death spiral

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jul 10, 2006

Remember the old saw about swatting the ox between the eyes with a two-by-four "to get its attention"? In an LA Times op-ed, Beliefnet's Charlotte Allen takes the timber to liberal Christianity, the progressivist congregations Mark Steyn collectively calls the Church of the Flavoured Condom:

When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.

So why are progressive churches in decline? Because, they insist, they're hindered from becoming as progressive as all God's chilluns want them to be. Allen's not buying:

So this is the liberal Christianity that was supposed to be the Christianity of the future: disarray, schism, rapidly falling numbers of adherents, a collapse of Christology and national meetings that rival those of the Modern Language Assn. for their potential for cheap laughs. And they keep telling the Catholic Church that it had better get with the liberal program -- ordain women, bless gay unions and so forth -- or die. Sure.

The sardonic congratulation offered by atheist H.L. Mencken in the 1920s rings truer than ever: "The great achievement of liberal Protestantism was to make God boring."