{"id":7645,"date":"2004-03-24T09:49:40","date_gmt":"2004-03-24T09:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/christianity_unraveling.html"},"modified":"2004-03-24T09:49:40","modified_gmt":"2004-03-24T09:49:40","slug":"christianity_unraveling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/christianity_unraveling.html","title":{"rendered":"Christianity Unraveling"},"content":{"rendered":"

An article from the Public Interest<\/a><\/p>\n

Since the late nineteenth century and the emergence of the Social Gospel, the typical response of the mainline churches to the challenge of secularism has been to capitulate to it. Every one of these churches has been advancing (or retreating) from Christian orthodoxy down the road of secular progressivism. They have not done so without hesitation and confusion, which have sometimes brought them to the brink of schism. Nonetheless, within each of these churches, certainly at the national level, progressivism has eventually prevailed across the board.<\/p>\n

This same pattern has obtained, mutatis mutandis, even in the Catholic Church. It was slower to embark on this course than the others, for the Papacy spurned \u201cmodernism\u201d until after World War II. The Second Vatican Council changed all that. True, papal authority has constrained the church in America, as elsewhere, from giving ground on certain bedrock issues. These aside, it has participated fully in the ecumenical progressivist consensus. <\/p>\n

Similarly, within the pastoral realm, the discourse of psychotherapy and personal fulfillment appears to have established itself as thoroughly in the mainline churches as in the lay world. Those who are looking for something different in church than is on offer outside it are increasingly less likely to find it there. Each of these denominations has by now alienated its more traditionalist members, especially during these recent decades of increasing cultural polarization, and many have voted with their feet. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nOne of the problems I have with this article is the characterization of American evangelical Protestantism as being some sort of bulwark against cultural progressivism. I don’t see it. In fact, I see popular evangelical Protestantism as just as much in thrall to the discourse of “personal fulfillment” as the mainline churches, and just as much enthralled by the culture, just in a different way. There really is, outside perhaps of places like Wheaton and Eerdmans Press and various journals, not a seriously unique, theologically challenging evangelical cultural movement as the author suggests . On the popular level, which is where most people are – it is primarily about answering the latest bubblings from the secular culture and aping it. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article from the Public Interest Since the late nineteenth century and the emergence of the Social Gospel, the typical response of the mainline churches to the challenge of secularism has been to capitulate to it. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}