Part 1 Unlike our evangelical friend, our ecumenically minded mainliner received an education in church history at an Ivy League divinity school and is a little more cognizant of the problems of overcoming the Reformation but he’s also a member of the . . . Continue reading →
Mainline Christianity
RCA Adopts the "Belhar Confession"
News from the GR paper.
RCA Prof Predicts Demise of the RCA (and the CRC)
Donald A. Luidens is a sociology prof at Hope College and he’s written a provocative and interesting essay in Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought (which I think is descended from the old Reformed Journal) in which he argues that loss of . . . Continue reading →
More Bad News For The Mainline
A December 7, 2009 report from the Barna Group details the continued slide of the mainline churches (i.e. the American Baptist Churches in the USA; the Episcopal Church; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Presbyterian Church (USA); the United Church of . . . Continue reading →
EPC Moves Toward the Mainline and the Mainline Moves Toward the Drain
Recovering the Reformed Confession I described the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (along with the CRC) as a part of the “borderline” (as distinct from the mainline and the sideline). At the time, the CRC appeared to be moving toward the mainline (which trajectory . . . Continue reading →
Office Hours: From Mainline to Sideline
In this episode Office Hours talks with the Rev Mr John Bales, interim Library Director at Westminster Seminary California about his journey from the Protestant mainline (RCA) to the confessional Reformed sideline.
Machen’s Warning To MDiv Students
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 →
Do Mainlines Renew?
There several ways to classify American denominations. We could distinguish between “liberal” (those who no longer believe Scripture to be God’s inerrant Word or the historic Christian faith) and “conservative” (those who affirm inerrancy and historic Christianity). As Darryl Hart argues in . . . Continue reading →
Kicked To The Curb: Reformed Theology, Piety
Dad had been a staunch defender of a somewhat cramped version of Calvinism formed by his upbringing in the Gereformeerde Kerk in the Netherlands. Early on, his parents had put the kibosh on his aspirations to ministry; unless he had a distinct . . . Continue reading →
The PCUSA: Proudly Dying Since 1936
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 →
Are Mainline Baptisms Valid?
A friend and HB reader writes to ask about the validity baptisms administered in mainline (liberal) congregations. Should a NAPARC (North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council) affiliated congregation receive as valid a baptism performed by a minister in a denomination that has . . . Continue reading →
The Banality Of Theological Liberalism
A recent tweet from Union Theological Seminary in New York City indicates that the institution, which once boasted luminaries of the intellectual stature of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, is now encouraging an innovative penitential practice: confessing sins to plants. To quote . . . Continue reading →
Machen’s Antidote To Political Correctness
Of course, Machen himself believed that the church should be intolerant. But the kind of intolerance he advocated was theological, not political. He believed that the church’s primary task was to proclaim the Gospel, and that this task required careful attention to . . . Continue reading →
New Resource Page: On Mainline (Liberal) Christianity In North America
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 →