Overview
In this alarming expose of America's mainline Protestant churches, historian Thomas C. Reeves asserts that these once hallowed houses of worship do not matter nearly so much as they used to, and that, in fact, they are consistently unappealing and irrelevant. Mainline churches are spiritual home to almost a quarter of the American people. They include the American Baptist churches, the Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches, and the United Church of Christ. Still, millions of parishioners have abandoned them in disgust. And the question is, why? Reeves attributes this crisis, in part, to the growth of a liberal church leadership whose political interests have distorted faith and orthodoxy and replaced them with political correctness. In the hands of liberal organizers, mainline churches have become bastions of "progressive" politics, wherein Christian teaching has lost out to multiculturalism, and theology itself has tended to become secular, focusing more on liberal issues such as AIDS awareness and feminist critiques of God the Father than on the life and teachings of Christ. As a result, many churches have alienated their orthodox members and lost their strongest adherents. What, asks Reeves, can be done to reverse this disturbing trend? Based on his own probing investigations, Reeves makes informed recommendations for revitalizing them, and argues that the most critical step in halting the slide of mainline churches is the restoration of their commitment to orthodox theology. Taking his cue from C. S. Lewis, Reeves argues that orthodoxy requires faith in an all-powerful God who was and is capable of the miraculous. Christianity without miracles is dead, and its founder and the apostles madmen.Editorials
Library Journal
Historian Reeves (A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy, Free, 1991) looks at the liberalism of mainline Protestantism from a historical perspective. The author juxtaposes the crisis of declining membership and why it is happening against reasons why the more evangelical and fundamentalist denominations are increasing their memberships, often with the disenchanted who have left the mainline Protestant churches. Some of the reasons Reeves cites are the moral crisis in America, secularization of the churches, and the influences of secular religions (the Enlightenment, communism, science). Finally, he charts the influence of American culture beginning with the 1920s and culminating in the social upheaval of the 1960s. The resultant stagnation and decline have prompted the churches to get more involved in politics and government instead of the essentials of the Christian faith. Reeves ends his book with a discussion of how the mainline churches can be renewed through both its lay and clergy. A well-documented book written for a broad audience; recommended for academic and public libraries.-Cynthia L. Peterson, Univ. of Texas at DallasKirkus Reviews
Possibly the most slanted, conservative take on American church history to appear in recent memory.Reeves (History/Univ. of Wisconsin, Parkside; A Question of Character: The Life of John F. Kennedy, 1991, etc.) here publicly airs his grievances with dying mainline Protestant churches. He provides mountains of details to demonstrate that they are dying—no news there—and then makes the bold and unsubstantiated leap to the claim that they are failing because they have been overrun by liberal bleeding hearts who are hell-bent on neglecting the gospel, undermining patriotism, and teaching their Sunday school pupils to use condoms. Reeves also assails such predictable targets as multiethnic theological education, the churches' "aggressive lesbian contingent," and homosexual ordination. At bottom, he asserts that mainline churches are "stuck in the sixties" in their affinity for social justice and confusion about personal morality. His incessant liberal-bashing is irritating and banal, but that alone does not make it poor history. Reeves accomplishes that by ignoring the larger, more provocative questions that other scholars have posed concerning the mainline's decline. Ultimately, Reeves's singleminded preoccupation with the dangers of liberalism diverts attention from a persistent motif of American history, which is that only religions not associated with power and authority will inevitably flourish, as, for instance, antiestablishment fundamentalist sects are doing today. An even more damning problem is that Reeves utterly ignores the phenomenon of religious pluralism ("Is modern America secular or Christian?" he asks, as if these were our only options). This is predictable, considering Reeves's insistence that America's founding "fathers" intended it to be a Christian nation.
A far better choice is Randall Balmer's brilliant ethnography, Grant Us Courage: Travels Along the Mainline of American Protestantism (1995), which sensitively and provocatively explores the real issues underlying contemporary American Protestantism. Mainline churches may be dying, but they deserve a more intelligent eulogy than Reeves can provide.