There has been a lot of discussion about the future of Christian denominations recently. I thought I’d draw your attention to some of the more interesting takes:
Jay Akaise, What Ails the Episcopalians
General Convention is also notable for its sheer ostentation and carnival atmosphere. For seven straight nights, lavish cocktail parties spilled into pricey steakhouses, where bishops could use their diocesan funds to order bottles of the finest wines.
Taylor Burton-Edwards, A Tale of Two Church Legislators…Priming for a Future of Hope
I believe we do have a hopeful future before us as The United Methodist Church. I also believe that if this past General Conference was a wake-up call to anything, it was a wake-up call for us to begin placing as our first priority finding every way we can to get to know one other, work together, and respect and love one another across our global church, even and especially where we disagree, all the while trusting that as we pursue being body of Christ with one another, not being afraid, God is opening many new doors for us, too.
Diana Butler Bass, Can Christianity Be Saved? A Response to Ross Douthat
Douthat points out that the Episcopal Church has declined 23% in the last decade, identifying the loss as a sign of its theological infidelity. In the last decade, however, as conservative denominations lost members, their leaders have not equated the loss with unfaithfulness. Instead, they refer to declines as demographic “blips,” waning evangelism, or the impact of secular culture. Membership decline has no inherent theological meaning for either liberals or conservatives. Decline only means, as Gallup pointed out in a just-released survey, that Americans have lost confidence in all forms of institutional religion.
Jeff Clarke, 10 Questions for the North American Pentecostal Movement
Have we perhaps unintentionally restricted the work of the Holy Spirit by focusing almost exclusively on Spirit baptism as a personal and private experience to the neglect of the Spirit’s global and cosmic work?
Kevin DeYoung, Why No Denomination Will Survive the Homosexuality Crisis
So my plea is for these denominations to make a definitive stand. Make it right, left, or center, but make one and make it clearly. Insist that member churches and pastors hold to this position. And then graciously open a big door for any pastor or church who cannot live in this theological space to exit with their dignity, their time, and their property. Because sometimes the best way to preserve unity is to admit that we don’t have it.
Ross Douthat, Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?
…today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.
Steve Holmes, Defining Liberal Christianity
What is liberal Christianity? The question is complex, of course. To give a fully adequate answer would demand reference to renewed confidence in reason, to a high estimate of the possibilities of human endeavour, married to a downplaying of the doctrine of original sin (at least as classically taught), to Biblical criticism, to the turn to history that affected theology as much as every other academic discipline in the early twentieth-century, and to other currents.
Tony Jones, The Denouement of Denominations
My guess is that Christian communities are going to get smaller and more diffuse. More house churches, more small start-ups. Less property, less bureaucracy.
Rob Kerby, Why is the Episcopal Church near Collapse?
This is no longer George Washington’s Episcopal Church – in 1776 the largest denomination in the rebellious British colonies. Membership has dropped so dramatically that today there are 20 times more Baptists than Episcopalians.
U.S. Catholics out-number the Episcopal Church 33-to-1. There are more Jews than Episcopalians. Twice as many Mormons as Episcopalians. Even the little African Methodist Episcopal denomination — founded in in 1787 — has passed the Episcopalians.
Amanda MacInnis, The Future of The Anglican Communion
Other members of the Communion have called for the Episocopal (and Canadian) churches to pause and not continue on this push for the sake of Christian unity. On the other hand, the Episcopal churches have basically said that Christian Unity means that the rest of the Communion should let them do this and to not interfere in this “local option.” Churches and an entire diocese have left to join a new Anglican network under the authority of the Southern Cone, and have been called ‘schismatics’ for failing to uphold Christian unity. But one has to wonder if the Episcopal Church is the true schismatic for wielding Christian unity as a weapon of manipulation and defiance.
James McGrath, Can Non-Liberal Christianity Be Saved?
There is a version of Liberal Christianity that it is easy to get excited about. And Iam excited about it. Perhaps the time has come for all of those of us who see things in this way to unite, and to take back the identity of Christianity from the loud and prominent self-proclaimed spokesmen (yes, most of them are men) who have so managed to persuade the media and popular opinion that they represent “true Christianity,” that Liberal Christianity has come to be viewed as a half-hearted, half-baked mixture of the traditional and the cultural, which does justice to neither.
Sarah Morice-Brubaker, Will the Catholic Church Split?
Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, a renowned church historian at Oxford, predicts that the Catholic church will split over its ethical and social teaching, but also—and perhaps more profoundly—“the way authority was expressed.” That wouldn’t be unprecedented, of course. But is it inevitable? Well, gosh: on that question, it seems, there is a range of thoughtful opinion.
Bo Sanders, Concern About the Collapse of the Mainline Liberal
I find myself in an interesting position as one employed at a healthy and growing Mainline church that is about to begin an emergent expression this Fall with the addition of a second gathering. It has been said by numerous folks that I bring an evangelical zeal to being progressive. But when I read stuff about the bigger picture I feel like I showed up at the prom around 11.
Very good material here, everyone. Much to think about. Thanks for compiling it for easier access.
Brian, you’ve done a good job with a series of posts in the last little while about how Seminary is becoming irrelevant, how there’s tension between academia and orthodoxy, how the investment isn’t always worth it for the student, how current curriculum doesn’t necessarily produce good pastors etc. This is sad because it’s basically pointing out out that pastors are not being fed (at least by seminaries). It is disappointing that ‘Christianity’ does not seem healthy at the moment, but not entirely unexpected; this is what happens when teachers become blind [Isa 9:16][Jer 12:9-10][Hosea 4:6] esp. [Jer 50:6][Matt 15:13-14].
[Rev 6:12-13] says “When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.”
The comment on the fig tree shedding its fruit in winter is interesting because it relates to something Jesus said to his disciples. In [Mark 13:28] the parable of the fig tree, Jesus teaches that when her branches are yet tender, and puts forth leaves, we are to know that summer is near [Mark 13:29]. Jesus tied knowledge of the seasons, and this parable specifically to faith in the Kingdom of God in [Luke 21:29-31]. Not to put too fine a point on it, notice also what he says to the blind teachers in [Luke 12:54-56] about discerning events in the kingdom of God.
Similarly in [Luke 12:54-56] Jesus represented his mission as a ‘season’ to be discerned (also [Mark 12:2][Gal 6:9]). This imagery works well with His mountain, the Kingdom representation as;
-a vineyard [Isa 5:1,3-7,7]][Isa 1:8][Matt 20:1-2,4,7-8];
-a tree [Psalm 1:3][Psalm 52:8][Psalm 92:12][Pro 11:30][Isa 17:6][Isa 24:13][Matt 3:10][Matt 7:17][Rom 11:17,24][James 3:12]; and
-vine/branches [Eze 19:10][Isa 34:4][Isa 36:16][Isa 17:10][Isa 32:12][Jer 8:13][John 15:1][John 15:4-5] etc.
Scripture was so full of this kingdom metaphor, saying its meaning plainly ([Isaiah 5:7][Jer 2:21][Jer 6:9][Hos 10:1][Hos 14:7]) that it is difficult to understand how anyone could have missed it at all. Yet the hypocrites of [Luke 12:56] could not discern the prophetic season of His mission despite its clear and unambiguous reference in scripture [Hos 14:7][Eze 17:4-9][Isa 4:2][Isa 32:12]. But Peter, James, and John, all believers, could also not understand [Mark 13:4][Luke 21:7].
In [Mark 13:28] He instructed them to recognize the season by starting with a parable that related the emergence of their faith (and Christ-likeness) to his ministry, which had been predicted by the prophets. Jesus pointed out that they were in spring (i.e. summer was near) because the branches had becomes tender and put out their leaves. We know from from [Hos 10:1][Jer 2:21][Jer 6:9][Isa 5:2][Isa 24:7][John 15:1,3,5,8,12] what the branches were, and who the vine was. Likewise, we know that the buds were evidence of Christ-likeness emerging within the assembly of the elect from [Matt 7:17,20]. When Jesus engaged in his ministry, true faith in God sprouted and grew like leaf-buds in spring.
We can learn something from the Revelation quote too however; and that is that we are not to go about like the witless hypocrites, failing to recognize the sign of the times. Jesus wanted his disciples to recognize their season from the emergence of Christ-likeness, as a result of his ministry. The discussion Jesus had with his disciples lead to the parable of the fig tree and a lesson on how the season could be determined from what happened to the tree.
Looking again at what Jesus says in [Rev 6:12-13] except this time we won’t be looking at what he was saying to the generation of budding branches who could not know of anything but their own season. Rather we should look instead at what he was saying to later generations, for though Jesus was speaking to his disciples when He spoke (in Mark), and John (in Revelation), He was looking squarely at us! This is the generation when the fig tree is shedding its winter fruit, the branch is shrivelling and shedding frail leaves; faith is being lost .
It is reasonable to conclude that when the branch gives off its leaves and the fig tree sheds its winter fruit, winter is most certainly here; which is a sense of where in the season we are.