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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?"