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| 85 5 In a State of Perpetual Decline Meridian Street United Methodist Church is the mother church of Methodism in Indianapolis. Founded in 1821, on what would eventually be the site of the statehouse, the congregation has been home to prominent city leaders as well as a vice president of the United States, a U.S. senator, and the governor of the state, not to mention leaders within the denomination. Over the course of its history the congregation has built various church home along Meridian Street, from the famed circle at the heart of Indianapolis to a new location a bit farther north by the dawn of the twentieth century to even farther north as the city’s population and limits grew. Although the congregation is part of the Seven Sisters, the ups and downs of its membership and the movement of its church plant since its founding also represent the wider issues facing denominations, both inside and outside of the old Mainline, as the twenty-first century began.1 There is more to the decline of the Seven Sisters than the types of theological and political reasons we have already discussed. In many respects, the onset of decline in the 1960s and 1970s was a perfect storm of sorts, with internal and external reasons coupled with a new political environment. But decline was also spurred and perpetuated by the rise of consumerism, the communications revolution, and the challenges of cultural engagement beyond politics. These factors continue to have implications for the Seven Sisters and for the emerging new Mainline of the twenty-first century. Revisiting Classic Decline When it comes to the decline of the Seven Sisters, theology and doctrine does matter.2 If the Episcopal Church is not testimony enough, consider the Methodists. The denomination, which boasts such storied congregations as Meridian Street, had rapid membership gains from their founding until the 1860s, with additional spikes in the 1870s and the 1910s, and were part of the evangelical core of the Mainline. Despite having gone through doctrinal con- 86 | In a State of Perpetual Decline troversies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Methodists retained many members easily described as both conservative and orthodox , and successfully reunited as a single denomination after the Civil War; the church also merged with smaller denominations of Wesleyan heritage. Still, decline appeared on the denominational radar screen in the 1950s, and by the 1970s absolute membership numbers began to drop.3` Why did this happen? The Methodists, it turns out, followed in the path of the Episcopal Church and other members of the Seven Sisters, such as the UCC, with many members growing complacent, others seeking “respectability ” as part of the middle class (and thus less interested in disrupting the status quo),4 and some open to reshaping their version of the Christian faith for the modern world. In other words, they became victims of the classic decline thesis put forward by Dean Kelley, which, as we saw in the case of the Episcopal Church, argued these very things.5 And while there have been challenges to Kelley’s thesis, most notably with the claim that demographics (i.e., conservatives have more children, rather than liberal theology are really to blame,6 the fact is that these critiques can be seen as augmenting Kelley’s work by considering such factors as consumerism. Beyond Classic Decline: Consumerism Consumerism is hardly a foreign concept to Americans. People shop for bargains all the time. But that they also shop for churches is a concept that many have found difficult to accept, perhaps because such an approach makes churches seem like goods or a commodity rather than the source of the Good, and because of fears that accepting consumerism is akin to making the church into a business, just another organization dedicated to the bottom line. Yet, ignoring the reality that since denominational decline set in, there has been a corresponding decline in denominational loyalty. For good or ill, the democratic tendency in American religious history has helped commodify where people worship and gives them a wide variety of options.7 Since the 1970s, they have been exercising their choice to shop around with great regularity.8 Consumerism does not just affect denominations; it really is best seen at the local level. After all, a person might decide to leave church A for church B, but that person makes that choice, in part, based on specific congregational options that are available to him or...

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