Rod Dreher (raised Southern Baptist, was Catholic until he lost his faith over the abuse scandals, now Eastern ORthodox) has some instructive posts on his blog about the decline of the "mainstream" American Protestant denominations, the way in which bureaucratisation encourages a mindset which identifies the church with clerical and lay "experts" and sees the pewsitters in the congregation as troublemakers and a problem (now that I think of it, political parties tend to see rank and file members in exactly this way too - are the trends related) and how younger American fundamentalists/evangelicals increasingly see America not as the NEw ISrael, a chosen people who can be mobilised to take the country back for God as the Moral Majority generation of the 70s and 80s did, but as Babylon, where the faithful must live in exile among a fundamentally hostile society and hope for bare tolerance. There is a very clear Irish parallel for the last one, don't you think:
www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/last-episcopalian-been-born/EXTRACT
It’s the same with churches. Philip Jenkins is right: the last Episcopalian may have been born (though certainly not the last Anglican; there’s a difference). That being the case, it is beyond absurd to see the Connecticut Episcopalians doubling down on the progressivist strategies that have done nothing to arrest the church’s decline, and that have arguably exacerbated it. Why do organizations do things like this?
Example: The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the organization that represents most Catholic nuns and sisters in the US, is dying. There are as many American nuns over the age of 90 as under the age of 60; the average age of an American nun is 74. Yet in 2012, the LCWR invited this blissed-out weirdo to be the keynote speaker at its national assembly. (N.B., not all American nuns are affiliated with the LCWR; 20 percent belong to a more traditional organization for nuns. Though the alternative organization represents only about one-fifth to one-sixth of the number of nuns represented by LCWR, the traditionalists are getting most of the new vocations.)
When the rate of decline of your church or religious organization is so steep that it is possible that someone born today may live to see it evaporate, and you have the leadership class of those churches or religious organizations responding with crackpot gestures, what else do you do? It’s like watching those African tribal fighters don gris-gris charms they believe will make them invisible, then go into war against people with real guns...
The myth (in the sense of the story that helps them make sense of the world) that they believe is not the myth of historically normative Christianity, but the myth of Progressivism. From my point of view, it’s a radically false gospel, in that it cannot be reconciled with historic Christianity. But it has a powerful hold on the minds of many.
Sociologist Philip Rieff, in The Triumph of the Therapeutic, observed that institutions die when they can no longer communicate their core values to the next generation in a convincing way. He said this to support his contention (in 1966!) that Christianity was dying in the West, because we Westerners have become hostile to the ascetic spirit that is inextricable from authentic Christianity, and has been from the beginning. As you know, I believe Rieff was right, and that his being right is not something that traditional Christians should take comfort in, except in this one way: a Christianity that does demand something sacrificial from its followers is not only being true to the nature of the religion, but is far more likely to engender the kind of devotion that will endure through the therapeutic dark age. Aside from its radical theological innovations that are impossible to harmonize with Christianity as it was known for its first 1,900 years, Progressive Christianity has fully embraced the therapeutic mindset, in the sense that Rieff means. It is dying because it cannot convince young people to embrace its values within the institutional churches. It can’t be denied that many of the young do accept the social liberalism embraced by the progressive churches, but it also can’t be denied that most of them don’t see why they have to be part of a church to be socially progressive.
Theological conservatives had better watch out with this. If you raise up young people to believe that the truth of their theological beliefs is determined by the quality of their emotional experience in worship, you are undermining your foundations. Anyway, the universal challenge faced by Christianity in the West is how to communicate its values to a generation whose “myth” is inimical to the Christian message
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www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/death-by-church-bureaucracy/EXTRACTS
I have no experience at all with church bureaucracies, but Billingsley’s comments did bring to mind what a Catholic friend with long experience working for the Catholic Church’s bureaucracy told me back during the early days of the abuse scandal. She said that people who work for, or who have worked for, the Church were not surprised by any of it. It’s not like they knew the extent of the destruction and corruption, but rather that it did not shock them that an institution that runs like the Catholic Church does could breed an internal culture in which abuse was tolerated and perpetuated.
As I recall — my memory could be faulty — she explained that the clergy believed (consciously or unconsciously) that the Church existed for their benefit. That is, “the Church” referred to the institution; therefore, the good of the Church was, to their way of thinking, what was good for the class that managed the bureaucracy. This, by the way, was by no means confined only to the ordained. Laypeople who worked for the bureaucracy and that had absorbed the bureaucratic mindset were just as culpable.
I think this tells us little about Christianity and much about bureaucracy. People from outside the bureaucratic structure typically have no idea how much being on the inside affects the way you see things. A good friend of mine worked for a big company that, because of changing market conditions, began losing a significant amount of business. He was in management there, and told me that the leadership class within the company was truly concerned about what they could do to turn around their situation. The thing was, all their proposed solutions favored what the managerial elites wanted to do in the first place. That is, they would consider no possible measures that would mean doing something that challenged their own settled convictions, and certainly nothing that would harm their own perceived internal interests.
Result: the company continued to lose market share, and the bureaucratic managers grew increasingly anxious. It’s been years since we talked, but the main thing I recall from that conversation was that in his view, the management (again, of which he was a part) was so immersed in its own bubble that it did not understand how blinded it was by its own interests...
Again, this is not a Christian thing, specifically, but a function of bureaucratic mindsets within government, industry, academia, and all complex social entities. Being religious does not liberate you from being human. It can, though, convince you that whatever you’re doing as a leader within a religious bureaucracy must be right, because you are serving God. I’ll never forget the case in which a Catholic bishop told an adult victim of a priest’s sexual abuse — the priest was the woman’s confessor, and used information he gained in the confessional to blackmail her, a married woman, into a sexual relationship — that if she went to the authorities with this story, he, her bishop, would ruin her, “because I have to protect the people of God.” True story.
Anyway, as I said, if you work for a church bureaucracy, or have worked for one, I would love to hear your stories. Does Billingsley’s account seem right to you? If not, why not?
UPDATE: Startling comment by reader Jeff:
Denominational bureaucracy in two other “mainline Protestant” denominations I’ve worked with, the tradition in which I’m ordained and the one in which I did extensive supply preaching and consulting in, is exactly as the lead commenter described.
I respect very much Roger Talbott’s comment about the need for and the occasional positive aspects of “middle judicatory” life, but in the three Midwestern states I’ve served in as pastor and professional, all of the mainline Protestant bodies have a startlingly liberal, careerist, and I would say un-parish oriented staff cadre. There are various cynical and sarcastic explanations for how such folk end up in those jobs, but the striking thing to me is that since World War II, the denominational histories and documentation confirm what’s even more the case today: they see congregations as the problem, not a solution.
And frankly, when in personal conversation, a shocking percentage of them not only do not believe in any sort of orthodox supernaturalism (now, Reiki or homeopathy, those are big with them), I’ve had more than a couple admit “I don’t believe in God.” I (sadly) got used to my fellows in ministry not believing in the Resurrection from before seminary, but not even believing in God still leaves me breathless.
In two cases, I had the opportunity and presence of mind to say, I hope compassionately, “So why don’t you quit?” And both said the same words, years apart: “What else would I do?”
I once asked a Catholic priest friend how on earth the bishops could have done the things that they have done, re: the scandal. It just made no sense to me. He looked at me soberly and said, “I think a lot of them just don’t believe in God.”
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www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/changing-catholic-flag-douthat/www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/america-from-israel-to-babylon/EXTRACTS
My Southern Baptist friend and reader Ryan Booth cited this quote from Trevin Wax, from a piece he did on how a new generation of Southern Baptists differs from the old guard:
It’s common to hear the story of young evangelicals fleeing conservative churches and embracing center-left politics. I don’t see this happening among young Southern Baptist pastors. What I do see is less emphasis on bringing change through political engagement and more emphasis on dealing pastorally with the implications of a secularizing society.
When I talk with older Southern Baptists about recent cultural developments, I get the impression that many of them see mobilization of Christian voters as the best way to effect change. When I talk with younger Southern Baptists, I get the impression that the landscape has shifted to the point they expect to be a minority. Therefore, the strategy becomes more about preserving space for Christian morality and less about enshrining our views in law. This is a generalization, but I think there’s truth here: Older Southern Baptists are more likely to see the U.S. as Israel. Younger Southern Baptists are more likely to see the U.S. as Babylon. That’s a significant shift, and it leads to a different tone.
That expresses my view exactly. “Babylon” here refers to the Babylonian captivity, where the Israelites lived as strangers in a strange land. This is the reality of where orthodox Christians find themselves today. Those Christians who understand this and figure out how to live and to thrive in Babylon will make it. Those Christians who persist on thinking that we are living in the Promised Land will not, in large part because they will not have prepared themselves. If you haven’t read my TAC colleague Samuel Goldman’s piece from a while back on what he calls “The Jeremiah Option,” please do.
Take a look at these quotes from a report on a conference on marriage and the family in contemporary America that the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission had this week:
Addressing Christian ministry in a “post-marriage culture,” R. Albert Mohler opened the event by saying the crisis regarding the biblical, traditional definition of marriage as a permanent union of a man and a woman began “with the heterosexual subversion of marriage.”
“The divorce revolution has done far more harm to marriage than same-sex marriage will ever do,” the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary told the audience made up primarily of pastors and other young adults. Heterosexuals “showed how to destroy marriage by making it a tentative, hypothetical union for so long as it may last, turning it only into a contract” that produced a “consumer good,” Mohler said.
“By the time the moral revolution on same-sex relations arrived on the scene, most of the moral revolution had already happened,” he said.
More:
Western civilization is in the final stage of a moral revolution — one that is “happening at warp speed,” Mohler told attendees. British theologian Theo Hobson has said three things must happen for a moral revolution to occur. Those developments, Mohler said, are:
– “Something that was nearly universally condemned is now nearly universally celebrated.
– “That which was celebrated is condemned.
– “Those who refuse to celebrate are condemned.”
The church is now in a position of being “a moral minority,” Mohler said.
“We are accustomed to ministry from the top side in the culture, not from the underside,” he said. “We are accustomed to speaking from a position of strength and respect and credibility. And now we are going to be facing the reality that we are already, in much of America, speaking from a position of a loss of credibility.”
Responding to this situation, Mohler said, “is going to take an awful lot of Christian thinking. It’s going to take a lot of prayer, a lot of agonizing conversations. . . . the kind of conversations that take place in the middle of an emergency.”
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