***** Beyond the Mainline Tale
Walter Sundberg
Copyright (c) 1993 First Things 34 (June/July 1993): 55-57.
The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers In Our Religious Economy. By Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. Rutgers University Press. 325 pp. $22.95.
In mainline theological schools, divinity students are told a familiar tale about the church in modernity that goes something like this: The present age is "secular" or "post-Christian" and the church is in decline. In order to be responsible, Christians must get used to their straitened circumstances as a community in "exodus." Theologically, they must accommodate to modernity by making Christian proclamation compatible with a scientific worldview so that faith can be acceptable to its "cultured despisers." The primary means of accommodation is historical-critical method in biblical scholarship. Modern church history is the story of the triumph of this method. With the exception of retrograde movements of Yahoo Evangelicalism (e.g., Fundamentalism and Pentecostalism), whose existence is confined to the periphery of civilized life, the success of the critical method is assured. Inherited denominational differences among churches are of little importance to the modern church. Ecumenism is an urgent task because only the reunification of churches can effectively answer the challenge of modern pluralism. The World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches, and various interdenominational dialogues represent the future of Christianity. To be true to the Lord, the church must not only be ecumenical, it must also be a witness for peace and justice ("peace and justice" all too often translating into anti-American, anti-capitalist social policy).
Although steeped in pessimism, this Mainline Tale about the church in modernity is curiously comforting to declining denominations. It rationalizes, in an intellectually elegant fashion, what they believe to be the inevitability of their failure.
In recent years, however, the Mainline Tale has been subject to attack from many quarters....
The latest salvo has been fired by two sociologists of impeccable credentials: Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. In a vigorously polemical essay filled with useful statistics, Finke and Stark turn the Mainline Tale upside down. Their book is a delight to read for many reasons, not the least of which is their employment of a wonderful array of in-your-face metaphors taken from the world of free-market capitalism and their serious questioning of such accepted authorities as Sidney Ahlstrom, Martin Marty, and Winthrop Hudson.
The story of American Christianity, assert the authors, is the triumph of upstart sectarian groups, primarily Methodists and Baptists, over historic "established" denominations: Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. Whereas established denominations had a "market share" of religious "adherents" (a concept that adjusts membership for children) of 55 percent in 1776, this share was reduced to 19 percent by 1850. By contrast, the market share of Methodists and Baptists had risen from 19 percent to 55 percent by 1850. This dramatic reversal took place at a time when the U.S. population was growing by leaps and bounds -- from approximately three million in 1776 to over twenty-three million in 1850 -- and the number of "churched" Christians rose by 20 percent. The phenomenon of sectarian growth remains a constant feature of the American religious landscape. Between 1960 and 1970, for example, the Assemblies of God grew by 23 percent. They now have 500,000 more members than the United Church of Christ and are within hailing distance of faltering Episcopalians and Presbyterians.
The triumph of Evangelicalism has been the most important factor in what Finke and Stark call "the churching of America." Drawing on a wealth of data, including neglected statistics of the Census Bureau, Finke and Stark show that Americans have become adherents of Christian congregations at an increasing rate: from 17 percent of the American population on the eve of the Revolution, to 37 percent at the start of the Civil War, to 56 percent before the onset of the Depression, to 62 percent by the year of Ronald Reagan's election. Not secularization but Christianization is the primary religious fact of American life. No other industrialized nation of the West displays such a pattern. On the contrary, the story of Christianity in Europe is a sad account of the marginalization of "monopolistic" territorial religions. Despite the sophistication of their theology and the hoary prestige of their ecclesiastical orders, the European churches have failed to market their "product." In modernity, monopoly is as bad for church growth as it is for a commercial economy. By the same token, pluralism in religious choice encourages the emergence of healthy religious movements....
<http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9306/reviews/sundberg.html> *****
According to Finke & Stark, the free market in religion promotes the growth of upstart sectarians. The story can't be as simple & linear as Finke & Stark make it out to be, but might the USA be more secular today if the Framers had established the State Church?
Yoshie