God’s Left Hand

All of the mainline denominations guided by liberal theology in the 20th century have been in decline since the early 1960s. Mainline Protestant church members once numbered one out of every six Americans. Now they are one out of every thirty. Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism has retained its market share of the U.S. population, and evangelicals have be come the largest religious demographic in America. Seemingly, the hour of liberal Protestantism has come and gone.

But Diana Butler Bass challenges the conventional wisdom; she insists that her fellow liberal Protestants are more vibrant than commonly realized. She does not try to support her thesis with statistical evidence. She admits this book is not a “quantitative project,” and her evidence is mostly anecdotal. From among six denominations she identified fifty vital mainline congregations that defined themselves as theologically moderate or liberal. But she still admits that mainline Protestant institutions, as a whole, are in “deep crisis and desperately in need of renewal.”

According to Bass, “evangelical voices have grown louder and more insistent that they–and they alone–are the true Christians, the ones with true doctrine, true morals, and true politics.” Their leaders, having flexed their muscles in national elections, are now trying to create a “one-party Christianity.” A frequent liberal commentator and critic of religious conservatives, Bass is part of Jim Wallis’s newly unveiled “Red Letter Christians,” who want to steer evangelicals away from concerns about abortion and homosexuality and towards environmentalism and antiwar activism.

Wanting to channel her anger constructively, Bass set out to highlight the “quiet Christians” whom the media supposedly ignore. She warns that her book is not for churchgoers who are “closing their eyes” and are spiritually content. So, watch out! The mainline congregations on which Bass focuses are “often in tension with local fundamentalist Christians, or surprisingly, their own denominations,” although she does not elaborate much.

Bass recounts having grown up in a Methodist church in Baltimore in the 1960s. The neighborhood has since decayed, and today the church is mostly empty, cannot afford a full-time pastor, and ponders merging with another congregation. Bass notes that the dwindling congregation has joined a group called the Center for Progressive Christianity and is “reaching out to gay and lesbian persons.” It’s a pretty typical story for an urban mainline church.

Leaving the denomination of her childhood, Bass transitioned through fundamentalism–charismatic Christianity–classical evangelicalism, and then back to mainline Protestantism, but of a decidedly liberal sort. As a teacher at an evangelical school some years ago, she worried over students influenced by evangelical history books portraying America’s Founding Fathers as Protestant saints. But she admits that secularists “fail to appreciate” how Protestantism shaped, and continues to shape, the United States.

Not long ago, Bass remembers, not all Protestants were “evangelicals or fundamentalists or political extremists.” She recalls fairly accurately that the mainline Protestantism of the 20th century had morphed into religious Rotary Clubs. They were spiritually unchallenging but espoused civic righteousness and generic morality. With fondness, Bass looks farther back to the “enchanting universe” of historic churches, such as Christ Church (Episcopal) in Alexandria, Virginia, where George Washington worshipped, and which remains active still. Despite the social injustices of its day, Bass looks to old Protestantism in America as offering “village” churches specializing in hospitality for spiritual pilgrims. She seems to be trying to rediscover this old, gentle Protestantism that, from a distance at least, combined beauty, transcendence, and wonder.

After leaving evangelicalism, Bass gravitated towards a liberal and vibrant Episcopal church with a homosexual priest and plenty of political activism. Most of the churches she studies in her book do not seem to be quite so far left. They are medium-sized, mostly urban, congregations of several hundred people, many of whom are either refugees from conservative churches or new to religious practice. The congregants are largely well educated, upper middle class, and eager to avoid “fundamentalism” while emphasizing “community.”

Bass’s favored churches host speakers like the Gnostic enthusiast Elaine Pagels and the interfaith advocate Karen Armstrong. They read books by the New Age mystic Marcus Borg. They walk labyrinths and meditate. They enjoy liturgy, vestments, the lighting of candles, and anointing with oil. They are interested in “reconciliation,” in psychic healing and “cosmic restoration.” They share faith stories. They employ tambourines and drums in their worship. Some do Latin chants. They want a connection to Christian tradition without necessarily being bound by it. They shun “religion” but they want to be “spiritual.”

Christianity for the Rest of Us is full of anecdotes from people who recount to Bass how they came to affiliate with their ostensibly centrist or liberal congregation. They seem, primarily, to be people like Bass: intelligent, well read, and wanting a supportive Christian community that shuns, or at least avoids, conservative religious and political themes.

God bless them all on their journeys. But it is hard to understand exactly what the objective is for Bass’s book, other than to affirm her own spiritual choices. There are about 80,000 mainline Protestant local churches in America. Bass has found 50 that are at least somewhat vital–although she admits that none are exactly megachurches. Overall, each of the mainline denominations has lost 30 to 50 percent of its membership; Bass explains their decline by suggesting they had exchanged transcendence for dutiful morality. This is true enough, but not all the truth.

Twentieth-century liberal Protestantism, even in its more orthodox forms, basically became universalist in its study of salvation. If everyone is going to Heaven automatically, then winning souls is unnecessary, and growing a church resembles a Rotary membership drive. It did not work. The denominations lost millions of members and have been unable to replace them.

Bass’s vibrant liberal congregations, though not focused on soul-saving, are not entirely dissimilar to vibrant evangelical ones. Both emphasize innovation, personal testimony, and catering to the customer. But Bass’s liberal worshippers tend to meet in more tasteful surroundings, drink better wine, and read more quality literature. As part of Jim Wallis’s cohort, Bass is, of course, profoundly political: She stresses the political involvements of her studied churches. But nearly all surveys show that the vast majority of America’s congregations, including both mainline Protestant and evangelical, are carefully nonpolitical, and include adherents from across the political spectrum.

Bass writes that mainline Protestants evenly divided in the 2004 election, but that more churchgoing mainline Protestants voted for John Kerry. She does not source her claim. The 2004 postelection National Survey of Religion and Politics did find mainliners evenly divided, though traditional mainliners favored George W. Bush by 68 percent and centrist mainliners favored Bush by 58 percent. “Modernist” mainliners favored Kerry by 78 percent. That survey did not break mainliners down by churchgoing habits, but every other available survey has shown that frequent churchgoers from all traditions favored Bush over Kerry.

The American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, which interviewed 50,000 Americans, found that pluralities of Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Congregationalists all favored Republicans over Democrats. Only the Episcopalians were evenly divided. Even so, the vast majority of Americans, thankfully, do not attend church for political camaraderie.

Bass, like many on the religious left, seems overly preoccupied by the supposed political threat of conservative Christianity. But contrary to stereotypes, most conservative churches are not focused on politics. Bass should just chill out, and enjoy the companionship of the many like-minded Christians whom she found on her book-writing journey.

Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.