Religion in America: Pumping life into mainline Protestantism
There are a whole host of spiritual practices usually associated with individuals. An Episcopal church in Arlington, Va., reconstituted their congregational life by thinking of themselves as an urban abbey. It's a lay monastic vision of the ordering of one's life, but instead of being done out of a monastery, it's done out of a church. They have a certain expectation of study and scriptural text, service to the poor, and they ask the congregants to do a retreat once a year. [But] they don't have to wear hair shirts inside out or anything like that.
How did the intentionality come about?
Most of these churches engaged in a Christian practice of discernment. That simply means that people in the congregation began a process–this is so unlike the mainline Protestant churches I grew up in where they listened to God's voice, trying to discern what God would have for them. It sounds so simple, but most mainline churches became mired in very businesslike ways of doing things. They thought of themselves like companies and that if you applied strategic long-range planning, it would work, and it was very secular. Most of these churches rejected that and found ways to work that were spiritual. That was a radical thing for these churches to do. They broke with the ways of doing business that their parents and grandparents had. As one of my friends said, "It's not rocket science." When they go back to the simplest things, they're experiencing new growth. They didn't know they had everything they needed.
How do these churches differ from evangelical churches?
They have a different theological structure. Most of these churches have more ritualized forms of liturgy. They're connected to traditional denominations, so the forms of government are different. There's more openness to gay and lesbian people, and there's a complete acceptance of women clergy and the whole range of issues associated with contemporary feminism. They share something with evangelical churches, and that is [that] they're a lot more expressive. Religious experience matters. They believe in things like healing and even a sense of the miraculous. The Holy Spirit is very personal. They share that kind of emotive stuff, but the framework in terms of tradition, political issues, and theological emphasis is entirely different.
Can you quantify their vitality?
In these 50 congregations, most have grown by at least 10 percent over the past 10 years. However, we have a couple of congregations that have doubled in size. Calvin Presbyterian Church outside Pittsburgh has gone from 200 to 400 congregants. Another has gone from 500 to 1,400 in eight years. A good number of them have experienced some very significant growth. But none of them is declining, and even those in difficult areas are holding their own. They're not threatened by closure.
What lessons do you draw from these churches?
I think it's very suggestive of what you can do when you use your imagination and you allow a congregation to be creative. It offers a potential pattern that mainline congregations can embark on that could spark new life. It clearly has very political consequences because of the amalgam they are: They are liberal and socially active in terms of their public involvement. These places are very much the middle of American religion. They talk in a language of being in the middle. We were with them during the 2004 elections. They don't want to be used by the political extremes. They're extraordinarily upset about the characterization of congregations being identified with the religious right. They'd say, "We're faithful but we're not fundamentalists." They're interested in figuring out how to do that in the public square, and, if they do, that it might change the public conversation about the role of religion and party politics right now. So I think whatever happens will end up having public and political consequences.
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