Martin Marty reflects on the decline of the “mainline Protestant” church:
Historians who mark their work with enduring attention to the signs of finitude, contingency and transience may not join the front rank of strategists for the once-mainline. But they can provide perspective and contribute to the search for wisdom in bewildering times—if they are not surprised, paralyzed or distracted by obsessive talk of mainline decline. Over my shoulder as I write is a framed phrase in Chinese calligraphy. It once was on the office wall of Charles Huggins, a Nobelist in science. It translates: “Discovery is our business.” True for the scientists, it also informs the vocation of humanists and theologians who are mining the past for the purposes of discovery.
I suspect that the time for lament is coming to an end. Church attendance is down, cultural influence is dwindling, buildings are crumbling. =’(. ITS A SIGN! So lets go from there and see what we can do.
For some reason tumblr is being whack and won’t let me hyperlink within the text. Here is the link below:
http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-08/declinism-discovery