Pew Research has come out with new data with discouraging news for white mainline Christianity in the United States. In a previous post, I reviewed data showing that white mainline denominations are skewing more liberal, something that it has consciously chosen to do over the past century. This means that the white mainline denominations should be especially focused on those who claim a more liberal bent in the United States.

In its March 2018 report on political party identification in the United States, Pew has found that the tendency for those who self-identify as liberal to claim either to be a Democrat or to lean toward the Democratic Party (see figure below). This is perhaps not so surprising.

What is surprising and should be concerning to white mainline denominational leaders is that liberal leaning Democrats who are increasingly no longer identifying with the white mainline Protestant denominations.

This decrease in Democratic affiliation for white mainline Protestants might not be concerning if the defections from the Democratic Party could be tracked to Republicans. However, it can’t. The overall number of white mainline Protestants in the electorate, regardless of which direction they lean politically, has dropped dramatically.

This leads to the uncomfortable conclusion that the white mainline Democrats are not abandoning liberalism for conservatism, but are abandoning mainline Protestantism to be unaffiliated to religion. In fact, if we add the number of people who ceased to claim being evangelicals or mainline Protestants within the Democratic category between 1997 and 2017, we reach a whopping 21% loss of people. That accounts for all but 3% of the 24% rise in the number of people who claimed to be unaffiliated with any religion during those two years.

The white mainline Protestants have set themselves up as champions of liberal causes bolstered by liberal theology, and the Democratic Party is increasingly the party for political liberalism. Yet, this obvious confluence of common beliefs does not seem to help the white mainline denominations in generating any new adherents.

This drop in people who adhere to the Christian faith should be a red flag to Christians of all stripes in the United States. Why it should be particularly concerning for the white mainline is that people who lean Democratic should be the mainline’s sweet spot for evangelism. The white mainline Protestants have set themselves up as champions of liberal causes bolstered by liberal theology, and the Democratic Party is increasingly the party for political liberalism. Yet, this obvious confluence of common beliefs does not seem to help the white mainline denominations in generating any new adherents. Instead, they seem to be hemorrhaging people at the very point where it would seem they would must successfully attract them.

Why is this?

One possibility is that white mainline Protestants have abandoned evangelism as a practice of sharing their faith in a way that invites people to make a commitment to that faith by participating in a local community of faith. Liberal Christianity has long sought to broaden the definition of evangelism to entail actions beyond verbally sharing the gospel in order to call people to faith in Jesus Christ. There has been some benefit in this. It has helped evangelism break free of stereotypes that made practicing it unpalatable in the extreme for both those who wanted to share their faith and those who would be on the receiving end of that sharing.

…to the extent that evangelism has become decoupled from a distinct call to respond in faith, allowing it to be defined as just doing good deeds for others, it may actually be fueling the exodus from mainline denominations.

Evangelism can and should involve sharing the gospel through words and deeds. It should allow for people embodying the good news of God’s grace through Jesus Christ by acting lovingly as well as speaking the gospel.

However, to the extent that evangelism has become decoupled from a distinct call to respond in faith, allowing it to be defined as just doing good deeds for others, it may actually be fueling the exodus from mainline denominations. Liberalism today is often equated with advocacy on the part of the marginalized. This includes political advocacy. If the call to faith is nothing more than calling people to be politically active, then it is rational to ask why anyone even needs the middleman. Why not become politically active in liberal causes directly without the religious baggage that would only push a person toward that political activism anyway?

In this sense, the hemorrhage of the white mainline Protestant denominations might be a demise of their own making. By redefining the call to faith to largely equate to being a call to liberal activism, they have created the stepping stones that have helped people cross out of their ranks and into the ranks of the liberal unaffiliated.