God's Left Hand
TOOLEY, MARK
BOA God's Left Hand Preaching to the choir in the 'Mainline' churches. by Mark Tooley All of the mainline denominations guided by liberal theology in the 20th century have been in decline since...
...Bass has found 50 that are at least somewhat vital— although she admits that none are exactly megachurches...
...The denominations lost millions of members and have been unable to replace them...
...Not long ago, Bass remembers, not all Protestants were "evangelicals or fundamentalists or political extremists...
...It did not work...
...They were spiritually unchallenging but espoused civic righteousness and generic morality...
...Bass should just chill out, and enjoy the companionship of the many like-minded Christians whom she found on her book-writing journey...
...Even so, the vast majority of Americans, thankfully, do not attend church for political camaraderie...
...Bass explains their decline by suggesting they had exchanged transcendence for dutiful morality...
...But she admits that secularists "fail to appreciate" how Protestantism shaped, and continues to shape, the United States...
...Most of the churches she studies in her book do not seem to be quite so far left...
...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...
...She seems to be trying to rediscover this old, gentle Protestantism that, from a distance at least, combined beauty, transcendence, and wonder...
...She recalls fairly accurately that the mainline Protestantism of the 20th century had morphed into religious Rotary Clubs...
...Only the Episcopalians were evenly divided...
...Bass's vibrant liberal congregations, though not focused on soul-saving, are not entirely dissimilar to vibrant evangelical ones...
...The neighborhood has since decayed, and today the church is mostly empty, cannot afford a fulltime pastor, and ponders merging with another congregation...
...After leaving evangelicalism, Bass gravitated towards a liberal and vibrant Episcopal church with a homosexual priest and plenty of political activism...
...From among six denominations she identified fifty vital mainline congregations that defined themselves as theologically moderate or liberal...
...Modernist" mainliners favored Kerry by 78 percent...
...God bless them all on their journeys...
...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...
...Bass's favored churches host speakers like the Gnostic enthusiast Elaine Pagels and the interfaith advocate Karen Armstrong...
...Now they are one out of every thirty...
...There are about 80,000 mainline Protestant local churches in America...
...As part of Jim Wallis's cohort, Bass is, of course, profoundly political: She stresses the political involvements of her studied churches...
...This is true enough, but not all the truth...
...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...
...The 2004 postelection National Survey of Religion and Politics did find mainlin-ers evenly divided, though traditional mainliners favored George W. Bush by 68 percent and centrist mainliners favored Bush by 58 percent...
...Some do Christianity for the Rest ofUs How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith by Diana Butler Bass HarperSanFrancisco, 336 pp., $23.95 Latin chants...
...Bass writes that mainline Protestants evenly divided in the 2004 election, but that more churchgoing mainline Protestants voted for John Kerry...
...population, and evangelicals have become the largest religious demographic in America...
...They want a connection to Christian tradition without necessarily being bound by it...
...Seemingly, the hour of liberal Protestantism has come and gone...
...She does not source her claim...
...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 enjoy liturgy, vestments, the lighting of candles, and anointing with oil...
...Christianity...
...They are interested in "reconciliation," in psychic healing and "cosmic restoration...
...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...
...She does not try to support her thesis with statistical evidence...
...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...
...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...
...It's a pretty typical story for an urban mainline church...
...They walk labyrinths and meditate...
...Mainline Protestant church members once numbered one out of every six Americans...
...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...
...Their leaders, having flexed their muscles in national elections, are now trying to create a "one-party Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy...
...But Bass's liberal worshippers tend to meet in more tasteful surroundings, drink better wine, and read more quality literature...
...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 envi-ronmentalism and antiwar activism...
...They employ tambourines and drums in their worship...
...Wanting to channel her anger constructively, Bass set out to highlight the "quiet Christians" whom the media supposedly ignore...
...They share faith stories...
...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...
...by Mark Tooley All of the mainline denominations guided by liberal theology in the 20th century have been in decline since the early 1960s...
...Bass recounts having grown up in a Methodist church in Baltimore in the 1960s...
...Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism has retained its market share of the U.S...
...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...
...The congregants are largely well educated, upper middle class, and eager to avoid "fundamentalism" while emphasizing "community...
...They read books by the New Age mystic Marcus Borg...
...But it is hard to understand exactly what the objective is for Bass's book, other than to affirm her own spiritual choices...
...But she still admits that mainline Protestant institutions, as a whole, are in "deep crisis and desperately in need of renewal...
...If everyone is going to Heaven automatically, then winning souls is unnecessary, and growing a church resembles a Rotary membership drive...
...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...
...Both emphasize innovation, personal testimony, and catering to the customer...
...They shun "religion" but they want to be "spiritual...
...So, watch out...
...Twentieth-century liberal Protestantism, even in its more orthodox forms, basically became universalist in its study of salvation...
...Despite the social injustices of its day, Bass looks to old Protestantism in America as offering "village" churches specializing in hospitality for spiritual pilgrims...
...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...
...she insists that her fellow liberal Protestants are more vibrant than commonly realized...
...But Diana Butler Bass challenges the conventional wisdom...
...She warns that her book is not for churchgoers who are "closing their eyes" and are spiritually content...
...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...
...She admits this book is not a "quantitative project," and her evidence is mostly anecdotal...
...Overall, each of the mainline denominations has lost 30 to 50 percent of its membership...
Vol. 12 • November 2006 • No. 9
