October 17, 2010:

Ponderings of a Pilgrim PASTOR

“What Happened To Us?”

Since the first Protestants rowed to shore in Jamestown, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, we “Mainline” Protestant Christians have been pretty much in charge.  As recently as the 1950’s, the President as well as seven of the nine Supreme Court justices were Protestants.  Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and other “old-time” Mainline” Protestants were clearly the major force in American political life.  We were — to use Reggie Jackson’s famous phrase — “the straw that stirred the drink.”

Today, only one member of the high court is Protestant (John Paul Stevens, the others are Roman Catholic) and President Obama after his falling out with his U.C.C. pastor appears to be “church-shopping” when he goes at all.  More and more of our Mainline Protestant Churches have fewer than a hundred members and in many of them the average age is above retirement.  That’s vastly different than in most Evangelical Churches.

What happened to us?  Did we lose?  That is, the hearts and minds of Americans who now flock to other churches?  Did we lose the culture wars to conservatives?  Or did we win?  All the things we stood for and supported in the past fifty or more years have come to pass:  racial justice, equality for women, programs for the poor, rights for the disabled — all these and more came about because of the efforts of our kind of Christians.

Have we become tired, complacent, self-satisfied?  Maybe in some places. But could it also be possible that we Mainline Protestants are now in the process of re-inventing ourselves?  Certainly a glance at history would suggest we’ve always been doing that.  The Mainline Churches of the Twentieth Century were very different from the Mainline Churches of the Nineteenth or Eighteenth Centuries.  Everything we’ve ever stood for is still the predominant mood of American people, particularly young people. If a new focus and new “packaging” is what it takes, we’re already working on it.

Don’t count us out.  As someone once said — sort of — “We’ll be baaack!”

Love,
Pastor Dave