Church, Identity, and Change: Theology and Denominational Structures in Unsettled Times (review)

With rumors flying about the immanent demise of Protestant denominational life in the United States, this volume's rigorous assessment of eight American Protestant communions convincingly argues that American denominations are persevering for the most part, despite multiple factors contributing to denominational decline. The volume's contributors suggest that some denominations have endured through efforts to maintain their established ecclesiastical and cultural niches, whereas others have sustained themselves through efforts to adapt to new historical realities. Nevertheless, persevering is not the same as thriving, and some of the "oldline" Protestant communions among the volume's eight denominational case studies were diagnosed as stable, at best, with increasingly difficult futures looming if important internal changes are not made.

What the volume's contributors most often believed to be hindering the prospects of oldline denominations were structures that concentrated decision-making in too few hands, stifled rank-and-file input, relied too heavily on professional staff to envision and implement the denominational mission, failed to empower women and youth, responded too slowly to demographic and technological changes within the society, and emphasized secular objectives too much and spiritual objectives too little. Volume's contributors invoked some or all of these critiques in their analysis of the Episcopalian Church, the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church of America, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The Assemblies of God and Vineyard Churches came in for some of this criticism as well but were generally viewed by contributors as more attuned than some of the other denominations to spiritual and ecclesiastical winds of change. A chapter on Vineyard Churches, for example, comments on the ability of Vineyard Church leaders to "exegete culture" at least as well, if not better, than they do Scripture (157) and states further that it was the inability of mainline denominations to read culture that contributed to their decline and "[c]reated a vacuum into which movements like Vineyard" and other "new paradigm" churches could move (159). Nevertheless, Vineyard Churches and the Assemblies of God were viewed as lagging behind some of the others in their willingness to accommodate the nation's racial and ideological diversity—(although they are clearly not the only denominations in this volume, or in this country, struggling with racial and ideological diversity).

An established strength of oldline and historically black denominations has been their emphasis on social engagement. And although the volume's contributors note the continued importance these denominations placed on these matters, there have been factors eroding the ability of these denominations to rely on this as a basis for institutional influence and growth. An observation made by more than one of the contributors was that oldline and historically black denominations have been preoccupied of late with their own survival and have become more internally focused, at the expense of missions, social activism, and even evangelism. A contributor commenting on the Reformed Church of America draws attention to shifts in the mid-1960s away from the denomination's "extracongregational undertakings in order to cover skyrocketing congregational expenses." The author points out further that the percentage of the Reformed Church of America's resources allocated for external expenses declined from 25 percent in the mid-1960s to less than 10 percent by the 1990s (416). Similarly, a chapter on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod comments on the denomination's "dual mentalities of preservation and mission outreach" which "went to war with each other" during the 1960s and 1970s and led to increased debate about the need to theologically rein in the denomination's ministry (260–61). Although internalization on the part of the Reformed Church of America was premised on preserving congregational viability and was premised within the Lutheran Church on preserving "theological purity," a chapter on the National Baptist Convention USA, Inc., outlines a privileging of internal structure over external engagement that results...