Those Mainline Blues

In the beginning was mainline Protestantism. At Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, and for 3 1/2 centuries thereafter, the denominations known today by that label defined the spiritual and moral ethos of the U.S. These prominent Wasp bastions nurtured the founders, imparting to them notions of republican government and individual freedom. Dominating American Protestantism, these churches shaped virtually every aspect of an evolving nation: its pioneering colleges, its 19th century novels of sin and rectitude, its capitalist ethic of striving and saving, and a world-conquering spirit that was shared by missionaries and entrepreneurs alike. Mainliners were at the forefront of social crusades from independence to abolition, women's suffrage to Prohibition, civil rights to Viet Nam protests.

During the past two decades, however, that center has dropped away. The central fact about mainline Protestantism in the U.S. today is that it is in deep trouble. This stunning turnabout is apparent in the unprecedented hemorrhaging of memberships in the three major faiths that date from colonial times. The United Church of Christ (which includes most Congregationalists) has shrunk 20% since 1965, the Presbyterian Church 25%, and the Episcopal Church 28%. As for two related denominations that mushroomed in the 19th century, the United Methodist Church has dropped 18%, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) 43% after a de facto schism. Together, these five groups suffered a net loss of 5.2 million souls during years when the U.S. population rose 47 million. (In addition to these five denominations, "mainline" generally refers to the old, culturally established, predominantly white Protestant groups belonging to the National Council of Churches.)

Nor is any upswing in sight. Mainline congregations, says Isabel Rogers, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), are "no longer the primary shapers of values in American society." What, then, does their decline portend for a society that has been so largely built upon their values and precepts? That is hardly a trivial matter. How the nation defines itself spiritually will have much to do with its future political directions and with the strength of its moral foundations, which are increasingly under siege by drugs, violence and pervasive greed.

The mainline plight might be understandable if all of U.S. Christendom were reeling under the shocks of secularism and the inroads of new, alien faiths. But that is not the case. During the past two decades, black Protestant groups have gained, Roman Catholic membership has grown a solid 16%, and the boom in the conservative evangelical churches (including Fundamentalists, Pentecostals and charismatics) has caused some to envision a religious revival.

Why this massive power shift? Explanations abound. No doubt cultural and demographic changes have eroded mainline churches. Constant organizational reshuffles have taken a toll. In addition, far too many mainline churches are sorely lacking in the marketing and communications savvy that the Evangelicals employ to win new members. In fact, a contingent of prospering evangelical congregations exists within each of the mainline denominations. A preoccupation with political and social issues at the expense of good old- fashioned faith has alienated many members. Not only are the traditional denominations failing to get their message across; they are increasingly unsure just what that message is.

To be sure, the mainline retains sufficient social status to be the spiritual home for half the U.S. Congress, as it has been for most U.S. Presidents. George Bush is a churchgoing Episcopalian, although he communes more naturally with Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell than with his own bishops. Presbyterian convert Dwight Eisenhower testified to the extraordinary mainline influence that existed at midcentury when he journeyed to New York City in 1958 to lay the cornerstone for the headquarters building of the National Council of Churches.

Although it formerly symbolized mainline ascendancy, the N.C.C. is now shaken by a crisis that signals the decline of the religious Old Guard. The organization, which this week is grappling with its internal problems at an all important board meeting in Lexington, Ky., suffers partly from its member denominations' tribulations. For instance, the shrunken Presbyterian staff, just moved from the N.C.C. building in New York City to Louisville, has been cut by 400, in part to ward off a $7 million shortfall. With 49% of active lay Presbyterians heading toward retirement, said a study published last year, future money problems will be "almost beyond belief." Other mainline agencies face a similar fiscal crunch.

Critical shortcomings are evident in virtually every activity concerned with the teaching and spreading of the faith. Examples:

SUNDAY SCHOOL. Enrollments are plummeting even faster than overall membership is. In the past two decades, participation has decreased an average of 55% in the major denominations. Dorothy Bass of the Chicago Theological Seminary blames the decline on mainline failure "to transmit the meaning and excitement of Christianity from one generation to another, one person to another."

HIGHER EDUCATION. A century ago, most U.S. colleges and universities were controlled by mainline Protestantism and constituted the faith's most important channel of cultural influence. But gradually, mainline schools have become indistinguishable from secular campuses, leaving distinctly Protestant higher education to the Evangelicals. This "revolution" occurred with "nobody noticing and nobody seeming to mind," remarks Duke University historian George Marsden.

FOREIGN MISSIONS. Spreading the gospel abroad was once a quintessential mainline activity, but today evangelical agencies sponsor four-fifths of American Protestant missionaries. Mainline strategists play down proselytism and insist that foreign countries should recruit their own workers. Similar woes affect the N.C.C.'s most successful agency, Church World Service, the overseas relief and development arm. Its expenditures have fallen substantially, and are now exceeded several times over by those of World Vision, the leading evangelical agency.

RADIO AND TELEVISION. Broadcast religion was once a mainline monopoly, but since the 1960s it has been dominated by evangelical aggressiveness. In the wake of the squalid televangelism scandals, mainliners last fall launched an interfaith cable network called VISN. It is potentially their most strategic project in many years, but so far programming has been dull and dated. Significantly, it was a secular cable company, not mainline agencies, that came up with the idea for VISN.

Because of population and demographic shifts, long-established mainline churches often find themselves struggling along in unpromising locations. On a typical Sunday in downtown Pasadena, Calif., for example, only 80 mostly elderly worshipers attended services at the First Congregational Church, a cavernous old citadel built to hold a thousand people. The sparsely populated pews contrast dramatically with the overflow crowds that regularly jam the ultramodern Church of the Nazarene, situated on the fast-growing outskirts of town.

Whatever the location, though, the Evangelicals are handily winning the game of enlisting members. Most mainline churches do not consider it their mission even to compete. Despite mainline emphasis on racial justice, conservatives in , the Southern Baptist Convention and Assemblies of God are more adept at recruiting urban blacks and Hispanics, just as they are more successful at planting new churches in growing suburbs. When John Vaughn of Southwest Baptist University compiled a list of America's fastest-growing Protestant congregations, 445 of the 500 were outside the mainline.

In their book American Mainline Religion, Wade Clark Roof of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and William McKinney of Hartford Seminary pin much of the blame for decline on long-term demographic trends. As with higher- status groups generally, the authors report, birth rates in traditional Protestant churches dropped below replacement levels in the 1960s, and future trends are alarming because of the rising average ages of members. Moreover, note Roof and McKinney, while liberal congregations never excelled at converting nonbelievers, they used to attract a steady flow of "switchers" from other churches. Social-climbing gains by high-prestige mainline churches began to dwindle in the 1960s.

Most damaging of all is a doubling of "back door" losses since the 1960s, especially as younger adults bred in Establishment churches drift into irreligion. "Most Episcopalians who have left have not gone over to the conservative churches," says Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. "They have gone nowhere."

Paradoxically, mainline churches are being hurt by past success. Many are living off income earned from old wealth and feel no urgency to attract new supporters. They have also been lulled by their social status, which formerly made it possible to attract members without any effort. The Rev. Roger Zimmerman, who is industriously turning around a Disciples of Christ church near downtown Louisville, says that his socially prominent congregation long had a "white glove" mentality: "They didn't reach out and evangelize. They expected people to come of their own accord."

In addition, mainline religion has been undercut by some of its own cultural achievements. The churches persuaded people to embrace tolerance and inclusiveness, says Hartford Seminary's David Roozen, but in doing so lost their internal sense of identity. Similarly, liberal Protestant leaders encouraged antiauthority movements in the 1960s, only to find youths rejecting them as part of the despised Establishment.

The penchant of mainline leaders for embracing progressive causes has sparked bitter internal disputes, especially over homosexuality and women's rights. The Rev. H. Boone Porter, editor of the Living Church, an Episcopal weekly, complains that "national officials have taken positions which, frankly, the rest of us do not understand." There are also continual squabbles over the political stands by clergy who sound like McGovern-Mondale Democrats while lay members are largely Reagan-Bush Republicans. Several denominations have also lost members through conservative schisms.

More important than rancor over specific positions is the impression that social crusading is turning the faith into a "political agenda masked with a veneer of spirituality," in the harsh words of Kent Hill of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy. A. James Reichley of the Brookings Institution believes that mainline "social and political action takes away from the religious focus." Mainliners sometimes seem more convinced about the virtues of the Sandinistas or the vices of Nestle than, say, the meaning of Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection.

The mainline leaning for liberal politics and low-cal theology drew on a sort of rationalism that, in the view of Richard Mouw of California's Fuller Theological Seminary, is no longer fashionable. "We are experiencing a reaction against modernity," says Mouw. "We are getting magic and the occult and the New Age. There's a return to a premodern world view." Mouw, an Evangelical, asserts that the churches were seriously mistaken in seeking to duck the age-old questions: "Who am I as a human being before God? How can I face my own death? How can I be forgiven for my very real sins?"

A back-to-basics mood is palpable among those training for the Protestant clergy, many of whom are older students who are entering second careers. President Neely McCarter of the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley says his graduates are still liberal in politics but "more conservative biblically and theologically. They want more worship, and they want more spirituality." At New York City's Union Theological Seminary, too, prayer groups have grown up, although, reports a participant, they are regarded as "kind of like a subculture." Many mainline youths prefer conservative training at such growing nondenominational schools as Fuller, Trinity Evangelical in Illinois and Gordon-Conwell in Massachusetts.

Should the mainline denominations move boldly left of their current wishy- washy liberalism or should they turn back to the evangelical old-time religion that they espoused until well into the 20th century? Analyst McKinney insists that if the mainliners move right, the exodus of disgruntled younger members would "blow the back door out." But that is not likely to occur anyway, at least if national staffs have anything to say about it. Theressa Hoover, a highly influential Methodist bureaucrat, contends that "you don't change focus just because constituencies give you trouble. We've taken as much of a beating in the past and never retreated."

Despite the successes of numerous local congregations, few experts foresee mainline Protestantism regaining its former clout and prosperity. Are the ballyhooed Evangelicals thus destined to constitute America's new religious center? One shrewd analyst in that conservative camp, Fuller's Mouw, has a surprising reply: "If there is an Establishment voice today, it is that of Roman Catholicism. The Catholics are the calm, dignified, authoritative voices, insofar as there are any at all." Lutheran Richard John Neuhaus even wrote a book claiming this to be The Catholic Moment for America.

But John Mulder, president of Louisville Presbyterian seminary, thinks it is unclear what kind of new moral core American society will develop or who will shape it. Most likely, America will never again have an unofficially established faith such as mainline Protestantism was for centuries. Perhaps, then, those genteel old churches are destined to fight a rear-guard battle to counteract a "society whose values are at odds with the gospel," in the mordant words of Spurgeon Dunnam of Texas, Methodism's most influential editor.

McKinney thinks the mainliners' present struggles could one day give them special strength. "America is being disestablished on the world scene," he explains. "How do we make sense out of being Americans in the 21st century?" In his scenario, churches that are currently being dethroned may help the American people come to terms with a similar humbling of the nation's status 50 and 100 years hence. Perhaps, then, mainline churches are being cast into a narrow sectarian role not unlike that of the European refugees who are known to history as the Pilgrims and Puritans. Unlike their 17th century predecessors, however, they have no New World to conquer.

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