The Pope of Protestantism
Monday, May 7, 2007
I happened to be at the magisterial Riverside Church a few days ago doing research for my new book. I had never been to what's sometimes viewed as the Vatican of liberal Protestantism and I was blown away by the beauty and quirkiness of the building. It may be modeled on Chartres, but only Riverside has Einstein carved above the front door. And Darwin!
Coincidentally, my friend Sam Freedman has an outstanding article in the NYT about the challenges the church is having finding a new minister. I recommend this piece highly, though my own visit this week suggests the problems may be even deeper than Sam is able to get on the record, including that the 2,700 member figure quoted here is greatly exaggerated.
Since being founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1930, Riverside has often and justifiably been likened to the Vatican for America’s mainstream Protestants, the theologically and politically liberal segment of the faith. The church’s first minister, Harry Emerson
Fosdick, and successors like William Sloane Coffin, used Riverside as a national pulpit from which to preach social justice, civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, among other causes.
Yet now, as Riverside prepares to search for a new senior minister for only the sixth time in its history, mainstream Protestants are struggling to reverse a decades-long pattern of losing numbers, vitality and influence to their evangelical Protestant competitors. Between 1990 and 2000 alone, mainstream denominations like the Episcopal, Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches and the United Church of Christ lost 5 percent to 15 percent of their members, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Riverside is interdenominational but is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Baptist Church
The confluence of challenge, opportunity and visibility, then, makes Riverside’s selection of a new leader important not only for the 26 million adherents of mainline Protestantism but also for the shape of American religion as a whole.
Labels: Christianity
Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM
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It is interesting to me that having a heart for social justice and being evangelical are so often described as mutually exclusive. I don't think anyone who takes their Christian faith seriously is really like that.
To be a Christian, and take the calling seriously, means that you are evangelical. In our Great Commission we are called to "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Matthew 28:19-20 NIV
It is my opinion (and only that) that churches are losing members because of the empty messages from the pulpit. People may be attracted to the shallow feel-good messages of the social gospel, but when they are grow in their faith, they find so many inconsistencies in what they hear from the pulpit. The main inconsistency is that churches send the message that the "obey" part isn't really necessary. So moral relativity grows in the church. People don't really have a desire for that. They grow tired of "anything goes", and the "mainstream" churches find out that they are adrift!