{"id":1723,"date":"2012-11-18T21:49:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-18T21:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/11\/liberal-christianity-conservative-christianity-and-the-caught-in-between.html"},"modified":"2012-11-18T21:49:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-18T21:49:00","slug":"liberal-christianity-conservative-christianity-and-the-caught-in-between","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/11\/liberal-christianity-conservative-christianity-and-the-caught-in-between.html","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

As you may have noticed, a flurry of articles and blog posts have materialized in the wake of the Episcopal Church USA General Convention, many asserting that the Episcopal Church\u2019s declining numbers, and those of other Mainline Protestant churches, are direct result of their progressive policies. The most notable of these responses came from Ross Douthat of the New York Times who asked, \u201cCan Liberal Christianity Be Saved?<\/a>\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cInstead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes,\u201d Douthat wrote, \u201cthe Episcopal Church\u2019s dying has proceeded apace\u2026 Practically every denomination \u2014 Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian \u2014 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.\u201d<\/div>\n
Diana Butler Bass responded with an article entitled \u201cCan Christianity be Saved?<\/a>\u201d \u00a0in which she reminds Douthat that conservative churches are also in decline. \u201cIn the last decade,\u201d she writes, \u201cas conservative denominations lost members, their leaders have not equated the loss with unfaithfulness. Instead, they refer to declines as demographic \u201cblips,\u201d waning evangelism, or the impact of secular culture. Membership decline has no inherent theological meaning for either liberals or conservatives. Decline only means, as Gallup pointed out in a just-released survey, that Americans have lost confidence in all forms of institutional religion. \u00a0The real question is not \u2018Can liberal Christianity be saved?\u2019 The real question is:\u2019Can Christianity be saved?\u2019\u00a0<\/div>\n
Both were thoughtful, relatively charitable articles, but I was disheartened to see my Facebook and Twitter feeds light up with gleeful jeers from conservative evangelicals essentially saying,\u201clet the liberals die!\u201d<\/em>\u00a0followed by defensive responses from more progressive Mainliners reminding them,\u00a0\u201cwe may be dying but we\u2019re taking you with us!<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>Missing from the whole dialog was any sense that\u00a0we\u2019re in this together<\/strong>, that, as followers of Jesus, we may need to put our heads together to re-imagine what it means to be the Church in a postmodern, American culture where\u00a0confidence in organized religion is at an all-time low.<\/a><\/div>\n
Meanwhile, I feel totally caught in between.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you may have noticed, a flurry of articles and blog posts have materialized in the wake of the Episcopal Church USA General Convention, many asserting that the Episcopal Church\u2019s declining numbers, and those of other Mainline Protestant churches, are direct result of their progressive policies. The most notable of these responses came from Ross […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLiberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As you may have noticed, a flurry of articles and blog posts have materialized in the wake of the Episcopal Church USA General Convention, many asserting\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/11\/liberal-christianity-conservative-christianity-and-the-caught-in-between.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As you may have noticed, a flurry of articles and blog posts have materialized in the wake of the Episcopal Church USA General Convention, many asserting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2012\/11\/liberal-christianity-conservative-christianity-and-the-caught-in-between.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rhetoric Race and Religion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-11-18T21:49:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Andre E. 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