Albert Mohler: From Mainline to Sideline -- The Death of Protestant America

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Joseph Bottum remembers a time when America was painted in bold Protestant hues. "America was Methodist, once upon a time--Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian," he explains. But, that was then, and this is now.

Now, Bottum suggests that the average American "would have trouble recalling the dogmas that once defined all the jarring sects, but their names remain at least half alive."

Bottum writes of this Protestant collapse in the August/September 2008 issue of First Things, one of the most influential intellectual journals of the day. In "The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline," Bottum offers a clever and insightful theory of mainline decline -- the collapse of liberal Protestantism as a movement and dominant cultural influence. the rest