WHEN the New York Times wants the opinion of respectable religion on an issue of the day, its reporter inevitably seeks out an Episcopal bishop, a Presbyterian minister, or a Reform rabbi; and so those Americans who rely on the Official Media for news can be forgiven for thinking that the liberal “mainline” churches represent the mainstream of religious faith. At the same time, despite random signs of life—such as the ever-presence of Unitarian minister Robert Fulghum on the bestseller list —there is a sense among those who follow such things that liberal religion is on the decline, that in the marketplace of faith the conservative denominations have got the upper hand.
This isn’t what children growing up in liberal Jewish or Christian homes were told to expect. These children have long been taught that orthodoxy and fundamentalism are dying anachronisms—that, in the modern world, a “contemporary,” enlightened view of God and man is the only viable stance. And yet that opinion has itself turned out to be an anachronism. What has happened to liberal religion?
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