Slacktivist says it like it is

It occurs to me that I've been essentially neglecting any writing about the Discourse of Decline recently - and just on time, Fred Clark (a smarter man than I) delivers:

Everybody knows that evangelical churches are more theologically conservative and orthodox. And everybody knows that mainline Protestant denominations are liberal and heterodox....

It goes something like this:

1: Find the most liberal theologians you can from mainline Protestant denominations — Tillich! Spong! — and then sketch caricatures of them that make them seem as outrageously liberal as possible.

2. Make these caricatures the avatars for mainline Protestant churches, always suggesting that they are typical, hugely popular and influential.

3. Cite this outrageous theological liberalism as the cause of mainline “decline.”

4. Contrast this mainline liberalism with the orthodoxy of evangelical churches.

5. Cite evangelical orthodoxy as the cause of the rapid growth of evangelicalism.

6. Lather, rinse, repeat. For years and years and years.

This is propaganda. It’s the shell-game that we evangelicals have been playing for decades now. And it’s a shifty, dishonest trick.

Fred, you nailed it.

What is the Discourse of Decline?

Growing up, the narrative I heard (pretty much from Bruce Bawer onward, at least) was about the worrying rise of "fundamentalism." The word eventually changed to "evangelicalism," but there was still that sense of being overwhelmed; the awareness that we were struggling even as the local megachurch exploded, eventually drawing my sister (and thus my mother) until it burned them both out.

What I've read, what I've heard, the Christians I've spoken to, the non-Christians I've spoken to - all of them share an overarching narrative about the history and fate of American Protestantism. That narrative runs something like this:

• The mainline churches are the hegemonic ones in America. I use "hegemonic" both in the conventional sense of "dominant" and the Gramscian sense of "normative, such that outsiders are forced to define themselves relative to it."
• The mainline churches have lost the Mandate of Heaven. They no longer take the faith seriously, and have increasingly accomodated to the secular world.
• The Mandate of Heaven is passing to the evangelicals. Evangelicals, who do take the faith seriously and present it in an unadulterated form, are growing like gangbusters picking up those who leave (or are left behind by) increasingly irrelevant mainline Protestantism.

The only problem with the narrative is that it's not true.

Why the fundamentalists win

Last month, Ross "Don't" Douthat took the opportunity to concern-troll the mainline after some fallout with the Episcopalian General Conference. A bunch of bloggers I follow wrote in response, and reading them was a humbling experience; they're all smarter folks than I, and what did I have to say? Nothing, that's what. Because I was in Niantic at the time, gorging myself on books on spiritual formation at $3 apiece. I didn't even discover the kerfluffle until a week later.

I was really meaning to write something about it. Anarchist Reverend's post "Progressive vs. Liberal" got me wanting to write something about it (or at least about related topics.) But then, yesterday, Slacktivist brought it up again: "Progressive religious voices not irrelevant, just ignored."

This is particularly big for me because, as I've written before, I have some issues with tribalism in my past, and I've read enough Nietzsche to be leery of ressentiment. I don't want this to turn into an excuse to curse the right and mourn the mainline.

I want to contribute to this discussion. I want to think substantial thoughts, and say substantial words. I'm tired of being a commenter. I want to write.