The 2 million member Presbyterian Church (USA) has become the latest mainline Protestant denomination to implode on sexual standards. On May 10, Presbyterians in Minneapolis became the needed 87th local presbytery to vote for deleting the denomination’s expectation for ministers and elders of “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.”
These Presbyterians now join the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in adopting a liberalized policy of permitting clergy to be sexually active outside heterosexual marriage. Among the larger (and historically liberal) mainline Protestant denominations, only the United Methodist Church, with 7.7 million U.S. members, still officially prohibits clergy sexually active outside traditional marriage. Almost uniquely international in membership, with over 4 million members now in Africa, where Christianity is very conservative and fast growing, United Methodism almost certainly will retain its sexual standard.
But the rest of once preeminent mainline Protestantism in America is collapsing. The PCUSA was already losing about 60,000 members a year, a figure that surely will increase now, as it did for Episcopalians and Lutherans after their divisive votes to liberalize the sex teachings, in 2003 and 2009 respectively. Forty-five years ago, one in every six Americans belonged to the “seven sister” mainline Protestant denominations. Today, only one in 15 Americans still does. Although secular elites often portray a secularizing America, actual church attendance in America has remained remarkably constant across the last 75 years. But among non-Catholic Christians, attendance has shifted from mainline Protestant to more evangelical churches.
The implosion of U.S. mainline Protestantism almost certainly will continue indefinitely, a trend to which church elites are largely indifferent. Their nearly all white, mostly college-educated, upper-middle-class memberships, buttressed by endowments from earlier generations, help to ensure that even empty churches can stay open. PCUSA members, spread across over 10,000 congregations, continue to give over $2 billion every year.
Although not unexpected, it’s still a sad moment for traditional Presbyterians, who first ratified the “fidelity and chastity” expectation in the 1990s with hopes of staving off sexual liberalization. “This is a lonely day for Presbyterians who believe what the Bible and the Church have consistently taught,” commented my colleague Alan Wisdom, a long time combatant in PCUSA politics. “Now we belong to a denomination that is no longer sure it believes that teaching.”
And it’s a sad day for America. The mainline denominations date to America’s earliest days. They profoundly shaped our national ethos, mostly for the good. Can Catholics and evangelicals fill the void? Hopefully so. But all of us should mourn the decline of yet one more once-great church.
— Mark Tooley is President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.
How people who mix milk with meat, eat pork and shelfish and don't stone people to death who work on the sabbath can get so exercised about homosexuality based on biblical text is beyond me.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne need not be Christian, or even concerned with anything the Bible says (whichever book one reads) to be "exorcised" about homosexuality.
Encouraging, or even condoning it, is harmful to humanity's progress.
What % of society's population can be homosexual before the species diminishes?
I know socialists desire fewer humans, and believe very strongly that government policy should reduce the # of humans (as we've seen throughout the past century).
But what is the ulterior motive to promulgate that lifestyle among non-socialists?
At the risk of being called an anti-Semite (which is getting to be a real gas):
As an American Jew, I find the liberalization of Protestantism to be very, very sad, really. It means fewer institutions upholding the beauty of human nature. With my own faith abandoning that around, oh, 1870, who's left?
Morally, I guess I'll become more and more akin to an evangelical.
:)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRightofCenter- you must not understand anything about Christian moral theology. Christian teaching is based on Scripture, tradition, and reason. The New Testament and the early Church generally did away with the ceremonial rules of Judaism, including rules about kosher food. Marriage is not in this category; it has been regarded by Christians through history as a profoundly important and primarily non-ceremonial institution. That is why for thousands of years it was not regarded as wrong for Christians to eat shellfish, even as marriage was unquestioned as an institution. These 'mainline' Protestant denominations are losing members: and for good reason. When you become wedded to the spirit of the age, you become widowed when the age has past.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's OK Right of Center, for you live in America. You are free in this, dare I say, exceptional, country to believe or not believe what you wish. If I were you, though, I would keep an eye out for a Presbyterian looking to behead you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's interesting that Eastern Orthodoxy faces no pressure either from within or without to update it's traditions on marriage and clergy. With 250 million adherents worldwide, everyone just seems to know that Orthodoxy will remain orthodox.
If you're an unhappy Protestant (as I was), I suggest giving either an Orthodox Church of America (OCA) parish a look, or my own jurisdiction, Antiochian, a look. Neither are wed to a single nationality like Greek, Ukrane, or Romanian Orthodox Churches.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"What % of society's population can be homosexual before the species diminishes?"
Hate to break it to you but homosexuality is not a new invention.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Having a form of godliness, but denying its power."
That the financial endowment of previous generations provides for the churches to remain open, even though devoid of parishioners, is a picture of our culture's current status in so many ways.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe collapse of our system of churches is a step that will preclude a collapse of far more...
The good news is not that the mainline Protestant churches have given in to Leftism, but that the members of those churches are going elsewhere, in search of a faith that can serve as a bedrock for their lives.
For guys like "Right of Center", mocking people who are exorcised over these issues, they find their bedrock elsewhere... for the Left, it tends to be in Leftism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf one must cite kosher food to make one's point, one has already lost the argument.
Here's why someone who learned the kusher laws never would follow them, regardless of what a book says:
Modern technology renders them irrelevant. A stove is in the home of every poor person, as is a fridge. The absence of those appliances violates the implied "warranty of habitability" applicable to leases for poor people like me in all 50 states. And those two appliances alone render the "purity" laws irrelevant.
And a tradition with no modern purpose loses at least one adherent to it - me.
As well, I never appreciated two practical downsides of keeping kosher:
1) I could not break bread freely with my fellows. How inhuman! I like my fellows, and I enjoy very much sharing meals with them. And I am not so rude as to bring Styrofoam containers with plastic utensils to my fellows' homes.
2) I cannot afford it. Aside from the cost of the food itself, which is 1.5 times higher than all other food stuffs, I'd need two of every appliance and two sets of dishwear and glasswear.
Keeping kosher in our modern society is not Pauper-friendly. :) EVEN IF I wanted to be segregated at my tables - a horrific concept to my brain's synapses.
As for my soul throughout eternity: I'll take my chances!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIlove approaching a person with a "coexist" sticker on his car and asking him a series of questions:
Where are Jews fighting Christians?
Where are Shintoists fighting Hindus?
Where are Pagans fighting Rastafarians?
Where are Animists fighting Agnostics?
The only question I never ask is, Where are Muslims fighting?
Because they are fighting EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE in the world.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am not sure whether we mourn the loss of these mainline denominations or not. As someone who was raised in a mainline Protestant church and moved to Evangelicalism in my later years, it is my view that about the only thing that has remained unchanged about these denominations is their name. Homosexuality is not the only area where they stray from orthodoxy. Of course, i would hope that they would se the error of their ways and repent, but to the degree that they lead souls astray, perhaps we should be thankful for their decline in influence.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Right of Center - you have proven your ignorance of Christian theology and the primacy of the New Testament.
As a PC(USA) member, I am appalled that the clear meaning of the Letters of Paul are being ignored and predict that the offensive language with respect to homosexual conduct will be "edited out" of the bible that mainline churches use, much as communists edited history to honor the victors and write the vanquished out of history.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusemadisonian,
Kashrut has nothing whatsoever to do with food safety.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was born and raised in the Presbyterian Church and served as an elder, a trustee and a deacon, sang in the choir, served on too many committees to count and taught church school. This fight has been ongoing for decades and it was only a matter of time before the liberal voices in the church had their way. I greatly admired my minister, but he and I parted company on Planned Parenthood - he served on the board - and gay clergy.
I haven't attended a Presbyterian Church in more than 20 years because it is no longer the church I was born and raised in. The subtle infusion of liberal values into the Presbyterian Church is similar to what has happened to our country over the last few decades. When we should have stood up and fought for what we believed in, we went along to get along and, too late, we realized our mistake.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Hate to break it to you but homosexuality is not a new invention."
No, no! I'm SO GLAD you "broke the news"! I've been an amoeba, hiding under rocks for hundreds of thousands of years, and LO! I just awoke, in this "human" capsule, so please! Excuse-ay moi?
Pretty Please?
Here's MY little newsflash:
What is SO novel, for human society, is the notion that promulgating, encouraging and condoning an abhorrent lifestyle that threatens the very survival of the species makes one AT ALL "enlightened".
Believe as you wish. Condescend at your own peril.
I repeat my question you quoted, since you failed to even attempt to answer it, while you were busy "stooping down" to deign to respond!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh? Eating shellfish is immoral?
Why?
I was doing the Rabbis I have spoken to a favor, by extrapolating for them the reason kosher laws were put into the Torah, because even Orthodox Rabbis have told me that the specific reason for them is unknown.
When they figure it out, I'll listen. If you've beaten them to it, do tell! Oh, do tell!
Inform this dolt!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSad indeed, when a church bows to pressure to conform to a culture that is self-destructive and intolerant (yes, the left is extremely intolerant of any other views) and loses its ability to bring light and healing to the world.
If my grandparents were alive, they would feel so betrayed - as do many who have remained in apostate churches.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRasputin:
"And let us all say -- AMEN!"
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusemadisonian: I've been told that the reason for the kosher rules, like many of the other rules in the old testament had to do with setting the Jewish people apart from other cultures and to demonstrate the futility of trying to earn your way into heaven by following a list of rules.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor those who are Protestant and who love traditional worship services, you might want to try a conservative Anglican congregation in your area. There are several now which have broken from the Episcopal Church USA. I attended a great conservative parish in Savannah, Georgia for a while, which went through terrible struggles because of property issues with the Episcopal Church, but which thrived and was full of life.
Its a good reminder that Christianity often thrives in suffering, as we see in places like China.
I don't want to discourage anyone from trying other good, Biblical churches, and I appreciate the suggestions of others here such as Rocket_J_Squirrel, but I also wanted to put in a positive word for the conservative Anglicans.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse