is mainline christianity irrelevant?

Mainline churches have been declining for decades. Such sad news is not new. As Greeley & Hout (2006) argue, the reason for this is primarily two-fold: 1) people in "conservative" denominations are switching to mainline churches at a much reduced rate and 2) people in conservative churches tend to have more babies. On the one side, the population cannot sustain itself and grow. On the other side, churches continue to grow due to population replacement and a better rate of retaining members. The former is something we can do little about except for ask people in mainline churches to hop in the sack and have babies more often. The latter is the variable of concern.

To be sure, getting members from other churches is not the issue for mainlines. The issue is this: why is it that conservative churches have such a better rate of retention than mainline churches? If you sit in on many congregational meetings, vestry meetings, session meetings, etc. there is bound to be a discussion about how to get more members to worship and participate. Then it will shift to strategies such as offering different kinds of worship services for different ages, mumbo-jumbo talk about different "generations" that use "technology", different kinds of music, removing structural hierarchies, creating a coffee shop or informal atmosphere, etc. Not that this is all bad, but it is essentially empty.

In looking at these kinds of programs and methods to get people in the pews (if you still have them by the end of the conversation) what churches try to do is use social programming which they think will cater to people's liberal sensibilities. In most areas, those same social functions are often provided by either religious organizations designed for that purpose, or by secular institutions. In either case the local congregation has not only been beaten to the punch, but they are in a non-competitive position. It is not that these programs are in themselves bad to do for local congregations, but they are not the unique function that the church is there to serve and so, will probably not work as well as the program directors thought to get and retain membership.

Proponents of secularization theory have argued that it is this kind of replacement of social functions that makes religion irrelevant. Even as Bryan Wilson wrote in 1966,

As an agency conferring solace in institutionalized forms of for the persisting afflictions of society, and the ultimate philosophical and emotional traumata which embrace men in their lives – associated most dramatically with illness, misfortune and death – the Church has long had perhaps its most immediate and intimate access to the generaltiy of men. It has furnished explanations, and emotional reassurances. But, as modern society has grown more complex, ans as scientific explanations have superceded essentially religious interpretations of life – replacing the suggestion of "meaning" with the closer analysis of empirically verified fact – so the pastoral function of the Church has been affected (p. 92).

When the emotional and social functions of the church are all that remain of the church in its function, it is almost assuredly the kiss of death. The reward for immediate concerns through other social institutions is simply quicker and more efficient. The expertise of the psychological, social and, medical health that was once the purview of the church, is now at the discretion of trained professionals. While there might be overlap with the church in these functions, it is clear that the church is not the place people will go first to have these various needs addressed. Thus, while church programming that seeks to lure people may offer a faddish alternative to the primary secular structures already in place to meet these needs, but the church will always serve as sloppy seconds.

How does a mainline church retain its members as well as the conservatives churches apparently can? Conservative churches understand their role in society much better and perform it more efficiently. What they seem to understand is not their role that can compete with secular structures, but their unique role that only they can fill. That role is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ as one who offers ultimate salvation. There is only one social institution where one can enter a door as something undeserving of ultimate grace, be received by it, and also receive it. To be sure, mainline liberal congregations do perform this role. However, it is simply not clear that they perform it as well or as consistently as their conservative kin. It is because of the centrality of Christ crucified that more conservative churches retain a higher degree of tension with the normative secular structures of society. This, above all else, is why people persist there.

Liberal Christianity loses its soul when it ceases to stake its claim on the centrality of Christ crucified. Any church that wants to retain members has to place demands on them as well. These do not have to be theologically or biblically conservative demands, but even as Christ demands that we seek the outcast, seek justice, love mercy, and hate evil, so must the church. If Christ is the most important message in Christianity, that is what must be preached with verve and vigor, and what must always be at the center of what the church has to offer.

Without Christ crucified, the church will cease to exist; it will be as a droplet into the vast sea of secular conscience. With Christ, there is nothing but an irreducible tension that the church will have with the prevailing normative society because Christ demands that those in the church change it. It is not a matter of if people need a savior. It is to claim the conviction that people do need a savior and there is only one social institution that can offer it. This is the one unique calling of the church in a secular world. May the church of Christ live up to its calling and purpose for its existence.

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