An article from the Public Interest

Since the late nineteenth century and the emergence of the Social Gospel, the typical response of the mainline churches to the challenge of secularism has been to capitulate to it. Every one of these churches has been advancing (or retreating) from Christian orthodoxy down the road of secular progressivism. They have not done so without hesitation and confusion, which have sometimes brought them to the brink of schism. Nonetheless, within each of these churches, certainly at the national level, progressivism has eventually prevailed across the board.

This same pattern has obtained, mutatis mutandis, even in the Catholic Church. It was slower to embark on this course than the others, for the Papacy spurned “modernism” until after World War II. The Second Vatican Council changed all that. True, papal authority has constrained the church in America, as elsewhere, from giving ground on certain bedrock issues. These aside, it has participated fully in the ecumenical progressivist consensus.

Similarly, within the pastoral realm, the discourse of psychotherapy and personal fulfillment appears to have established itself as thoroughly in the mainline churches as in the lay world. Those who are looking for something different in church than is on offer outside it are increasingly less likely to find it there. Each of these denominations has by now alienated its more traditionalist members, especially during these recent decades of increasing cultural polarization, and many have voted with their feet.

One of the problems I have with this article is the characterization of American evangelical Protestantism as being some sort of bulwark against cultural progressivism. I don’t see it. In fact, I see popular evangelical Protestantism as just as much in thrall to the discourse of “personal fulfillment” as the mainline churches, and just as much enthralled by the culture, just in a different way. There really is, outside perhaps of places like Wheaton and Eerdmans Press and various journals, not a seriously unique, theologically challenging evangelical cultural movement as the author suggests . On the popular level, which is where most people are – it is primarily about answering the latest bubblings from the secular culture and aping it.