GetReligion
Thursday, April 17, 2025

Seven Sisters

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Wait just a minute: Fading Lutherans (ELCA) in Waco sold their lovely building to Anglicans?

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I think leaders of The Waco Tribune-Herald team had an interesting religion-beat story on their hands the other day, but it appears that they may not have known that.

It's easy to see the some predictable news trends looming over the recent headline: "Dwindling congregation forces sale of 133-year-old Waco Lutheran church."

There are several valid news angles here, the first of which is that lots of fading urban churches are being squeezed by similar financial and demographic issues. You can see that in this recent story from The Nashville Tennessean that was picked up for further distribution by Religion News Service.

If you visit the core streets and neighborhoods of almost any American city you will find lots of churches – often from the old "Seven Sisters" flocks of liberal mainline Protestantism – sitting on what is now prime real estate for re-developers appealing to the gentrification and young singles Millennial crowds. Many of these churches now face a tornado of red statistics, with aging members, low birthrates and declining numbers of converts.

Yes, there are doctrinal issues linked to some of those issues, especially in the American heartland and Bible Belt (think Waco, Texas). However, the Tribune-Herald team isn't very interested in these issues.

Hold that thought, while we look at some summary material near the top of this report. The symbolic voice is that of 94-year-old church member Joyce Heckmann:

Through the years, there were countless Christmas celebrations, church-wide smorgasbord dinners, Sunday school classes, Vacation Bible Schools and more.
But while the years have been kind to Heckmann, they have taken their toll on the aging church building and congregation, members say. The once-vibrant church family boasted 450 members, requiring an extensive expansion project that more than doubled the size of the building in 1958.
Now, members say, they are lucky to have 40 worshipers on Sunday morning. Members recently came to the painful but practical realization that their smallish group could no longer support such a large building.
So they voted to sell the property – Texas Historical Commission landmark medallion and all – to Christ Church Waco, an up-and-coming Anglican congregation that has met in least 10 temporary locations since it was formed in 2009.

Now stop the train right there for a minute.


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Regarding a 'mainline' slide (yet again), a noted journalist raises questions to ponder

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Regarding a 'mainline' slide (yet again), a noted journalist raises questions to ponder

A previous Religion Guy Memo looked at Canada's spiritual landscape as it celebrates its 150th anniversary.

That item provoked an e-mail response worth pondering by journalistic analysts. The writer is Kenneth A. Briggs, a competitor and friendly colleague as religion editor of The New York Times during the Religion Guy’s early years writing for Time magazine’s religion section. Briggs, also an award-winner for his work at Long Island Newsday, later became a college teacher, book author and independent journalist in varied media projects.

Importantly for this context, Briggs is a certified mainline Protestant as a Yale Divinity School graduate and an ordained elder in the largest U.S. mainline denomination, the United Methodist Church (which granted him a “special appointment” for journalistic work).

First, Briggs asks whether the Religion Guy was “suggesting cause-and-effect” in stating that both Canada and the U.S. “show remarkable losses for ‘mainline’ churches that have floated leftward”? These Protestants’ gradual numerical decline and liberal shifts this past half-century are established facts, but Briggs says the two could be simply “coincidental,” rather than that liberalism caused decline.

The Guy – yes – meant to imply that a shift toward more liberal doctrinal beliefs was one contributor to the unprecedented membership losses, with breakaways by local congregations, outright schisms, and individual members switching to other options or forsaking church altogether. Meanwhile, conservatives often held steady or gained adherents (though note the past decade’s smaller, but significant, decline for the staunchly conservative Southern Baptist Convention).

Briggs calls that scenario – linking doctrinal changes and numerical decline – “evangelical boilerplate.”

The Guy must quickly add that factors other than liberalism played into church trends.


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New York Times offers solid Religious Left update, with skewed headline that's LOL territory

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Every now and then, newspapers need to go out of their way to correct errors found in headlines, but not in stories.

This would, for example, help news consumers understand that headlines – 99.9 percent of the time – are written by copy-desk editors who do not consult with the professionals who actually reported, wrote and edited the story in question.

My first full-time job in journalism was working as a copy editor – laying out news pages, doing final edits and, yes, writing headlines. It's hard work and you rarely have time to visit the newsroom for debates with reporters about the wording of headlines.

Anyway, one of the big religion-beat stories of the weekend ran at The New York Times with this double-decker headline:

Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game.
Faith leaders whose politics fall to the left of center are getting more involved in politics to fight against President Trump’s policies

That top line is simply wrong. Anyone who has worked the religion beat in recent decades knows that it is wrong – wrong as in factually wrong.

Read carefully, and note that the headline does not accurately state the primary thesis by religion-beat veteran Laurie Goodstein in this summary material up top:

Across the country, religious leaders whose politics fall to the left of center, and who used to shun the political arena, are getting involved – and even recruiting political candidates – to fight back against President Trump’s policies on immigration, health care, poverty and the environment.
Some are calling the holy ruckus a “religious resistance.” Others, mindful that periodic attempts at a resurgence on the religious left have all failed, point to an even loftier ambition than taking on the current White House: After 40 years in which the Christian right has dominated the influence of organized religion on American politics – souring some people on religion altogether, studies show – left-leaning faith leaders are hungry to break the right’s grip on setting the nation’s moral agenda.

I would question one piece of that statement. When did religious progressives (defined in terms of doctrine) ever "shun the political arena"?


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After crucial ruling against an openly lesbian bishop, what now for United Methodists?

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After crucial ruling against an openly lesbian bishop, what now for United Methodists?

In recent years, the "Seven Sisters" of the old mainline Protestant world have not been making as much news as they have in the past, at least as evidenced in the annual "top stories" polls conducted by the Religion News Assocition.

However, it’s likely that 2017’s religion story of the year will be the April 28 United Methodist Church (UMC) ruling that the western region improperly consecrated Karen Oliveto as a bishop and she should be removed. Reason: as an openly married lesbian, she violated church law and her ordination vows.

That Judicial Council edict produced typically sure-footed stories by The Religion Guy’s former AP colleague Rachel Zoll (The San Francisco Chronicle ran wire copy even though Oliveto led a big local church!) and Laurie Goodstein of The New York Times (a rare treat that this fine, neglected scribe gets 34 inches atop A18!). United Methodist News’s Linda Bloom was a must-read (maxim: always check such official outlets plus independent caucuses left and right.)

Jennifer Brown’s Denver Post spot story and walkup report were appropriately comprehensive, since Bishop Oliveto supervises five states from an office in suburban Denver. “Whatever the ruling, the expectation is that the denomination may divide,” Brown reported, noting that Methodism’s last split, over slavery, took 95 years to heal.

The media mostly overlooked another important Judicial Council decision. Reviewing Illinois and New York disputes, it reaffirmed that ordained or appointed clergy must observe “fidelity in marriage” or “celibacy in singleness.”

The UMC has long upheld traditional belief on sex and marriage shared among the nation’s five biggest denominations (with more than 100 million members). Groups shifting in conscience to favor same-sex clergy and marriage, e.g. Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), exist only within the U.S. But at UMC policy-setting General Conferences the U.S. has only 58 percent of delegates, with 30 percent from Africa and 12 percent from elsewhere. In Protestantism worldwide, liberal change is largely limited to predominantly white “Mainline” churches in western Europe and North America.


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Weekend thinking about old-line Protestant demographics, doctrine and future Easters

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If you follow religion news closely (which would make you the kind of person who frequents this website), then you know that there are two major, overarching trends taking place in modern America that are affecting all kinds of religious organizations.

This is certainly true in Christianity and also in Judaism. The same trends may be affecting Muslims and members of other major world religions, but I am not sure – in part because I have not seen enough research in those communities.

The first major trend – which has generated massive amounts of coverage – is the rapidly rising tide of Americans identifying themselves as "religiously unaffiliated," meaning that they claim no ties to any particular religious tradition. Yes, these are the "Nones." This does not mean that they are pure secularists, although many are (while some are "spiritual but not religious"). The stats for atheists and agnostics are on the rise, as well.

The second trend, in tension with the first, is that the large slice of the American population that practices traditional forms of religious faith does not appear to be declining, or not at a rapid rate. True, some of these believers have been switching from one sanctuary to another.

It is also significant, in terms of demographics, that people in more doctrinally conservative forms of faith tend to (a) have more children and (b) take part in efforts to win converts to their faith. See, for example, the numbers for Pentecostal Christians and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Compare the birth rates for Orthodox and Reform Jews.

What is shrinking is the "mushy middle" of the spectrum, the lukewarm believers and those in faiths that make weaker demands on their time and convictions. Yes, this same theme showed up in that recent flurry of online discussions about the future of the religious left.

This brings us to a trend that researchers have been discussing for nearly 50 years – the statistical decline of the "seven sisters" denominations in old-line Protestantism. And that, in turn, brings us to this weekend's think piece on a topic close to the religion beat – an "Acts of Faith" essay in The Washington Post by Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

The headline is a grabber: "If it doesn’t stem its decline, mainline Protestantism has just 23 Easters left."


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More thinking about the old religious left and its muddled future in America's public square

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Here we go again.

If seems that the time is right for people to think about the religious left. In some cases, people are clearly yearning – as they have for decades – for some doctrinally liberal movement that is the grassroots equivalent of the Religious Right to rise up and help save the world from, well, the Religious Right.

You might recall that there was a whole tread of commentary online about this topic just the other day.

It started with a Reuters report that was perfectly summed up in the headline: " 'Religious left' emerging as U.S. political force in Trump era."

That led to a Religious Dispatches thinker by liberal scribe Daniel Schultz with this headline: "IS THE RELIGIOUS LEFT EMERGING AS A POLITICAL FORCE? NO." I left all the caps in that headline, since it kind of helps sum things up.

Now all kinds of things happened at that point, including my piece pointing readers to Sculltz, with this headline: "Rising force in American politics? Define the 'religious left' and give three examples." That led to a podcast and follow-up piece: "Yes, the religious left exists: Can you think of a logical person (Oprah) to serve as its leader?"

Then there was a piece by Mark Tooley at the "Juicy Ecumenism" blog, as well as a podcast and transcript of a feature by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr.

Finally, Schultz reacted to all of this disturbing acclaim by conservative writers (of various kinds) with a follow-up at Religion Dispatches that ran with this headline: "WHY THE RELIGIOUS LEFT ISN’T COMING TOGETHER, AND WHY IT MATTERS."

The basic idea is that the old religious left, which focused on the work of a predictable set of doctrinally liberal flocks, including progressive Catholics and Reform Jews, appears to be a thing of the past – outside some elite leaders in politically blue zip codes. The big problem is that the old mainline flocks are not, shall be say, in growth mode. Why?


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Press offerings during holy seasons (continued): Contrasting approaches in The New York Times

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Press offerings during holy seasons (continued): Contrasting approaches in The New York Times

Weeks ago, The Religion Guy discussed the perpetual media problem of handling religious holidays and highlighted a godsend (so to speak) for Holy Week 2017, Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge’s “The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ.”

Alas, a quick Google check finds no coverage of her or her blockbuster.

The New York Times, whose top editor recently confessed that “media powerhouses ... don’t get the role of religion in people’s lives,” proved that point with the sort of potshot at tradition one often gets from the mainstream news media during holy seasons. Molly Worthen’s Good Friday piece looked askance at evangelical conservatives’ biblical beliefs and “natural human aversion to unwelcome facts.”

Then came Easter and a contrasting, surprising Ross Douthat column that meditated on U.S. “mainline” Protestant slippage.

Complaints about religious conservatives are the oldest of old news, so Douthat’s opus was by far the more interesting. In this case a political conservative was preaching to “this newspaper’s secular liberal readers,” and a staunch Catholic was telling cultural Protestants to shape up. The column was part of his mordant “implausible proposals” series, which mingles wry fantasy with sincerity.

Douthat took an overly familiar theme in a new and unexpected direction. It’s well-known that times are tough for America’s seven ecumenically allied (the "Seven Sisters" camp) and predominantly white “mainline” Protestant denominations known for theological flexibility. Over the past four decades their combined memberships have shrunk 30 percent, from 28,160,000 to 19,590,000. Nothing like this has happened previously in American religion.

(Yes, I am aware that those “Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches” data are out of date because the National Council of Churches was unable to compile its standard annual the past five years – a sign of mainline disarray.)


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Rising force in American politics? Define the 'religious left' and give three examples

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Since the very first days of this weblog, your GetReligionistas have been asking for mainstream journalists to pay more attention to the religious left.

If there is a Religious Right, which almost always receives big "RR" treatment, then it would be logical to think that there is a religious left. I have long argued that, without the beginning of the sharp statistical decline of the old religious left in the 1970s and '80s, you would not have had a large gap in the public square into which the Religious Right could move.

The key questions: "What is the religious left? Does one define this term using doctrinal standards, political standards or both? Is there more to this than the Democratic Party at prayer?"

Every now and then, mainstream reporters write a round of features about the return of the religious left. The rise of Barack Obama inspired one recent set of these stories. Now, Reuters has released a feature that, in Newsweek, drew this headline: "How the 'religious left' is emerging as a political force in Trump's America."

So what is the "religious left"? It is, readers are told, primarily "progressive" Catholics and Protestants. OK, so what are the key issues here?

Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the "religious left" is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics.
This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump's policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections.
"It's one of the dirty little secrets of American politics that there has been a religious left all along and it just hasn't done a good job of organizing," said J. Patrick Hornbeck II, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University, a Jesuit school in New York.

What about the history of this wing of American religion?


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Hey reporters: Is a more active Religious Left a sign of a growing Religious Left?

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Your GetReligionistas have long argued that the mainstream press doesn't pay enough attention to the Religious Left. In fact, I wish that the Associated Press stylebook team could help us all get consistent on the question of whether – as with the term Religious Right – it's "religious left" or "Religious Left." I vote for the second option.

Also, anyone who dug into the details of the famous "Nones on the Rise" materials from the Pew Forum realizes that religion-beat pros need to change our thinking about who is in the Religious Left, these days.

You see, it's not enough to focus on the declining numbers of people in liberal Christian and Jewish pews. That story is still important, and worthy of coverage, but it's old. Journalists really need to think of the new Religious Left as a growing coalition of atheists, agnostics, "Nones" and then doctrinally liberal Christians and Jews. When it comes to hot-button religious, cultural and moral issues this is the coalition that stands together. We will come back to that.

I bring this up because of some interesting passages in the main Religion News Service story about the Women's March in Washington, D.C. (Click here for Julia Duin's wrap-up of other angles linked to that important event.)

The first hint of what is coming is this:

Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist, they rejected the notion that the conservative religious people successfully courted by Trump – out in force on the National Mall for his inauguration Friday – represent the only voice of religious America.

But here was the start of the main block of material on this topic:

Andy Miller said his Judaism brought him to Washington Saturday.


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