Future of Liberal Religion: A Counterculture Blooms?

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http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6196/future_of_liberal_religion%3A_a_counterculture_blooms/


For the first time in its history the National Council of Churches is led by women. From left to right: Clare Chapman, Kathryn Lohre, and Peg Birk. Photo by Brett Nelson, ELCA

Amid a cascade of comment on the decline of mainline Protestantism, an historian argues that a great progressive tradition is in the throes of renewalBy JILL K. GILL

There is a price for being prophetic. Yet, as historian David Hollinger argues in a recent interview, prophetic ecumenical voices helped change America for the better. Through their risky stances against racism, sexism, imperialism, and American exceptionalism, ecumenical Protestants prodded a reluctant nation toward greater acceptance of pluralism during the 20th century.

Today, even a growing number of evangelicals treat those positions as mainstream—but ecumenical institutions have struggled.

During 1960s-era social transformations, conservative laity withdrew money and support from organized ecumenism. Meanwhile young liberal Christians often left it behind to do social justice work within a secular environment that offered quicker bolder action. Others comprised a growing exodus of people embracing a post-Protestant, “spiritual but not religious,” identity, while adults still within the fold bore fewer children than evangelicals. Many secular intellectuals pooh-poohed religion altogether, as the Democratic party excised religious values from its lingo.

The result: greying mainline denominations struggling to pay bills amid steady membership and funding declines. Its corollary: an ecumenical movement facing even steeper financial challenges, worsened by the recession. News of a resulting restructuring effort underway in the nation’s historic flagship ecumenical organization, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC), is occasionally met with the query: “You mean it’s not dead yet?”


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