Sunday, February 19, 2006
Come On Al - It's More Complicated Than That
Al Mohler addresses the fact that my denomination is dying on the vine. When examining the why's Al says
There are a lot of individual Presbyterian congregations that are quite conservative theologically and they too are dying. And talk about a vanishing boundary - what distinction between belief and unbelief is there in a seeker-sensitive mega-barn?
No, if you want to narrow this down to a few simple statements, I think it has to do with the rise of individualistic evangelicalism and the PCUSA not going along completely with the agenda.
Now, mind you, there is a huge and very active, incredibly liberal group in the PCUSA, and they have hurt us tremendously. I just think we do not do the issue justice to boil it down as simply as Mohler did. I also don't like his tone - we're not all as nuts as he paints us to be.
Related Tags: PCUSA, decline, Presbyterian Lay Committee, Al Mohler, evangelicalism
As groups like the Presbyterian Lay Committee have made clear, the embrace of theological liberalism has consequences -- devastating consequences -- for any denomination.That's an oversimplification if ever I heard one and I know the Lay Committee knows better.
Just over a decade ago, researchers Dean R. Hoge, Benton Johnson, and Donald A. Luidens addressed this reality in their book, Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers.
As these researchers demonstrated, the embrace of what they called "lay liberalism" led massive numbers of persons to depart from the denomination and its churches. Why? Because the "vanishing boundaries" between belief and unbelief made church membership unnecessary and uninteresting. If the church has no distinctive doctrines, why belong? The coffee is better at Starbucks.
There are a lot of individual Presbyterian congregations that are quite conservative theologically and they too are dying. And talk about a vanishing boundary - what distinction between belief and unbelief is there in a seeker-sensitive mega-barn?
No, if you want to narrow this down to a few simple statements, I think it has to do with the rise of individualistic evangelicalism and the PCUSA not going along completely with the agenda.
Now, mind you, there is a huge and very active, incredibly liberal group in the PCUSA, and they have hurt us tremendously. I just think we do not do the issue justice to boil it down as simply as Mohler did. I also don't like his tone - we're not all as nuts as he paints us to be.
Related Tags: PCUSA, decline, Presbyterian Lay Committee, Al Mohler, evangelicalism
