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The American Mainline Protestant Church: Being the Body of Christ in Context Without Christendom Jessica G

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The American Mainline Protestant Church: Being the Body of Christ in Context Without Christendom Jessica G Hamline University DigitalCommons@Hamline Departmental Honors Projects College of Liberal Arts Spring 2015 The American Mainline Protestant Church: Being the Body of Christ in Context Without Christendom Jessica G. Putland Hamline University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/dhp Part of the Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Christianity Commons, New Religious Movements Commons, and the Practical Theology Commons Recommended Citation Putland, Jessica G., "The American Mainline Protestant Church: Being the Body of Christ in Context Without Christendom" (2015). Departmental Honors Projects. 31. https://digitalcommons.hamline.edu/dhp/31 This Honors Project is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts at DigitalCommons@Hamline. It has been accepted for inclusion in Departmental Honors Projects by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Hamline. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. The American Mainline Protestant Church: Being the Body of Christ in Context without Christendom Jessica Putland An Honors Thesis Submitted for partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with honors in Religion from Hamline University. 4/27/2015 Putland 1 In today’s society, religion has garnered a stigma that is hard to overcome. This stigma is not a new one. From the crusades to the Israeli­Palestinian conflict, some of the most violent conflicts in our world’s history have been started because of religion. This history of conflict, negative behavior, prejudice, and perceived strangeness has led to religion being cast into a negative light in the media and popular culture. Relatedly, the phrase “dying church” is one that is becoming all too familiar for Christian clergy across America. For the past ten years, across the United States, church has become a dying phenomenon. Negative views of the church from both inside and outside the church have led to a decline in attendance. This is shown in recent studies by groups such as the “Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life,” who have found that one fifth of citizens of the United States and one third of those under 30 are unaffiliated with a religion. This is a five percent increase from just five years ago.1 It is the fear of clergy and parishioners across the country that attendance will continue to decline until churches can no longer stay open. When all of the Christian churches in the country come to a close, the death of the church will have occurred. Though these studies pinpoint some forms of mainline Protestant Christianity to be nearing death, prominent Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz­Weber is indignant against this claim: “when the number crunchers and church consultants say the church is dying…may I suggest that we only say this when we forget what the definition of church is.”2 Bolz­Weber is not concerned with statistics of church attendance, and does not fear that Christianity is dying. Rather she is referencing diversions from the biblical definition of church; of what Jesus intended His church 1 "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic." The Pew Forum on Religion and ​ ​ Public Life (2008): 1­143. Pew Forum. Pew Research Center. Web. 1 Aug. 2014. 5. ​ ​ ​ 2 Bolz Weber, Nadia. "Stop Saying the Church Is Dying (a Sermon for the Rocky Mountain Synod Assembly)." ​ Sarcastic Lutheran: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint. Patheos, 10 May 2014. Web. 25 Sept. 2014. ​ Putland 2 to be. When the definition of church becomes something other than what Jesus intended, it is sure to fail and this is where Bolz Weber is pinpointing the perceived death. Church has become something other than the biblical definition, but a church that is not aligned with what Jesus intended is sure to fail, and this is where the death is occurring. But there is not one biblical definition of church, and therefore not one way to be be church. The bible offers many ​ ​ definitions and examples. Daniel Migliore, author of Faith Seeking Understanding describes ​ ​ these many examples of what the biblical definition of church can be. He writes: In the New Testament the church (ecclesia, “assembly” or “congregation”) refers to the new community of believers gathered to praise and serve God in the power of the Holy Spirit in response to the gospel of the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.3 Migliore expands on this, explaining that church is a unique relationship with one another and with God. It is a community that bears witness to those beyond the church walls, but also serves others. “In the ecclesia power and responsibility are to be shared, and there is always to be a ​ ​ special concern for the poor, the weak, and the despised.”4 The church is often referred to as “The body of Christ.” In the body of Christ, all rely on Christ, the head, but are also interdependent with one another as other parts of the body. “Believers are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28) and the variety of gifts that have been given are for the enrichment and edification of the whole community.” The body of Christ is especially effective given the diversity of experience that can be found within a single community. One who is suffering can find solace in the suffering, wounded body of Christ on the cross. Alternately, one who is rejoicing can find a parallel in the rejoicing of the risen Christ. This is an image that is apt in healing, comfort and understanding, but can also challenge the believer. Furthering this, the church is described as 3 Migliore, Daniel L. Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. ​ ​ ​ Eerdmans, 2004. Print. 251. 4 Migliore, 252. Putland 3 “the community of the spirit,” in which “racial, gender, and class divisions are broken down, strangers are welcomed.”5 This is a church that is expectant of the Kingdom of God to come. This is a church that offers the sacrament to all who enter their doors. This coincides with Bolz Weber’s understanding of church. She sees a group of people following Christ, welcoming all, and offering the sacraments, and she understands this group as a thriving church. But this is not what church has been in recent times. It has become a church other than what Jesus and his disciples intended. In support of Bolz­Weber and with the biblical understanding of church clarified by Migliore, this paper also challenges the view that American Protestantism is dying. When focus is shifted from numbers and statistics to context and content, thriving churches that follow the biblical idea of being the body of Christ can be found everywhere. Though individual churches are facing closure, American Protestantism as a whole is not dying. Rather, in today’s society, churches that have followed the historical examples of great theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have responded to a call to offer sacrament and serve the contextual needs around their churches as the bible calls them to do, and they have continued to thrive. Churches survive when they move away from institutionalized power, surface­level theology, cheap grace and polarized politics, and toward a focus on the needs of their context, working to meet those needs through service and worship. Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, authors of American Grace: How Religion ​ Unites and Divides Us, explain that the mainline Protestant Church has been the most influential ​ church in the United States for a long time.6 The Protestant Church is the sect of Christianity that 5 Migliore, 254. 6 Putnam, Robert D, and David E. Campbell. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. New York: ​ ​ ​ Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print. Putland 4 separated from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation. Mainline Protestants have been known for adopting higher criticism of biblical text and liberal theology. Protestants have a wide spectrum of beliefs, from fundamentalist conservatism to increasingly liberal pluralist theology. The word Protestant thus has a wide meaning. Putnam and Campbell separate the mainline church into the liberal denominations­ Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and etc. These are distinguished from Evangelical Protestants and “Black Protestants.”7 Since the 1950s these denominations have been the most dominant in America, and the most influential throughout the public square and politics. The term ‘mainline’ connotes that these are the denominations that have historically been the closest thing to establishment churches in America. Non­mainline Protestant churches would include Black and Evangelical Protestant churches, among others. The following will focus on these mainline American Protestant Churches. Though this paper understands the mainline Protestant Church in America to not be dying, the numbers provided by the Pew Research Group, Putnam and Campbell and more cannot be ignored. The idea that the church is dying is born out of these numbers, and so this idea and the numbers must be addressed in order to move past the diagnosis of death. The Death of the Body of Christ? Both the suggestion that the church is dying and the phenomenon of the deviation from the biblical definition of church are not new. Theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer have been commenting on these ideas for decades. It is important to understand the longevity of these issues through theologians such as Bonhoeffer so that we can better understand the state of the church and learn from past mistakes. In 1937, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his book The Cost of ​ 7 Putnam, Campbell, 12­15. Putland 5 Discipleship. Bonhoeffer understood the church as being a group of true disciples doing the work ​ of God and being the body of Christ in the world.
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