Much has been made over the last few months about the decline, or potential decline, of various Protestant subgroups.  The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) singled out the Mainline churches, there was the op-ed piece by Michael Spencer on “The Coming Evangelical Collapse“, and last week Newsweek had one of their famous, or is that infamous, C&E (Christmas and Easter) articles on “The End of Christian America.”  And that does not count the current debate about whether the United States is now or was a Christian nation to begin with (some say yes, others say no, and some say that it depends on the context and what you mean), a debate sparked by the President’s recent comments in Turkey.  There is also an NPR piece today about the secularization of Britain.

I’m working on some of the membership stories and will post more detailed commentaries on that at a later date.  But in the midst of all this I found an op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal that takes the long view and is a must-read if you are interested in the church membership trends.  Check out “God Still Isn’t Dead” by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.

They point out that with the Constitutional separation of church and state, the lack of a state church forced American churches to be “market driven,” free enterprise if you will, in order to have the members to be viable.

America has long stood out among developed countries for its
religiosity. This has less to do with innate godliness than with the
free market created by the First Amendment. Pre-Revolutionary America
was not that religious, because the original Puritans were swamped by
less wholesome adventurers — in Salem, Mass., the setting for “The
Crucible,” 83% of taxpayers by 1683 confessed to no religious
identification.

America became religious after the Constitution separated church
from state, thus ensuring that religious denominations could only
survive if they got souls into pews. While state-sponsored religion
withered in Europe, American faith has been a hive of activity: from
the Methodists, who converted close to an eighth of the country in the
half century after the Revolution, to the modern megachurches.

Yes, from the founding of the nation right up to the present you need those people in the pews to put their pennies in the plate to keep the lights on.  But while I agree that American Christianity is consumer driven, we use the term “church shopping” in a positive way after all, I do think a later paragraph is a bit short-sighted:

Meanwhile, the supply seems as plentiful as ever. Religion, no less
than software or politics, is a competitive business, where
organization and entrepreneurship count. Religious America is led by a
series of highly inventive “pastorpreneurs” — men like Bill Hybels of
Willow Creek or Rick Warren of Saddleback. These are far more sober,
thoughtful characters than the schlock-and-scandal televangelists of
the 1970s, but they are not afraid to use modern business methods to
get God’s message across.

Yes, there are some who base churches on more secular business methods.  And yes, I think many of us have “issues” with churches that promote “positive thinking” or “prosperity gospel” Christianity (if that isn’t an oxymoron).  But I also believe there are many faithful Christians who are drawn to churches because what the church offers is “the true preaching of the Word, the right administration of the sacraments, and discipline uprightly ministered.”  That people are drawn to a church because it fulfills the “notes of the true church” does not mean it is lead by a “pastorpreneur,” to use their term.  A good, faithful, vital product will succeed in the marketplace.

And the authors do consider the spiritual side in the article.  Towards the beginning they say:

Has this model really run out of steam? Betting against American
religion has always proved to be a fool’s game. In 1880, Robert
Ingersoll, the leading atheist of his day, claimed that “the churches
are dying out all over the land.” In its Easter issue in 1966, Time
asked “Is God Dead?” on its cover. East Coast intellectuals have
repeatedly assumed that the European model of progress, where modernity
equals secularization, would come to the U.S. They have always been
wrong.

And towards the end they observe:

Looked at from a celestial perspective, the American model of religion,
far from retreating, is going global. Pastorpreneurs are taking their
message around the world. In Latin America, Pentecostalism has
disrupted the Catholic Church’s monopoly. Already five of the world’s
10 biggest churches are in South Korea: Yoido Full Gospel Church, which
has 800,000 members, is a rival in terms of organization for anything
Messrs. Warren and Hybels can offer. China is the latest great convert.
There are probably close to 100 million Christians in China, most of
them following a very individualistic American-style faith. Already
more people attend church each Sunday than are members of the Communist
Party. China will soon be the world’s biggest Christian country and
also possibly its biggest Muslim one.

In the long view, no theological branch is monolithic in space and time.  If I may narrow down the perspective a bit and just comment on American Presbyterianism:  Almost from its inception the American Presbyterian church has been a dynamic entity.  The first presbytery was founded in 1706 and the first division occurred in 1741.  While the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) counts its General Assemblies from the first one in 1789 so that there have now been 218 of them, really the PC(USA) came into being in a merger in 1983.  And while the PC(USA) can legitimately trace its history as the main branch of American Presbyterianism from 1706, it is important to note that the history is shared with other branches.  The Presbyterian Church in America, formed in 1973, also traces his history and polity back through the southern church, the Presbyterian Church in the United States.  One diagram of American Presbyterian history shows nine different American Presbyterian churches at the present time, and I am aware of a few more that have spread into the country rather than branching off of the historical trunk. (For example the Free Presbyterian Church of North America)

Anyway, as much as we might like to think there is, and always has been, a single branch of American Presbyterianism, in the long view that is not the case.  While American Presbyterianism as a whole can legitimately claim a solid 300 year history, the individual denominations show an ebb and flow.  There is no reason to think that should end now.