The Slow Death of Liberal "Christianity"

And now for an over-simplified history lesson.

In the 19th and mid-20th centuries, Modernity reigned. Modernity valued reason, the scientific method, truth, linear thought, and rationality. The head not only ruled the heart, the head was both the head and the heart. If you couldn't prove it in a lab, it couldn't be true.

This was a bit of a challenge for the Christian church. Miracles were everywhere in the Bible, and miracles couldn't be proven so they cut against Modernist sensibilities. It was rather embarrassing, actually, for Christianity to be so tied to such a quaint but antiquated book like the Bible with all these silly stories.

And so some of the most fundamental assertions of historical Christianity were re-examined or discarded altogether. The Virgin Birth? Impossible! Healings? Psychological tricks. Jesus' resurrection? Please.

So for much of the 19th and 20th centuries people who were deeply committed to rescuing Christianity for the sake of Modernity began to deconstruct the Bible. One infamous collaboration known as "The Jesus Seminar" in the 20th Century went through all of the quotations attributed to Jesus and tagged each one with the probability that Jesus actually could or would have said it.

And thus, the Liberal Mainline Christian church as we know it was born. And thus, the Liberal Mainline Church as we know it is dying.

For much of the past 2,000 years, people have doubted and refuted the core tenants of Christianity. They just didn't call themselves Christians.

The unique thing that happened in the previous two centuries, at least in the U.S, is that people wanted to maintain ties to the institution of Christianity--it was important to keep the peace, teach morality and civics, and for social and business connections.

Over the past several months I've either read about or had interactions with people from the World War 2 generation who are (or were) deeply committed church-goers who didn't believe much of what has historically been called "Christianity." For the most part they would call themselves Christians. But their beliefs fall well outside of the historical standards of what it meant to be a part of the Christian faith.

But as post-modernism sets in, people are less and less tied to rationality and/or institutions and more committed to a more authentic spirituality. And Liberal "Christianity" has nothing to offer by way of authentic spirituality--just a bunch of moralistic rules and lessons as they've tried to "rescue the Bible from fundamentalism." And no one cares.

And so the slow death of the social phenomena called "liberal Christianity." As the older generation passes on, the church doors are closing. It won't be completely irradicated, to be sure. And as it shrinks there are some large gaps to be filled in their work in our culture and politics (more on that tomorrow). But for the most part, good riddance.