Mainline Protestant and Evangelical denominations both declining, how do we change that?

[Eryk]

And the repetitiveness of the liturgies and rituals leads to rote, disengaged behaviour.

Evangelical service: Song, slower song, louder song, announcements and offering, sermon - every time, utterly predictable. I was a Catholic and now I am a Protestant, and I have seen plenty of disengaged behavior. Lay Catholics who have not educated themselves in the meaning of the liturgy, and Protestant preachers who tell jokes from the pulpit have all contributed to a general lack of a sense of the sacred.

If a Spurgeon or MacLaren or Lloyd-Jones preached today, many would not have the patience to sit through their sermons, the vocabulary would go over their heads, and they would be bored to tears in the presence of rhetorical brilliance. An anti-intellectual culture, and a materialist/consumerist worldview that does not take spirit seriously, accounts for the decline of Christianity in the West. What's left? An obsession with politics.

 

[Paidiske]

FireDragon, Gracia Singh, I wonder whether talking about Christianity as having particular consistent characteristics of a sub-culture might be more helpful?

The gospel has been enculturated wherever it has gone, and that's not necessarily a bad thing; so expecting believers in, say, Russia and Brazil and the Congo and Indonesia (just to grab a random bunch of countries) to exhibit a consistent culture of their own is probably not very realistic. But you're right that all of those Christians should have things in common which are distinct from the non-Christians around them.

 

[aiki]

Evangelical service: Song, slower song, louder song, announcements and offering, sermon - every time, utterly predictable. I was a Catholic and now I am a Protestant, and I have seen plenty of disengaged behavior.

So have I. I didn't say, though, that evangelicals aren't disengaged; I only shared what the former Catholics I know have said to me. It seems much of evangelical Christianity is in a slow slide toward general apostasy as the sensual Christianity of the NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) movement takes hold. As you say, Protestant evangelicals have over the last fifty years or so been juvenilized in their faith. Consequently, their experience as believers is shallow, frustrating and lifeless which primes them for the "sound and fury" - and eventual spiritual disillusionment - of the NAR.

 

[FireDragon76]

Gracia, I don't see Christians as necessarily having a distinct culture. The Gospel does not require us to adopt a particular culture. One of the tragedies of American evangelicalism is confusing the Gospel with the folkways and mores of a certain segment of society.

On the whole, judging by these forums, non-Christian people in our society do not necessarily have bad values. And some people that call themselves Christian in this culture have poor values.

 

[dzheremi]

Gracia, I don't see Christians as necessarily having a distinct culture.

Perhaps this statement may apply to some of the Mainline or Evangelical churches that the OP refers to, to whatever extent they have lost their culturally distinctive practices (I really don't know), but that can't possibly be true across Christianity. Even sticking just to Protestantism, since that's the OP, what of the Gaelic Psalm singing from the isle of Lewis that I presented earlier? What about the various kinds of singing associated with the different Baptists (the 'primitive', 'old regular', etc.; sorry for the scare quotes, but I don't actually know what any of these mean, I just know they have some amazing chants) -- surely these are very culturally distinctive and uniquely Christian, as they developed in the way that they did in a Christian context.

Outside of more transparently obvious things like different chant forms of different peoples, there are various culturally-distinct ways of interpreting the scriptures (say, the Alexandrian, Antiochian, and Latin hermeneutic traditions), and various ways of communicating its message. St. Patrick and the clover would be a famous example that is unique to Western Christianity. That probably would not translate well outside of areas where the clover grows. Similarly, it is a tradition of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt to hang an ostrich egg before the iconostasis as a symbol of the resurrection and God's constant watching over us (as it is said that the ostrich will not take her eyes off of her eggs until they hatch). I've never heard of that in any other church, nor even seen it in any Coptic church in America (maybe ostrich eggs are hard to come by or import, or maybe they're there and I somehow haven't noticed for years).

The Gospel does not require us to adopt a particular culture.

Of course not. Why would advocating that Christians be culturally distinct from non-Christian society mean that we must all share the same culture if we are to be Christians? I didn't see that idea in anyone's posts here, so I'm a little confused why it is being brought up now, since it's not an answer to anything that anyone actually wrote. What am I missing?

One of the tragedies of American evangelicalism is confusing the Gospel with the folkways and mores of a certain segment of society.

I can imagine a few examples of that, yes, but I wonder how much of the tragedy of it is that they have done so (full stop), rather than that there appears to be so little discernment in the process concerning which parts of the culture are to be baptized and which are to be discarded, in either case for the good of the faith and those who seek it. If the gospel is to be above the folkways and mores of a certain segment of society (and I agree it is, and all churches should reflect this transcendence, as the house of God, the ark of salvation, the bride of Christ, and indeed the very body of Christ), then pretending that God is as stymied by cultural and political currents as we are isn't going to make that happen.

It appears from an outsider's perspective that at some point in the history of Christianity in the West it became completely unacceptable and downright un-Christlike to say that your preferences, your idea(l)s, your beliefs, indeed everything that you are must be placed in submission to Christ, baptized, crucified, and resurrected with Him. The holy scriptures counsel us: "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." (Romans 12:2)

Be transformed! This is why we end every liturgy by praying that the Lord have mercy upon us and save us and observe our repentance and bless us. The words in the original language really drive it home as the word that is usually translated in our liturgical texts as "repentance" is the Greek "metanoia" (Coptic form: ti-metanoia), which is "changing one's mind"; in a spiritual sense, a transformative change of heart as by spiritual conversion (source).

How is such a thing possible if we are not set apart from non-Christian cultures and societies in some ways, even (or especially) those elements of our own societies which would have us adopt an anti-Christ mindset in order to be considered good and faithful citizens?

 

[Paidiske]

Of course not. Why would advocating that Christians be culturally distinct from non-Christian society mean that we must all share the same culture if we are to be Christians? I didn't see that idea in anyone's posts here, so I'm a little confused why it is being brought up now, since it's not an answer to anything that anyone actually wrote. What am I missing?

I also thought he meant we should share one, Christian, culture; which is why I answered as I did about the possibility of Christian sub-cultures. Perhaps I misread it?

I think your third-last paragraph goes a bit too far, though. We might not live it very well, but I think even in the west Christianity has never stopped saying that being a Christian means submitting all that we are to Christ.

 

[dzheremi]

I also thought he meant we should share one, Christian, culture; which is why I answered as I did about the possibility of Christian sub-cultures. Perhaps I misread it?

Or perhaps I did. I guess we won't know unless Gracia Singh clarifies.

I think your third-last paragraph goes a bit too far, though. We might not live it very well, but I think even in the west Christianity has never stopped saying that being a Christian means submitting all that we are to Christ.

Pardon? I'm sorry, I did not mean to even slightly imply that Western Christians do not submit their all to Christ, but that the de-Christianization/shrinking/etc. that this thread is about is happening at a very fast rate in Western countries because at some point it became unacceptable to say that this is what must be done. For sure, there are many people who still do it (faithful Catholics, faithful Anglicans, faithful Presbyterians, etc.), but the number of people who might be described in those terms is apparently dropping, so I'm venturing to guess that this is so because nowadays when people hear (for example; I'm not saying any Western church in particular might have these specific customs) "You have to fast the Wednesday and Friday fasts; this goes back to the apostles, as contained in the Didache", people say "I don't have to do anything", or even worse "What's the Didache?" (though I guess that would explain why they don't think they have to do anything). Or if they are told to dress modestly to come to Church, or to abstain from sexual relations outside of marriage or within marriage during fasting periods, they might say "That's between me and God; who are you to judge me?", etc., etc. You get the point. The focus has shifted to what the individual wants to do, because modern Western societies are highly individualistic, so of course they've evolved forms of or approaches to Christianity that fit that mindset.

This ties into the wider point about Christian cultures versus wider (secular or otherwise non-Christian) cultures, because a lot of what negatively affects the practice of Christianity in the West goes unchallenged because the people who would presumably be most apt to do the challenging are also shaped by the wider society, so it's not so easy to separate yourself from a cultural setting where these kinds of ideas are like the air and water of Western life. Fasting? Vigils? Monastically-inclined prayer rules? I'm sorry...that's all stuff that happened hundreds of years ago, and no, we can't bring it back, because society as a whole has moved on.

Is this not essentially macro-level manifestation of our earlier discussion regarding the fate of chant in Anglicanism? As you put it there (liberally paraphrasing), when you have people who are hostile to traditional practices, and do not know how to lead, then how can you bring anything back?

So maybe at best you will have what you have observed in your own communion at a much larger scale, but with a much smaller population to fight over (or to care about any of this in the first place): a church divided, with some traditionalists and some modern people, and a lot of practices being lost or abandoned in the process of dealing with the resulting tension.

Or maybe something else will happen that none of us can know or plausibly predict.

 

[Paidiske]

Hmm. You make some good points.

Certainly I do not feel - outside certain very specific settings like confession - that I have the right to tell people what to do, even my own congregation. I can suggest, I can explain and encourage, I can inspire, but the days when we felt it was culturally acceptable for the priest to thump the pulpit and tell their congregation that unless they did "x" they were bad Christians has probably passed. We are now seen much more as guides and resources in the Christian life, than as rulers. How that relates to our broader discussion is something I would need to think about.

Certainly I think that it is double-edged; I am much more conscious of the potential to abuse my power, and much less likely to do so, than I think generations past of clergy were (and I think that's true of my generation in general). Whether, in avoiding abusing power, we pull back from using it well at times is a fair question to raise.

I don't mourn clericalism; I think it needed to die. But perhaps we have not found appropriate new ways to safeguard the treasures of our shared life which once were kept in place by clerical forces. That's something to think about some more.

 

[FireDragon76]

You know, just because the Coptic Church is ancient and perceives itself as unchanging doesn't mean they do everything the right way for us in North America. "Western" and "bad" are not necessarily synonymous. It has been my perception that many converts to Catholicism and Orthodoxy harbor overly authoritarian tendencies, and tend to judge other churches in light of that.

As a Lutheran, I believe in justification as the heart of the Gospel, not transformation. God freely justifies us, he declares us forgiven - if we are transformed into something we like better as a result, cool, if not... there is always the next world to sort things out.

Lutherans can and do fast. We just don't tell people they are sinning if they don't fast. We are less hostile to liturgical tradition than the Reformed (and some Anglicans), but we also recognize traditions are subject to critique when they do not serve the Gospel.

Lots of western people respect monastics. Maybe not necessarily in conservative evangelicalism, but I've never heard anyone at my church say anything bad about monastics. Quite the contrary, both our pastor and our vicar have significant contact with monasticism. However, our practice and theology is not rooted in monasticism, nor should it be. Lutherans do not believe in a class of people who are more sanctified than others.

 

[Paidiske]

As a Lutheran, I believe in justification as the heart of the Gospel, not transformation.

That deserves a thread of its own. I don't understand justification that doesn't transform.

But I think your last point is one we would share. Anglicans do not believe in special classes of Christians, even though we do now have monastics again.

 

[FireDragon76]

That deserves a thread of its own. I don't understand justification that doesn't transform.

If you noticed, I italicized being transformed "into something we like better". Nonetheless, transformation is something that Lutherans do not emphasize as much as the Reformed tradition. In Scotland and the early American colonies, this resulted in numerous controversies about perceived antinomianism, due to the prevailing legalism that swept over those churches.

As you said, you are uncomfortable with overly judgmental approaches. As you should be. You don't live somebody else's life, and in many cases, you don't know the people as well as you think you do. When dealing with real people ethics has to be personal, it can't deal in abstractions.

But I think your last point is one we would share. Anglicans do not believe in special classes of Christians, even though we do now have monastics again.

As do Lutherans. There have been Cistercians in Germany that became Lutheran during the Reformation, though they were quite small in number. We are not anti-monastic.

 

[dzheremi]

I'm not sure how much more explicit I can make this after having attempted to clarify what I mean and do not mean in my previous post to Paidiske, but I want to say again that the point is not "Western Christianity is bad" or "Western Christians are bad" or anything like that (and certainly not that I am better by any stretch of the imagination), but that there has been a shift in mindset that is at least somewhat unique to the West (being built on currents of philosophy and theology that arose in the West) that may help to explain the death of Christianity in Western societies. Of course not every Western person would or does reject or belittle monasticism, fasting, or any of this other stuff. Again, as I believe I wrote in that post, these are just meant to be examples of traditional Christian practices, not descriptions of what any particular church does, and certainly not indictments of what they may or may not do. Rather, the point is that those who would or do reject such practices often have those reactions to them -- hence chanting is put aside, fasting, vigils, and maybe, as other posters have noted, even the entire concept of liturgical worship.

Again: This does not happen everywhere, and it is thoroughly unfair to tar all of Western Christianity or all Western Christians with such a description (hence I already tried to explain that this is not what I am meaning to do). It's not a coincidence to me that the largest and oldest particular Western churches, such as the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, tend to be more liturgical and more concerned with preserving what they have been given, at least in their more traditional or 'high church' forms.

 

[FireDragon76]

I think if you studied the general public there would be a great deal of respect for liturgical worship, particularly in aesthetics (look at how Hollywood always uses all things Catholic as a trope, to stand in as a symbol for religion, because it's so visual). The issue alot of the unchurched or de-churched have with those churches are their social teachings being perceived as insensitive to the needs of contemporary people. The churches, for all their antiquity, lack credibility in moral matters. Many frankly perceive them as hypocritical. So alot of people respect the beauty of liturgy and traditional practices, but at the same time they feel alienated from adopting the religion.

And I actually think this is an outgrowth of the Protestant reformation, specifically Luther. And it's not a bad thing. People have learned to encounter God on their own terms, not through the hierarchy of a church, and most modern, educated people recognize that ethics is done within a community of moral deliberation where all the stakeholders can contribute to the discussion in a democratic fashion. This is an outrgrowth of the priesthood of believers.

 

[dzheremi]

I think if you studied the general public there would be a great deal of respect for liturgical worship, particularly in aesthetics (look at how Hollywood always uses all things Catholic as a trope, to stand in as a symbol for religion, because it's so visual). The issue alot of the unchurched or de-churched have with those churches are their social teachings being perceived as insensitive to the needs of contemporary people. The churches, for all their antiquity, lack credibility in moral matters. Many frankly perceive them as hypocritical. So alot of people respect the beauty of liturgy and traditional practices, but at the same time they feel alienated from adopting the religion.

Okay. I can only go by what people in this thread have told me, but probably that is one explanation. Other posters in this thread have made other observations, including a marked revulsion at anything that even appears liturgical on the part of at least some ex-Catholics-turned-Protestants (no doubt those same people would also reject the authority of the RCC and think it hypocritical, but that is not a discussion I feel very comfortable getting into, precisely because I am not here to trash Western Christianity; I would like to see it return its ancient status as the openly-proclaimed faith of Western societies). I would not be surprised if there are as many explanations for behavior as there are people to give them.

And I actually think this is an outgrowth of the Protestant reformation, specifically Luther. And it's not a bad thing. People have learned to encounter God on their own terms, not through the hierarchy of a church, and most modern, educated people recognize that ethics is done within a community of moral deliberation where all the stakeholders can contribute to the discussion in a democratic fashion. This is an outrgrowth of the priesthood of believers.

Alright. This is getting into matters of Protestant ecclesiology and hermeneutics that I don't even have the requisite knowledge to even begin to evaluate, so if you say so, then I believe that what you say is accurate in so far as it describes the life and mindset of your own church. I was attempting to take a wider view of things precisely because I don't know the specifics of Lutheran, Methodist, Anglican, etc. approaches to all this stuff.

Thank you for your insights and willingness to continue to discuss these matters despite the offense I appear to have unwittingly caused you with my earlier post.

 

[Paidiske]

I think there's a generation gap thing going on, too. The baby boomers are famous for eschewing liturgical worship, and for the move towards "contemporary," "seeker-sensitive," and so on approaches to worship.

The pendulum is actually swinging back the other way; many of us younger folk (I sit somewhere on the cusp of gen x and gen y, depending what date you pick as the transition point), if we're exposed to liturgical worship, prefer that. It's well recognised that millennials are seeking out liturgical worship (to the extent that they're seeking at all).

But they can't find what's not on offer, and in most places baby boomers still hold the reins, so...

 

[dzheremi]

Excellently stated, Paidiske. "They can't find what's not on offer."

Not to be morbid, but perhaps the future will look better on this front when the people who now hold the reins have passed on. I recall statements similar to the one you have made occasionally being voiced by more traditional young people in the Catholic parish I used to attend in a college town in the US state of Oregon. There the younger of the two priests (a Dominican in his early 30s or so) was actually far more traditional than the older priest, who was in his sixties. I once asked the younger priest why we have things like jazz bands, harp music, and other things that are not traditional to the Roman Catholic liturgy at this parish, and he literally told me "I've asked to get rid of it several times, but Father ____ (older priest) says that we need to be flexible and diverse if we are going to appeal to the youth who make up a lot of the congregation here." I almost wanted to say "But, Father, you and I are both 'the youth' in this context, and we both want more traditional practices! What if the youth would be receptive to traditional worship if it were actually offered regularly here?", but I held my tongue so as to not get him in trouble if his superior happened to be around.

 

[PhantomGaze]

As one who isn't Catholic, and who attends a Protestant and AOG church (even though I disagree with most of their theology), I think there's something mysterious and intriguing about ancient traditions and ways of connecting with God. I really wish my Church had something more than your normal lamesauce Protestant service previously described. Honestly, it's been a year since I've even been able to have communion. (Not that Protestants care about that anyway)

Moving past personal anecdotes:

From what is being described, the older generation finds the ritualism of Catholicism distasteful, and wants to abandon it, then the generation after finds Protestantism boring, and leaves church.

There's not much good arguing over which unsuccessful practice is better, why not just come up with something else?

...Or maybe the Institutional Church has become it's own enemy and now exists as a principality or power that opposes the kingdom of God for it's own mockup, and needs to be decentralized yet again?

 

[Albion]

Once again, generalizing is letting the speaker down. Have you ever considered attending, perhaps only as an occasional visitor, a Protestant church that has essentially the same worship service format as the RCC?

 

[PhantomGaze]

That sounds like an interesting idea, but In context of the greater discussion though, I'm not sure how it helps.

 

[Albion]

That sounds like an interesting idea, but In context of the greater discussion though, I'm not sure how it helps.

Well, what I saw in your post was this:
1. You say you are in disagreement with a lot of what the church you currently attend teaches.

2. You also said--

I really wish my Church had something more than your normal lamesauce Protestant service previously described. Honestly, it's been a year since I've even been able to have communion.

I see two important points in that snippet. In addition to wishing your church had a more uplifting service than it offers, you say that you have been so disaffected by it that you haven't received Communion in a year.

Beyond that, it looked to me that you were saying that the Catholic Mass was possibly better, at least as far as the style of the worship service is concerned. You didn't seem willing to become a Catholic because of this, but you might not know that the Lutheran Communion service and the Anglican/Episcopal Communion services are very similar to the Catholic Mass.

So, all in all, you might be interested in experiencing one or the other of them. That's all there was to my suggestion. It was a side issue to the topic of this thread, however, that's true.