When, Dean Kelley published Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), the Protestant mainline was already in crisis. They were shrinking, and, as Kelley’s title suggests, the “conservative” churches were growing. This book was published the year before . . . Continue reading →
An old friend wrote recently to ask whether it is appropriate for a confessional Presbyterian and Reformed (P&R) pastor or congregation to participate in an ecumenical service. In Part One of this series, we discussed our terms. Now we continue the question: should . . . Continue reading →
An old friend wrote recently to ask whether it is appropriate for a confessional Presbyterian and Reformed (P&R) pastor or congregation to participate in an ecumenical service. This is an interesting and challenging question. Let us start by defining our terms. What . . . Continue reading →
If you aren’t a baby boomer or a student of religious history, it can be hard to fathom the cultural influence and social cohesion that once resided in mainline Protestantism. At its height in 1965, mainline Protestant churches counted 31 million members . . . Continue reading →
The expression “mainline church” is drawn from an old-money neighborhood in Philadelphia known as “the main line.” The mainline churches were what are sometimes called the “tall steeple” church along the mainline. Scholars of American Christianity sometimes speak of the “Seven Sisters . . . Continue reading →
Jeffrey Walton reports that the membership Presbyterian Church (USA), the mainline liberal denomination, declined by 51, 584 in 2021. That is a loss of about 4%.
Andrew Bertodatti and Rasool Berry, two pastors in New York City, have written a lengthy critique of a new book by Owen Strachan. My interest in this essay is not to engage with Strachan’s book, which I have not read, nor to . . . Continue reading →
"The taking of a leaf is the cutting of the root of clinging. When this root is finally cut, you are safe as the original body of all life appears to deluded minds." –@KosenGregSnyder Read more about the Ordination of the Cherry . . . Continue reading →
In 1923, a young assistant professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary named J. Gresham Machen published a scathing critique of the worldview animating establishment or “mainline” Protestant Christianity in Europe and America. That worldview, Machen argued in Christianity and Liberalism, . . . Continue reading →
You will have a battle, too, when you go forth as ministers into the church. The church is now in a period of deadly conflict. The redemptive religion known as Christianity is contending, in our own Presbyterian Church and in all the . . . Continue reading →
A God without wrath bought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (New York: Harper, 1937), 193. (HT: David Chin)
If it does not care much about the Lord’s Supper (either to observe it or as to who communes) neither does it necessarily have a vital interest in the facts of the history of salvation. This tendency is plainly evident in two great figures in the history of Pietism, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918). Both were raised in the Pietist tradition and both abandoned historic Christianity. Continue reading →
Yet there is another aspect to the essay, and that is Paglia’s barely concealed contempt for the attempts of liberal Christianity and of the gay lobby itself to make homosexuality respectable. For Paglia, sex is powerful and deviant sex reflects that power . . . Continue reading →
Christianity they will tell us is a life and not a doctrine. Now that seems to be a devout and pious utterance, but it is radically false all the same, and to see that it is false you do not need even . . . Continue reading →
Perhaps the most intense and difficult part about growing up is learning how to fit in, when to try, and when it does not matter. I suppose, we probably never really outgrow those questions but perhaps, as we mature, it matters less . . . Continue reading →
Now that the number of persons departing the denomination has increased from 89,296 to 92,433, and the statistical rate of decline has bumped from 4.83 percent to 5.54 percent, Parsons can no longer soothe fellow church bureaucrats in Louisville that decline is . . . Continue reading →
The New York Times reported yesterday that a sufficient number of presbyteries of the liberal, mainline Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) have voted to approve gay marriage that church order Book of Order will, beginning in June of this year, define marriage no . . . Continue reading →
This does answer the question, does the PCUSA still have heresy trials? Of course they do. Heresy or apostasy in the PCUSA is now defined as lack or failure of institutional or corporate loyalty, and or actions, speech against the institution. Where . . . Continue reading →
But more and more there is a tendency to brand as illiberal, medieval and narrow any man who differs from the current of popular religious thought, and declares it to be non-Christian in its tendencies. There is a great discussion in the . . . Continue reading →
But what was the difference between the teaching of Paul and the teaching of the Judaizers ? What was it that gave rise to the stupendous polemic of the Epistle to the Galatians? To the modern Church the difference would have seemed . . . Continue reading →