Word: churches
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...past two decades, however, that center has dropped away. The central fact about mainline Protestantism in the U.S. today is that it is in deep trouble. This stunning turnabout is apparent in the unprecedented hemorrhaging of memberships in the three major faiths that date from colonial times. The United Church of Christ (which includes most Congregationalists) has shrunk 20% since 1965, the Presbyterian Church 25%, and the Episcopal Church 28%. As for two related denominations that mushroomed in the 19th century, the United Methodist Church has dropped 18%, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) 43% after a de facto...
...upswing in sight. Mainline congregations, says Isabel Rogers, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), are "no longer the primary shapers of values in American society." What, then, does their decline portend for a society that has been so largely built upon their values and precepts? That is hardly a trivial matter. How the nation defines itself spiritually will have much to do with its future political directions and with the strength of its moral foundations, which are increasingly under siege by drugs, violence and pervasive greed...
FOREIGN MISSIONS. Spreading the gospel abroad was once a quintessential mainline activity, but today evangelical agencies sponsor four-fifths of American Protestant missionaries. Mainline strategists play down proselytism and insist that foreign countries should recruit their own workers. Similar woes affect the N.C.C.'s most successful agency, Church World Service, the overseas relief and development arm. Its expenditures have fallen substantially, and are now exceeded several times over by those of World Vision, the leading evangelical agency...
Because of population and demographic shifts, long-established mainline churches often find themselves struggling along in unpromising locations. On a typical Sunday in downtown Pasadena, Calif., for example, only 80 mostly elderly worshipers attended services at the First Congregational Church, a cavernous old citadel built to hold a thousand people. The sparsely populated pews contrast dramatically with the overflow crowds that regularly jam the ultramodern Church of the Nazarene, situated on the fast-growing outskirts of town...
Paradoxically, mainline churches are being hurt by past success. Many are living off income earned from old wealth and feel no urgency to attract new supporters. They have also been lulled by their social status, which formerly made it possible to attract members without any effort. The Rev. Roger Zimmerman, who is industriously turning around a Disciples of Christ church near downtown Louisville, says that his socially prominent congregation long had a "white glove" mentality: "They didn't reach out and evangelize. They expected people to come of their own accord...