between a Monty Python-esque “it’s just a flesh wound!” bravado and a weird self-righteousness about their looming extinction. (In a 2006 interview, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop explained that her communion’s members valued “the stewardship of the earth” too highly to reproduce themselves.) 

Liberal commentators, meanwhile, consistently hail these forms of Christianity as a model for the future without reckoning with their decline. Few of the outraged critiques of the Vatican’s investigation of progressive nuns mentioned the fact that Rome had intervened because otherwise the orders in question were likely to disappear in a generation. Fewer still noted the consequences of this eclipse: Because progressive Catholicism has failed to inspire a new generation of sisters, Catholic hospitals across the country are passing into the hands of more bottom-line-focused administrators, with inevitable consequences for how they serve the poor. 

 Liberals don't want to accept their peril. As we see in the case of Katherine Jefferts Schori, she wants to window dress their declining numbers by passing it as a way of "stewardship of the earth". This type of denial would not be allowed in other quarters. And in the case of "progressive" Catholicism, it just won't get people inside their orders. If some progressives nuns wants to affirm somebody's homosexuality, why would, they in turn, would quit being a lesbian in order to turn into a life of celibacy?

But if liberals need to come to terms with these failures, religious conservatives should not be smug about them. The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right.

May the Lord deliver us from the right to take the face of Christianity!!!!

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.” 

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that per haps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.

I wonder then, how these "liberals" couldn't pass on their faith to the next generation. There's still much we have to learn. 

Who would think that being a pastor would be bad for your health? Well, our saviour died!!

In my 14 yrs of ministry, I've had very bad moments when people really made my gut turn inside out. But now there's a study that shows how being a pastor affects the health of those of who su engage in ministry:

(RNS) Most members of the clergy are taught to put the physical and spiritual needs of others first, but that self-denial may be harmful to their own health, according to a new Duke University study.
Studies of United Methodist pastors in North Carolina found high rates of chronic disease and depression, and researchers worry it can be difficult to convince clergy to seek help.
To address these unique problems, Duke Divinity School's Clergy Health Initiative developed a program to provide preventative care in a spiritual context.

I belong to the Baptist Union of Victoria, in Victoria, Australia. They put a great emphasis on taking care of one's health. But this is not sometimes enough by the looks of it.

"Clergy recognize the importance of caring for themselves, but doing so takes a back seat to fulfilling their vocational responsibilities, which are tantamount to caring for an entire community," said Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, the initiative's research director and assistant research professor at the Duke Global Health Institute.
The institute's research found the 40 percent obesity rate among North Carolina United Methodist clergy eclipsed the state average of 29 percent. Pastors also suffered high rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma, arthritis and hypertension. More than 10 percent showed symptoms of depression, about double the national rate.

Now I know why I am getting a belly!!!

Despite these health issues, clergy were also more likely to say their health did not negatively affect their work.
Proeschold-Bell said stress, which is tied to overeating and weight gain, comes in many forms for clergy.
Pastor's schedules are unpredictable and filled with diverse activities, resulting in what Proeschold-Bell called "role overload." She also points to an internal pressure to live faithfully and support the community.
"Pastors have lots of social ties, but the support goes only in one direction," she said. 

Yes, only one direction most of the time. If we want a bit of attention ourselves, we are usually put down right away as selfish, and not caring.

Read the whole entry. This is not a light issue, since it has to do with the ones called to serve the church. Hopefully, churches will take this study to heart, and be more supportive of their pastors.

Does Joel Osteen Not Know, or Does He Not Care?

By now, it is clear that Joel Osteen’s carelessness is deliberate and calculated.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
By Albert Mohler.

Here we go again. Joel Osteen is in the news once again, this time for saying that Mormonism is just another form of Christianity. Osteen, pastor of “America’s largest church,” as the media repeat over and over, was speaking toThe Washington Times in an interview that covered a variety of issues. It was the quintessential Joel on display.

Speaking to the newspaper on Monday, Osteen said, “I see faith in America at an all-time high.” His comments came just as a major research project detailed a significant loss of vitality in America’s Christian congregations. That loss of vitality can be traced, among other things, to a loss of theological and biblical conviction. Joel, of course, is proof positive that you can build a crowd without building a church. He is not inclined to deal in much theological conviction.

In the interview, he distilled his message in these words: “Part of our core message is that seasons change, and when you believe, if you don’t get bitter, and you don’t get discouraged, you may not change overnight, but you can get peace.”

That message includes some truth, of course — but it doesn’t even come close to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Hell will be filled with people who bloomed where they were planted.He also told the newspaper: “People need to be reminded that every day is a gift from God, and bloom where you’re planted and be happy where you are, and to make that choice to get up every day and be grateful.”

On Mormonism, Joel said:

“I believe that [Mormons] are Christians . . . . I don’t know if it’s the purest form of Christianity, like I grew up with. But you know what, I know Mormons. I hear Mitt Romney — and I’ve never met him — but I hear him say, ‘I believe Jesus is the son of God,’ ‘I believe he’s my savior,’ and that’s one of the core issues.”

“I’m sure there are other issues that we don’t agree on. But you know, I can say that the Baptists and the Methodists and the Catholics don’t all agree on everything. So that would be my take on it.”

Osteen just stated his belief that Mormons are Christians. He then expressed the thought that Mormonism “might not be the purest form of Christianity, like I grew up with,” but he affirmed Mormon statements that Jesus is the Son of God and that He is Savior.

Evaluating Osteen’s boyhood understanding of Christianity would be a project unto itself, given the shifting theology of his preacher father, the late John Osteen.

The main point of concern in Joel’s latest comment is the lack of any biblical standard of judgment and the total abdication of theological responsibility. He relegates doctrinal disagreements between Christians and Mormons to the status of theological debates between Protestant denominations and then includes Roman Catholicism. There are plenty of issues there, and the issues are not the same when comparing Baptists to Methodists, on the one hand, and Protestants and Roman Catholics, on the other. Comparing any form of Trinitarian orthodoxy with Mormonism is another class of question altogether.

Joel reminded the paper’s staff that he has never attended seminary. This is true, of course, but there are thousands of preachers who never had the opportunity to attend seminary who have a sufficient grasp of and commitment to biblical truth that would prevent such carelessness.

By now, it is clear that Joel Osteen’s carelessness is deliberate and calculated. This is not the first time that he has encountered the question of Mormonism. Back in 2007, he told Chris Wallace of FOX News that Mormons are indeed Christians:

“Well, in my mind they are. Mitt Romney has said that he believes in Christ as his savior, and that’s what I believe, so, you know, I’m not the one to judge the little details of it. So I believe they are.”

The little details of it? Mormonism does not differ from historic biblical Christianity in only the “little details,” and a faithful Mormon would be the first to point this out. Mormonism begins with a plurality of gods, not with the monotheism of the Bible. Jesus Christ is an exalted man — not the incarnate Word. The list of categorical doctrinal differences continues throughout the entire belief system.

The very essence of Mormonism is the claim that historic Christianity is fundamentally in error, and that true Christianity did not exist on earth from the time of the Apostles until Joseph Smith. Mormonism can hardly be charged with hiding their movement’s teachings — the Book of Mormon and the other fundamental texts of the Latter Day Saints are published in plain sight.

In a remarkable exchange with Chris Wallace, Osteen muddied the waters further:

WALLACE: So, for instance, when people start talking about Joseph Smith, the founder of the church, and the golden tablets in upstate New York, and God assumes the shape of a man, do you not get hung up in those theological issues?

OSTEEN: I probably don’t get hung up in them because I haven’t really studied them or thought about them. And you know, I just try to let God be the judge of that. I mean, I don’t know.

Here we face a fundamental dilemma. When Joel Osteen hears a summary of Mormon belief that mentions God assuming “the shape of a man,” does he lack the theological discernment to hear how that differs from biblical Christianity, or does it not concern him? In other words, does Joel not know, or does Joel not care?

In the end, we have to conclude that he does not care enough to know, and that is the greater tragedy for a Christian minister. He doesn’t “get hung up” on doctrinal issues, nor has he “really studied them or thought about them.” His own words indict him.

Evangelical Christians are going to face many questions in this season, and the question of Mormonism is now front and center. It will call upon all of us to do what Joel Osteen proudly has not done — to study and think about these issues. In this political moment, we will have to think carefully and act judiciously without confusing the theological questions. We will need the full wealth of Christian conviction.

We will also need deep doctrinal discernment mixed with urgent spiritual concern. The Latter Day Saints include some of the most wonderful and kind people we will ever meet. They put a great emphasis on character and on the moral values of our common concern. They talk freely and passionately about their own beliefs, including their beliefs concerning Jesus Christ. Furthermore, they put action behind their commitments, sending their young people on mission and fueling a worldwide movement that remains one of the fastest-growing on the planet.

But their beliefs concerning Jesus Christ are not those of historic Christianity, and their understanding of salvation differs radically from the message of the New Testament. It is the responsibility of every Christian — and most certainly every Christian minister — to know this.

Joel Osteen told The Washington Times that he is constantly “looking for new ways to influence the culture.” Our culture admires those with low theological commitment and high emphasis on attitude. In Joel Osteen’s case, it is the secular culture that has influenced the minister, and not the minister that is influencing the culture.

By RUSSELL D. MOORE

Are we witnessing the death of America's Christian denominations? Studies conducted by secular and Christian organizations indicate that we are. Fewer and fewer American Christians, especially Protestants, strongly identify with a particular religious communion—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, etc. According to the Baylor Survey on Religion, nondenominational churches now represent the second largest group of Protestant churches in America, and they are also the fastest growing.

More and more Christians choose a church not on the basis of its denomination, but on the basis of more practical matters. Is the nursery easy to find? Do I like the music? Are there support groups for those grappling with addiction?

This trend is a natural extension of the American evangelical experiment. After all, evangelicalism is about the fundamental message of Christianity—the evangel, the gospel, literally the "good news" of God's kingdom arriving in Jesus Christ—not about denomination building.

The post-World War II generation of evangelicals was responding to congregations filled with what they considered spiritual deadness. People belonged to a church, but they seemed to have no emotional experience of Christianity inside the building. Revivalists watched as denominational bureaucracies grew larger, and churches shifted from sending missionaries to preach around the world to producing white papers on issues like energy policy.

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More and more Christians choose a church not on the basis of its denomination, but on the basis of more practical matters.

The revivalists wanted to get back to basics, to recover the centrality of a personal relationship with Jesus. "Being a member of a church doesn't make you a Christian," the ubiquitous evangelical pulpit cliché went, "any more than living in a garage makes you a car." Thus these evangelical ministries tended not to talk about those issues that might divide their congregants. They avoided questions like: Who should be baptized and when? What does the Lord's Supper mean? Should women be ordained? And so on.

The movement exploded. Before 1955, there were virtually no megachurches (defined as 2,000 people per worship service) in the country. Now there are between 850 and 1,200 such churches and many are nondenominational, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Evangelicalism wanted to open its doors to all believers and it often lacked roots in the traditions of particular congregations. So many evangelical churches have a generic identity. This has changed the feel of local church life.

Where hymnody once came from the spontaneity of slave spirituals or camp meetings, worship songs are increasingly now focus-grouped by executives in Nashville. The evangelical "Veggie Tales" cartoons—animated Bible stories featuring talking cucumbers and tomatoes—probably shape more children in their view of scripture than any denominational catechism does these days. A church that requires immersion baptism before taking communion, as most Baptist traditions do, will likely get indignant complaints from evangelical visitors who feel like they've been denied service at a restaurant.

But there are some signs of a growing church-focused evangelicalism. Many young evangelicals may be poised to reconsider denominational doctrine, if for no other reason than they are showing signs of fatigue with typical evangelical consumerism.

For example, artists such as Keith and Kristen Getty and Sojourn Music are reaching a new generation with music written for and performed by local congregations. Yes, prosperity preacher Joyce Meyer sells her book "Eat the Cookie, Buy the Shoes," which encourages Christians to "lighten up" by eating cookies and buying shoes (seriously). But, at the same time, Alabama preacher David Platt is igniting thousands of young people with his book "Radical," which calls Christians to rescue their faith by lowering their standard of living and giving their time and money to Church-based charities.

And though nondenominational churches are growing, the Southern Baptist Convention—the nation's largest Protestant group—has over 10,000 students studying for ministry in six seminaries right now.

If denominationalism simply denotes a "brand" vying for market share, then let denominationalism fall. But many of us believe denominations can represent fidelity to living traditions of local congregations that care about what Jesus cared about—personal conversion, discipleship, mission and community. Perhaps the denominational era has just begun.

Mr. Moore is dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

United Methodists Maintain Standards

The United Methodist Church voted this week to maintain its official policy that homosexual activity is "incompatible with Christian teaching." The policy of the church also prohibits the recognition or celebration of same-sex relationships.

Meeting for its General Conference in Ft. Worth, Texas, the Methodists voted 517 to 416 to keep the current policy and language in its Book of Discipline. The denomination voted down a proposal to replace the "incompatible with Christian teaching" language with a statement that the church should "refrain from judgment regarding homosexual persons and practices as the Spirit leads us to new insight."

As Religion News Service and Christianity Today reported:

Many Methodists rose to speak in favor of a clear continuation of traditional teachings, especially for the purpose of evangelizing to a world that they said is beset by moral confusion.

"Friends, this is serious business," said the Rev. H. Eddie Fox, director of evangelism for the World Methodist Council. "It is an urgent matter for our church. It matters what we believe and what we practice and we do not meet here in isolation."

A group of 300 delegates protested the decision and blamed it, at least in part, on delegates from Africa. As The Dallas Morning News reported:

"It was a terrible day," said the Rev. Eric Folkerth, pastor of Northaven United Methodist Church in Dallas. . . .

Mr. Folkerth said, "American Methodists are ready for change." But he and others said change was thwarted this time by international delegates, particularly delegates from Africa, whose numbers and influence have grown because the denomination is growing there.

Dogo Jean Yoou, a lay delegate from Ivory Coast, agreed that the African delegates oppose relaxing the UMC's stands on homosexuality. "We are still very conservative on this issue," he said.

The United Methodist Church has been debating issues of human sexuality for four decades. The controversy is hardly unique to that denomination. The liberal churches often identified as "mainline Protestantism" have been torn asunder by these debates, with the Episcopal Church breaking up in some regions and other denominations attempting to avert immediate disaster by avoiding a decision for as long as possible. The sand in that hourglass is running out. As one United Methodist leader commented, a decision to approve homosexuality and same-sex relationships would signal "the death knell for the church."

As some of those pressing for the normalization of homosexuality made clear, they believe that time is on their side. The fact that the most important vote was separated by only 101 votes may indicate that they are right. The next General Conference in 2012 is certain to confront similar efforts.

Nevertheless, the denomination's decision to retain its teaching that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching" should encourage all those working within other denominations and churches to maintain biblical standards. A narrow victory is still a victory.

____________________

Art depicts the historic sanctuary of First United Methodist Church of Huntington, West Virginia.

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=1142

A Transgender Pastor in the Pulpit?

From the Albert Mohler Website.

What do you do when your pastor shows up in a new gender? That question is now faced by a United Methodist church in Maryland, and the issue of transgender persons is soon to confront all churches and denominations.

As The Baltimore Sun reports, the Rev. Ann Gordon is now presented as Rev. Drew Phoenix. The paper sets the issue clearly:

A year ago, the Rev. Ann Gordon received her routine reappointment as minister of a Charles Village Methodist congregation. Yesterday - after undergoing a sex-change operation and taking on a new symbolic name - the Rev. Drew Phoenix received another one-year contract to head St. John's United Methodist Church.

The paper also reported that the "reappointment" of the minister came after a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Methodist clergy "as well as an emotional open session." In the end, the bishop of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church decided that the church's moral code, known as the Book of Discipline, did not preclude the appointment of transgender persons as pastors.

Before turning to the ecclesiastical and theological issues at stake, we should note the way the minister explained her motivation -- to do this for others. "This is about more than me . . . . This is about people who come after me, about young people in particular who are struggling with their gender identity. I'm doing this for them." What she is doing is leading her congregation into an illusion and her denomination into an explosive controversy.

The illusory nature of this transformation becomes clear in another section of the paper's report:

"The gender I was assigned at birth has never matched my own true authentic God-given gender identity, how I know myself," Phoenix said. "Fortunately today God's gift of medical science is enabling me to bring my physical body in alignment with my true gender."

This pastor claims that she knows her "own true authentic God-given gender identity" to be different than her own body. The ancient Gnostics would understand this repudiation of the body, but not historic Christianity. Christians have believed that the body is a gift from God, for believers the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Despising the body to the point of repudiating birth gender is a posture in direct conflict with the Bible and the historic Christian tradition.

There can be no question that some persons suffer excruciating gender confusions. But the answer to this must be the embrace of birth gender as a central dimension of God's will for the individual. Christians must understand that gender --the sex of an individual -- is a part of God's glory in creation. God's own verdict on the creation of humanity as male and female, both made in His image, was that is was "very good." The transgender temptation is a repudiation of God's own verdict on His creation and His plan for humanity.

The emergence of this phenomenon is a direct consequence of the massive social, moral, legal, and ideological shifts that mark our times. The concept of autonomous individualism has led persons to believe that each of us holds the protean ability to create and re-create ourselves into whatever or whomever we wish -- and that no one outside the autonomous self has any right to set limits on this self-definition and transformation. The therapeutic revolution has deluded modern Americans into thinking that patterns of basic rebellion against God are means of self-liberation and therapy. The law has been transformed into an instrument of social revolution, even as many legal authorities claim that traditional definitions of marriage, sexuality, and gender are artifacts of an oppressive and patriarchal age.

Added to all this, the sexual revolution has led to a society fixated on sex and reluctant to draw any clear boundaries. A worldview of nearly absolute non-judgmentalism leads the larger society to consider sexuality and sexual issues to be beyond the bounds of common concern.

The saddest part of the Sun's report comes when the pastor claims that "today God's gift of medical science is enabling me to bring my physical body in alignment with my true gender."

This is an illusion of incredible tragedy. Modern medicine is truly capable of many wonders, but it cannot turn a woman into a man, nor a man into a woman. Doctors may perform drastic surgery and prescribe hormone therapies, but they cannot make a woman into a man. Rev. Drew Phoenix will be no more capable of biological fatherhood than Rev. Ann Gordon. Those who overlook this fact are hiding from reality.

Subsequent to its first report, the Sun reported that local Methodist clergy have asked for a judicial opinion from the church's highest legal authority, questioning Bishop John R. Schol's decision to reappoint the pastor. UMAction, an organization of conservative United Methodists, called upon their church to offer moral teaching on this pressing issue:

"I think instinctively most church people would say there are some theological problems with gender change, but they don't know how to articulate the arguments, and expect the church to offer a teaching on the subject," said UMAction director Mark Tooley.

"The issue of gender identity is not directly about sexual practice and really requires some different theological arguments," he said.

As one concerned pastor lamented, "Medical technology has gotten ahead of us." That is true for virtually all churches and denominations. Now is the time for Christian congregations, schools, and denominations to offer clear moral teaching and sound theological reflection on the gift of gender and the challenge of transgender persons.

The challenge could show up at your church tomorrow.

Where Have all the Liberals Gone? -- The Riverside Church Seeks New Pastor

New York City's famous temple of Protestant liberalism, the Riverside Church, is looking for a new pastor. As The New York Times reports, the search committee is not having an easy time of it.

The paper describes the historic church as "the Vatican for America's mainstream Protestants," but also as "the capital of a theological movement that has been slowly eroding."

As reporter Samuel Freedman explains, the church's storied past has given way to an uncertain future:
Yet now, as Riverside prepares to search for a new senior minister for only the sixth time in its history, mainstream Protestants are struggling to reverse a decades-long pattern of losing numbers, vitality and influence to their evangelical Protestant competitors. Between 1990 and 2000 alone, mainstream denominations like the Episcopal, Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches and the United Church of Christ lost 5 percent to 15 percent of their members, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Riverside is interdenominational but is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Baptist Church.

The confluence of challenge, opportunity and visibility, then, makes Riverside's selection of a new leader important not only for the 26 million adherents of mainline Protestantism but also for the shape of American religion as a whole.

Thus, the Riverside Church's search for a new pastor becomes a metaphor for the future of liberal Protestantism -- and a reminder of its past.

The church was built in order to provide Harry Emerson Fosdick with a place to preach. That explanation is overly simplistic, but accurate. Fosdick's liberal theology ran into controversy as he was the preaching minister at New York's First Presbyterian Church. After that controversy cost Fosdick his pulpit, a group of prominent New Yorkers established Riverside Church and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. led in the construction of Riverside's massive and elegant edifice in Manhattan's neighborhood of Morningside Heights. The church sits adjacent to New York's Union Theological Seminary, another symbol of liberal Protestantism.

The church's main sanctuary is one of the nation's most beautiful Gothic structures. Fosdick and Rockefeller envisioned the church as a fortress of sorts for Protestant liberalism. As a preacher and controversialist, Fosdick pulled no punches. His denials of central Christian doctrines and his reputation for theological revisionism were infamous. But, at the same time, he was one of the most powerful pulpit orators of his day.

Fosdick defined preaching as "pastoral counseling on a group scale," and his liberalism set the trajectory for the future. He was followed in the pulpit by Robert James McCracken (1946-1967), a former professor of theology. The Scottish-born McCracken defined his approach as "life-situation" preaching. His tenure, like Fosdick's, was 21 years.

McCracken was followed by Ernest T. Campbell (1968-1976). Campbell, oddly enough, was a graduate of Bob Jones University. He was later to graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary. Like Fosdick, Campbell considered himself a modernist in theology. He was followed in the pulpit by William Sloan Coffin (1977-1987).

Coffin, like Fosdick, was well-known before assuming the Riverside pulpit. He had previously served as chaplain at Yale University, where his liberal views and anti-war activism were legendary.

The most recent pastor at Riverside was James A. Forbes, Jr. (1989-2007). The church's first African-American pastor, Forbes came from a Pentecostal background in North Carolina. He was Professor of Preaching at Union Theological Seminary when called to the Riverside pulpit.
Forbes continued the Riverside tradition of theological liberalism and social activism. Reflecting on his pastorate, The New York Times observed that he had been successful at integrating the church racially and ethnically, but that he had also run into significant opposition with some members of his "highly educated, highly involved congregation."

The search for Riverside's new pastor reveals the troubles faces by Protestant liberalism. For one thing, there is no long list of well-known preachers. As the paper reports:
At this early stage, the most notable aspect of the search is the dearth of names being bandied about. If Riverside wanted to break the sex line, it could look to the Rev. Vashti McKenzie, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, or the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook, former president of the Hampton Ministers Conference. Both of these women are African-American, as are two prospective male candidates -- the Rev. Calvin O. Butts, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, and the Rev. Michael Livingston, outgoing president of the National Council of Churches.

"Compared to Bill Coffin or Harry Emerson Fosdick, neither Jim Forbes nor anyone else in mainline Protestantism cuts that kind of profile," said Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford. "Who are the big dogs today? It's true in Catholicism, too, for that matter. Where's the Spellman or the Cushing? The religious leaders worth listening to have to make the case for themselves -- running their own organization, writing books, being in the media

."

The challenge faced by the Riverside Church is indeed the challenge faced by Protestant liberalism as a movement. Once the vital content of the Christian faith is removed, denied, or marginalized, all that remains is a vaguely Christian spirituality and an agenda of social activism.
The problem for liberal churches is this -- Americans have learned that they do not need churches for "spirituality" or social activism. They can find these alone, in their yoga group, in political involvement, and in a myriad of other places and institutions. As the Times reports, liberal churches and denominations have been losing members for decades. Movements in such a pattern of decline are not likely to produce long lists of well-known preachers. There is no Harry Emerson Fosdick in the wings.

Beyond this, many liberal churches and denominations have become, in essence, collectives of special interest groups. These different groups are likely to hold very different expectations for a future pastor. As one nominee to the church's pastor search committee admitted, the congregation will have to "face up to the fact that Riverside has had a fairly public reputation of irritating our last two senior ministers to the point they got exasperated."

The basic problem with liberal Protestantism is theological. The movement's subversion of biblical authority and denial of basic orthodoxy lead, inevitably, to a sub-Christian message.

Professor Peter J. Paris of Princeton Theological Seminary once described the Riverside Church as "the world's most prominent institutionalization of Protestant liberalism." Where does it go from here?