congregations full of young adults, youth, and
children, that the future of oldline churches does not seem in doubt. But the
sections of the country in which this is true are shrinking. In California,
We notice both that the congregation is smaller than it once was and also that
the average age is much older.
California reflects in extreme form what the nation as
a whole is becoming. In California the population grows, and some forms of
Christianity flourish, but the oldline denominations shrink and age. Apparently
they were deeply meaningful to my generation, less so to our children, and
almost off the map of real options for our grandchildren.
Perhaps the decline of these denominations is not a
calamity. Perhaps we should simply accept that Protestantism is taking new forms
in our day.
We have also adjusted to the reality of religious
pluralism. We have recognized the values of other religious traditions and
accepted our place as one among others. We have promoted interfaith dialogue and
entered into interfaith cooperation and joint work.
In short we have shown that Christian faith is a real
possibility for persons who are richly informed and deeply sensitive. To be a
Christian does not require a leap away from thought and knowledge. Indeed, it
requires of us a quest for truth and for righteousness that leads us continually
into self-reformation. We do not see this kind of commitment in the forms of
Protestantism that clearly do have a future. Is it not important to avoid the
identification of Christianity only with forms that perpetuate ideas and
practices that cannot withstand criticism in terms of either the advances of
modern thought or the norms we derive from the gospel itself?
The communities
that were established on the frontier tended to become stable and growing for
several generations. The churches maintained a central role in their lives. The
rites of passage into adulthood were administered largely by the churches.
Giving leadership in the churches was a major way of giving leadership in the
larger community.
As a result the
church often played a much larger role in the lives of the settlers than it had
played among them before they came. This was true of many Catholic groups, and
it has been a far more important factor for Lutherans than the frontier revivals
referred to above. We see the same phenomenon today among Koreans coming to the
United States. Many who were not Christians while in Korea join Korean churches
here, and the church often becomes central to their lives.
There is a natural transition here to what I call
theological factors in the decline. More people in the oldline churches are
exposed to the corrosive effects of modern thought on the confidence of faith.
Much less of higher education supports the integration of faith and learning.
Meanwhile a whole new wave of criticism has swept over
the churches. Often in the past the objections were directed to central
Christian beliefs about God and about Christ, because of their incredibility in
the modern world.
On most of these points the oldline churches have
confessed their guilt and have undertaken to repent. To repent means to change
course. In each instance repentance requires rethinking of traditional teaching
as well as change in church practices.
In most instances, we can find individual Christian
thinkers who have analyzed the problems and have proposed new formulations of
Christian doctrine that carry through the needed repentance. That oldline
churches could move forward, purged and renewed by authentic repentance
has been demonstrated. But this remains true only in principle. It could happen
in actuality only as hundreds of thousands of members of oldline churches faced
the criticisms, studied the responses, and internalized ways of remaining
faithful with full integrity.
Whereas in
thousands of towns and villages in this country the church was once a center of
adult education, now it has been marginalized, and it further marginalizes
itself even with respect to its own members. They look elsewhere for their
education even with regard to questions of religious belief.
The consequence is that the oldline churches do not
inculcate strong convictions. Their thoughtful members are more aware of the
problems with the Christian beliefs that inform their liturgy, creeds, and hymns
than of solutions offered by Christian thinkers. They find reasons to continue
to be supportive and active, but they are reluctant, or perhaps unable, to
encourage others to share Christian beliefs that they themselves find
problematic. Even their children are unlikely to be inspired to shape their
lives according to these beliefs. As social pressure to take part in church life
diminishes, they are likely to drift away.
As the future of the institution becomes more
uncertain, its leaders typically become more cautious. Controversy seems ever
more threatening. To avoid controversy is to avoid facing theological issues. It
becomes increasingly difficult to introduce theological discussion into
congregations.
There is a tendency to blame the decline of the church
on the changes it has made to adjust to new knowledge and sensitivity. One
remembers the good old days when we proclaimed Christ without the qualifications
introduced by sensitivity to implications for Jews. One remembers when one could
read and speak in patriarchal language without embarrassment. One remembers when
moral teachings about sexual behavior were unambiguous and emphatic. And one
supposes that it would be better to return to a time like that. Such repentance
as the church has implemented is criticized, and calls for further repentance,
for example, for our exclusion and condemnation of gays and Lesbians, are met
with stronger opposition. In short, the oldline churches are becoming less able
or willing to assimilate new understanding and repent of their sins.
Yet the only form of the oldline church that is worth
preserving is the one that is open to all truth and ready to reformulate its
faith in light of new learning. Such a church is ready to change its practice to
conform to new understanding, but it must do so as a faithful response to the
gospel, not as compromise with the world. This can happen authentically only
through continuous rethinking and reappropriation of its heritage. In short, it
is a major theological undertaking. And theology fades away from the life of our
denominations. The situation is not promising.
IV
So we must ask again, do the oldline churches have a
future? If, in order to survive, they transform themselves into the patterns
successfully developed by other Protestant movements, then the answer is No.
That would be the abandonment of their role, not its fulfilment. They would
survive then only in name, not in mission or true identity.
The sociological forces that have weakened the oldline
churches are unlikely to change. The sprawling suburbs are not like the
frontier. Neither are the inner cities. Sociologically speaking, both respond
better to forms of Chrstianity that are not ours. Established communities are
fewer and fewer as the economic system and modern transportation increase
mobility. Ethnic enclaves of groups from Western Europe will be less and less
important. Higher education in general is unlikely to help us bring faith and
learning together. The oldline churches will not be renewed by sociological
trends!
Nevertheless, in this new situation interest in
spirituality and in communities of shared convictions has not declined. Indeed,
it seems to have burgeoned. As established, culturally supported religious
practices and traditional communities have weakened, many people feel the need
for some way of dealing with their inner stress and emptiness. Many also feel
the need of new forms of community, often for a community based on shared
beliefs and lifestyles.
The hunger for spirituality and the hunger for
community with those who share convictions that provide direction for life are
often found in different people. Some want meditational disciplines to order
their inner lives without the constraints of committed involvement with others.
Others are prepared to surrender their individual determination of their lives
if they can find community support and authoritative leadership.
The interest in individual spirituality has been
responded to most widely by meditational practices coming from South and East
Asia. In some instances these also draw people into groups in which there is
much mutual support. In some of these instances the groups go on to take
responsibility for the wider society, engaging in work for peace and the
environment, for example. The movement of socially-engaged Buddhists among
American converts to Buddhism is particularly impressive.
The most effective responses to the need for
faith-based communities has come from conservative Protestants. Some are
Pentecostal, others are not. Both offer opportunities for study and fellowship
and clear guidance for daily life. They do not deal with intellectual problems
or global responsibility, but they provide practical direction with a clear
sense of right and wrong. They create communities of mutual support and
reinforcement of the basic teachings. They tend to depict the larger community
and its ideas more as threats than as sources of new insight. They rarely
discuss the criticisms that have been directed against practices stemming from
traditional Christianity.
The proper role for oldline churches is not that of
criticizing these responses to popular needs. Our task is to devise better ones.
We may deeply respect the meditational practices of India and China and admire
the results that issue from them, but they do not express the wisdom of Israel
as transmitted to us in our Bible. That wisdom also offers ways to still the
restlessness of the soul and to find an inner peace that passes understanding.
The route to this peace is not so much through
meditational disciplines that lead to unusual states of consciousness, although
they need not be excluded, but through a widening of concern that brings an end
to the tension between our personal good and the good of the whole. In short,
the spiritual discipline most central for Christians is coming to love the
neighbor as we love ourselves. The goal is to reach the point where our petition
that God's basileia come, that God's purposes be realized on earth as
they are in heaven, becomes our most authentic prayer.
Unlike the usual presentation of Asian meditation and
its goals, the Christian knows that this expansion of concern is the work of
grace. But Christians have always rejected the passivism that could arise from
some formulations of this knowledge. Grace works as we are open to its working,
and we are open to its working as we are opened by grace. Such attainment as
results is not our doing, but it happens, all the same, in and through our
practice.
Christians know that a love for others that is not
distorted by self-concern is, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, an "impossible
possibility". But it is not an irrelevant goal. We can grow in genuine caring
for others. What matters most to us can become changes that are relatively
indifferent to our private wellbeing. For example, we may come to care about the
release of others from degrading poverty, the ending of war, or the preservation
of the life-support systems of the planet in ways that are relatively separate
from any gains to us personally. Or, better, we may come to define our personal
gains so that they are not distinct from these gains of humanity and the Earth.
Some of the practices of Christian spirituality can be
conducted individually and privately. One may spend time in prayer, asking God's
blessing on others, especially on those one is tempted to dislike. One may spend
time asking God to help one understand the distorting role of one's own ego even
in such prayers. One may spend time simply seeking to be open to the working of
the Holy Spirit within one.
But the Christian also knows that one is bound up with
other believers. Together we constitute one body of which Christ is the head. To
seek to love others as oneself without embodying that love in working and
worshipping together with others who are on the same quest does not work. We
need one another. We are members of one another. Truly to love others is to love
them in the messiness of these relationships, not in the security of privacy.
Committee meetings and shared actions are part of the practice of Christian
spirituality.
Furthermore, if we truly come to care for the whole
world, we cannot be satisfied to relate to it only in prayer and meditation. We
need to act. But we cannot act significantly in isolation. We need to act with
like minded people. We can be personally involved in a few ventures, but we need
to be part of a movement that supports many others in diverse ventures, so that
we can take part in healing the world on many fronts even while our own efforts
are extremely limited. In short we need the church in order to express our love
for the whole.
The Christian also knows that the power of self-deceit
is such that we need the help of others to avoid it. How easy it is to believe
that one has disinterested concern for world peace as one becomes active in
organizations that work for it, when others see that we care a great deal about
our role in the organization and gaining recognition for our
efforts! How many noble causes are frustrated by quarrels that express the
narrow interests of the parties more than genuine differences in belief about
how to move forward! Purely private disciplines, at least those of the Christian
sort, do not protect us adequately from contributing to these distortions. We
need to hear how others, who genuinely love us, perceive what we are doing.
Again, we need the church.
We can move from the side of meeting the needs for
faith-based community as well. Whereas the danger of many of the responses to
the hunger for spirituality is that they are too individualistic and even
privatistic, the danger of many of the responses to the hunger for community is
that they threaten the personal integrity of those whose needs they meet. A
healthy response by the oldline churches would not do this.
The emptiness of isolated existence and the meaningless
of a life that has no goals besides individual gain opens people to accept the
authority of those who promise answers in exchange for conformity and obedience.
The church, historically, has no doubt taken advantage of people's need to gain
such conformity and obedience. This may be true of our oldline denominations as
well.
But on the whole we have also respected the freedom of
conscience of our members and encouraged their personal development. We have
held that people should identify with us as their own reflection leads them to
share our ideas and our goals. We have tried to explain these persuasively, but
not to gain acquiescence through pressure or coercion. The community we want is
of diverse individuals, each exercising personal freedom, and supporting one
another in that exercise. Of course, this works only as long as these
individuals cherish one another and the community among them and are willing to
work collectively to achieve goals none can achieve alone.
For such a community to be a Christian church, it must
find its unity in Christ. This means both that all acknowledge Christ as their
Lord and Savior but also that all measure their individual lives and their
shared work by the understanding of God's purposes they receive through Christ.
But the authority of Christ is not a restrictive one. Christ's power is the
power that empowers, not the power that compels. Participation in the body of
which Christ is the head makes one more free, not less.
My argument here is that the traditions of the oldline
churches at their best do offer a powerful spirituality and a faith-based
community that, in principle, constitute an adequate response to the continuing
hungers of our culture. It is not that, if we did our job, other responses would
be superseded. There are many who want a spirituality that is purely private and
does not involve them with others. There are many who want to be freed from the
responsibilities that accompany authentic freedom. But I am convinced that there
are also many who would respond with joy and relief if the potentialities of the
oldline traditions were actualized in our congregations. Indeed, I believe that
where we find vital congregations today, there are many who are finding in them
something of what I describe.
V
Nevertheless, there is a large gap between what I am
describing and the reality of most of our congregations. I have described
communities of persons who find their unity in Christ and are helped to develop
a fully Christian spirituality. That would mean that their Christian identity is
primary.
Unfortunately, that cannot be taken for granted today
in our oldline churches. Many members are businessmen, or professionals, or
workers for whom their status as Christians is a second, third, or fourth
consideration. Some are primarily committed to good citizenship, and regard the
church as one valuable contributor to the community for which they care. For
them, to be a Christian may mean little more than to be a Rotarian or a
Republican. The church is simply one of the institutions they support. Others
are nationalists first, and support the church only as it is a means of
advancing nationalist goals. Others have their ideology shaped by economic
theories supporting the global market economy, and judge Christian teaching
according to its conformity to that. Still others think of the local
congregation as bound up with their family history, and, for the sake of their
ancestors, continue to take part.
To the extent that the oldline churches are shaped by a
membership that is not decisively committed to Christ, they cannot respond well
to the challenge they face to. Such people can hardly engage in reflecting on
how Christian faith illuminates the issues faced by the church. If answers arise
in such reflection that conflict with their primary identities and loyalties,
they may leave the church. A church already declining in membership and
resources feels in cannot afford to lose such members.
But this is a vicious circle. If we cannot afford to
reflect seriously about the meaning of Christian faith in relation to new issues
that confront us, Christian faith ceases to be the central organizing principle
of our thinking and living. We must turn to other guides for much of our being.
Christ inevitably becomes one Lord among others. By failing to engage our
members in serious reflection about the meaning of their faith, the number for
whom commitment to Christ is central inevitably continues to decline.
VI
I have said the task is a theological one, but in
calling for reflection about the meaning of Christ for new challenges, I have
not used that word. The term has become a turn-off for most laity and many
pastors. If theology is to be renewed as a central part of church life, we must
face the question of why it has been marginalized.
One reason is the broad anti-intellectualism of our
society. Many people suppose that it is how one behaves that is important, not
what one believes. But we should recognize that that itself is a belief the
consequences of which are vast and troubling. It is true, of course, as Jesus
taught in the parable of the two sons, that it is better to do God's will after
saying one will not than to fail to do it after saying that one will. It is also
true that we can test the worth of beliefs by their fruits. Practice is
immensely important.
But we should frontally attack the anti-intellectualism
that dismisses beliefs as unimportant. It is simply false. Behavior is deeply
influenced by beliefs, for good and for ill. Much of the greatest suffering in
human history has been caused by people acting as their deepest beliefs dictated
they should act.
If we go back in our Christian history to the age of
the Fathers of the Church, we find good examples. It was great Christian saints,
such as Chrysostom, who contributed most to the anti-Judaism that has poisoned
so much of our history. There is no reason to question his sincerity. He spoke
and acted out of his positive beliefs about the centrality of Jesus Christ.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux contributed greatly to the
Christian fervor that led to crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land. It
would be hard to doubt his sincerity. He acted in terms of central Christian
beliefs. But the suffering both of the Crusaders and of their victims was
enormous.
In more recent times, as belief in the greatness of
their nations has become the central motive for so many people, one can cite
innumerable instances of the evil consequences of such beliefs. Wars among
England, France, and Germany have dominated much of the history of modern Europe
and sucked in much of the rest of the world. The imposition of their rule
throughout much of the planet also expressed the belief in the greatness of
their cultures and the importance of affirming their national glory.
Today many act sincerely for the good of the poor in
promoting global capitalism. They genuinely believe that this is the salvation
of the world. But those who see the results in the actual lives of people
everywhere are painfully aware of the enormous suffering caused by acting on
these beliefs. As long as the beliefs are intact, this suffering is hard to
acknowledge.
At present our denominations are torn apart by the
struggle over homosexuality. It would be foolish to suppose that most of the
advocates of the opposed positions are insincere, that their beliefs are
unimportant. Some deeply believe that homosexuality is contrary to the
intentions of God as expressed in creation itself and as reinforced in scattered
references in the Bible. Others deeply believe that the love expressed in Christ
demands that the church be inclusive of those whom society excludes and
affirming of all regardless of their sexual orientation. For them, such
inclusion and affirmation cannot be conditional on lifelong abstinence from
sexual intimacy. These differences of belief threaten to tear some of our
oldline denominations apart.
The healthy response to such deep divisions would be
serious shared theological reflection among persons whose deepest commitments
are to Christ. That would entail a genuine effort to find the mind of Christ
rather than to justify deeply held beliefs by appealing to Christ. In a
community in which such theological reflection was well established, discussion
would be genuinely fruitful. But today we do not have the habit of such
conversation. We move quickly to arguments that express views that have been
shaped by other forces and only subsequently grounded in theology.
VII
Thus far I have blamed the anti-intellectualism of our
culture in which the churches share for the inability to respond well to the
crises of our time. But the blame falls equally on those of us who are
professional theologians. We have defined "theology" as an academic discipline
and thus removed it from the church.
This was not done by people of ill will or by those
indifferent to the church. It was done by those who cared deeply for the faith
and saw the seriousness of the threats coming from changes in the intellectual
context. Schleiermacher played an early role. Theology had long been the queen
of the sciences, but in the modern world, it was dethroned. It was in danger of
being excluded from the university. The irrelevance of Christian thinking to the
contemporary scene, already charged against the churches, would be confirmed.
Schleiermacher saw to it that theology would be a continuing part of the modern
German university.
In the German scene, the identification of Christian
theology as an academic discipline did not separate it far from the church. The
ministers, at least, were well schooled in theology as a central part of their
education. They might not participate in the debates among the theological
professors, but many of them kept up with these. Even laiety were involved to
some extent. Thus the theological faculties could play the dual role of guiding
the church's thinking and engaging centrally in the life of the universities.
German scholarship, including German theological scholarship, was the wonder of
the world.
In the United States, also, in the nineteenth century
theology as taught in universities remained close to the churches. As late as
the first half of the twentieth century, college teachers of religion and
seminary professors were often ministers who distinguished themselves by their
reflectiveness and scholarly habits. The issues they discussed in higher
education were not far separated from those that were of concern in
congregations.
But after World War II the situation changed. There had
long been admiration for German scholarship, and a number of professors well
before that time did much of their study in Germany. They brought back to the
United States a knowledge of the German tradition that showed up the simplicity
and naivete of much that had transpired in this country. As seminaries expanded
dramatically after World War II, their most distinguished and influential
faculty looked to German scholarship. The history of modern theology that they
taught was basically the history of German nineteenth- and twentieth-century
theology.
At that time this culminated in what was broadly called
Neo-orthodoxy. The spectrum of German-language positions from Barth and Brunner
to Bultmann and Tillich defined the choices for American seminary students. If
the story of American theology was taught at all, it was as a minor elective. To
take this seriously was a sign of lack of sophistication.
This introduced a break between theology and the
American churches. For a while the excitement of the German debate swept up a
good many pastors, so that there was some theological ferment among them. But it
was extremely difficult for them to relate the German debates, highly relevant
to church life in Germany, to their American congregations. Lay people might be
willing to study theology, but the theology they studied did not arise out of
their own experience or clearly relate to it. For American Christians, theology
had been redefined as an academic discipline with only tenuous relations to
their individual or ecclesiastical experience.
American theologians continued to have a significant
role to play. The history of European thought in relation to which they posed
their problems and did their research was shared by other scholars and
intellectuals. These could not look to the churches for serious grappling with
this important history, but academic theologians could participate respectably
in intellectual discourse. This is important for the future of Christianity.
Although I believe that it is the grafting of the work
of American theologians on the history of German, or Central European, theology
that has most clearly defined the meaning of theology, and its irrelevance to
the average American Christian, this is not the only role played by professional
theologians. For example, some have devoted attention to the history of their
own denominations, often with special emphasis on their founders. The churches
find these scholars useful when they make official statements or engage in
interchurch conversations. Among Lutherans, I believe, this kind of theology
plays an exceptionally large role, whereas it is peripheral among United
Methodists.
But even this kind of theology separates it from the
lives o church people. Only those who can engage in careful historical study can
participate in it. Church people may listen with interest to the results, and
may be able to apply some of them. But it is someone else's work, that of
someone with scholarly authority, that they are applying. It would not make
sense to have lay people engage in a debate about the details of Luther's
teaching. This kind of theology remains an academic discipline in which a
Christian can participate only by extensive specialization in academia.
VIII
There is a deep irony here. In the initiation of
Protestantism there was great concern that the basis for theological reflection,
the Bible, be available to all believers. Implicit faith, that is, the
acceptance of the authority of others to determine what one believed, was not
enough. Christians were to form and formulate their own convictions. This
applied to lay and clergy alike.
On this point, surely the Reformers were correct. Yet
for fifty years we have acquiesced in the professionalization of theology,
leaving most Christians either with naive and unexamined notions or an implicit
faith in what the church teaches. It is this abandonmnet of a cardinal principle
of the Reformation that I blame most for the decay of our oldline denominations.
Can we change this? If changing this meant introducing
all Christians to the history of professional theology, then we cannot. If it
meant studying the history of their denominations and the thought of their
founders sufficiently to participate in debates about these, then we cannot. But
theology does not have to mean either of these academic activities, valuable as
they are in themselves.
That is why, for me, the redefinition of theology is so
crucial. My redefinition is radical against the background of recent
professional theology, but not in relation to what theology has meant in the
overall history of the church, and especially of Protestantism. I define
"theology" as "intentional Christian thinking about important matters." I
believe all serious Christians can be theologians in this sense, and that being
a theologian is a part of the vocation of all Christians.
To unpack the definition, I will begin with the last
phrase. It is intentionally open-ended. Some issues are important to some
Christians and not to others. For those for whom they are important, intentional
Christian reflection about them is theology. Of course, this is a matter of
degree. The definition suggests that it is best for theological thinking to
concentrate on the most important matters as judged by an individual or by a
group collectively.
The topics of theology, then, may well be God, Christ,
and the church. These are indeed important matters. But the topics may also be
urgent ethical issues such as human rights, medical care, abortion,
environmental protection, or world peace. Or they may be highly theoretical
topics such as the ideology that supports global capitalism. One very important
change needed in the way theology is understood is recovery of the great breadth
of topics treated in classical theology. Psychological, social, political, and
economic questions are not less theological than are God, Christ, and the
church. Lay Christians may contribute more on many of these theological topics
than clergy or academic theologians.
For reflection on any of these topics to be Christian
theology, the reflection must be intentionally Christian. It is not enough that
the thinker be a Christian. Sometimes because of the thinker's Christian faith,
what is thought about these topics is influenced by that faith. But the ability
to compartmentalize is enormous. When a Christian has been socialized through
graduate education into an academic discipline, the influence of faith in the
reflection that follows is often exceedingly marginal. However sincere that
Christian's faith, what she or he says will not be theology.
That is why it is so important to understand that
theology is intentionally Christian thinking. When one is reflecting
about a psychological, sociological, political, or economic issue intentionally
as a Christian, one submits one's judgments to Christ. That does not mean, at
least if one understands Christ as I do, that one takes the established facts
less seriously or is less concerned to be fair and honest in dealing with them.
Quite the contrary. It does not mean that one's thinking will be less
disciplined than that which makes up the academic "disciplines".
On the other hand, it is likely to mean that one is
critical of the thinking done in established disciplines. It may mean that one
presses harder for the assumptions underlying a discipline and engages those
assumptions critically. It may mean greater suspicion of disciplinary claims to
objectivity. It may mean more attention to the subjectivity of the people who
are studied and whose fate is being decided. It may mean that one brings
understanding from one discipline to bear on decisions made in another. It will
certainly mean that one brings questions and insight formulated out of the
wisdom of the Bible and the Christian tradition to bear.
Engaging the academic disciplines and the professions
is an important role for lay Christians, especially those who are involved in
those disciplines and professions. But there are other questions that are more
accessible. Many Christians are perplexed about how to understand the relation
of Christ to Jews or Buddhists. They can begin their intentional Christian
thinking there. Others are troubled that so often it is good people, sincere
believers, who suffer. They can begin their thinking there. Others may wonder
about the efficacy of prayer. They can begin their thinking there. Still others
ask what happens to us at death. They can begin their thinking there.
Whether one has read what others have written on any of
these topics is not the first consideration. One can articulate whatever
opinions one holds and examine them as to whether they are conformal to the mind
of Christ. One can also examine how one seeks to identify the mind of Christ and
become critical about that method as well. In this way one can become a
responsible theologian without benefit of the opinion of others. Becoming a good
theologian is quite different from becoming a good scholar.
Nevertheless, we need one another. The questions of
others help us to see problems with our thinking. The opinions of others cause
us to rethink. The perception of others can help us to see where we are not
making clear and honest connections. Theology works best as a group project.
Furthermore, we can benefit greatly from the work of
scholars. Learning something of the history of the discussion of our topic
widens and clarifies our issues. It can point out the limitations of our own
solutions and suggest new avenues of thinking. Encountering solutions proposed
by theologians can also stimulate and challenge. In short, intentional Christian
thinking among all Christians can build bridges to professional theologians. It
may be surprising how many of them will happily cross the bridges to join the
broader theological task.
To renew theological thinking in the church will not
immediately end its statistical decline. It may even drive out some who are now
members. But it is my conviction that in the long run, and even in the
relatively short run it would reinvigorate the church and develop a core of
membership that can carry the church through its decline and provide a basis for
new health and even growth. The kind of churches that would emerge would carry
forward the best of the tradition of the oldline churches. These churches would
have a future.
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