[lbo-talk] Can Liberal Faiths Compete with Conservative Faiths? (An Appeal to Ignorance)

[Lance Murdoch]

On 6/15/05, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> On the other hand, liberal faiths, which sharply limit their
> epistemological claims to coexist with science and restrain their
> socio-political ambitions within the scope of political liberalism,
> are hardly distinguishable from secular humanism in practice -- hence
> they fail to attract those who want religion in a robust sense
> (without being able to intellectually satisfy "atheists, agnostics,
> humanists, secularists and those who do not identify with any
> religion" enough to lead them to join them) .  That failure shows as
> net losses in their membership:

You didn't post complete numbers from the chart.  Quakers have gone
from 67,000 to 217,000.  UU's have gone from 502,000 to 629,000.  I
myself went to one Quaker service (too quiet) and several UU services.

 While the general trend is from mainstream churches to either no
religion or born-again fundamentalism, it's not correct to say all
liberal churches are shrinking, the most liberal churches are growing.

Lance