The decline of the Protestant mainline in America began over 150 years ago. It has continued ever since, picking up momentum since the 1960s. We don’t really need more evidence, but here it is courtesy of George Barna’s latest report. A generation ago the Protestant landscape of America was dominated by the six major mainline [...]
Search Results for: episcopalian
Why Episcopalian decline matters
2 December, 2009 – 2:24 AM
New York Times: How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country? Bishop Schori: About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of [...]
Southern Baptist plateau? Maybe.
9 September, 2008 – 8:27 AM
Roger Finke raises three problems with the trend of Southern Baptist success measured by larger churches and professional clergy. Congregational size is inversely related to converting new members, activating the existing membership, and maintaining high membership standards. Small churches are more effective in generating commitment and conformity within a movement. Formal theological training is a [...]
The Church confronts (Post?) Modernity
25 August, 2008 – 1:32 PM
I’m reading Catholicism and modernity: Confrontation or capitulation? by James Hitchcock. Written in the late 1970s in the wake of Vatican II. He writes as an orthodox Catholic facing the growing liberalisation of his faith from within the Church. There are striking parallels in the story of the Episcopalian demise in the US and Canada [...]
What should the Anglicans do?
28 February, 2008 – 5:42 AM
It is no exaggeration to say that the global Anglican church of is at a crossroads facing its greatest crisis since the Reformation. It’s been there at least since the 1998 Lambeth Conference when the vast majority of Anglican bishops worldwide rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.” Despite this the Episcopal church in the [...]
The day the music died
2 April, 2006 – 1:44 PM
I went down to the sacred store where I’d heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn’t play and in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed but not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken and the three men I admire [...]
Shifting the deck chairs in Newark
21 January, 2006 – 5:28 PM
A new report reveals the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, continues to be in serious decline. It’s membership is free-falling at a rate three times the national average for the embattled Episcopal church. Down by 46% since 1972. Nearly 90 percent of its parishes were founded before 1942, and not a single church has opened in [...]
The suicide of liberal Christianity
11 April, 2005 – 6:49 PM
Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong stands in the tradition of modern clerics who have called for a new reformation in the church. A reformation, according to Spong, that will make the Protestant Reformation look like a Mother’s Union tea party. Spong argues that in the modern world, the idea of a personal God is outmoded. [...]
