Mainline Protestantism: Triumphant but Sidelined

Writing in The Atlantic recently, Jonathan Merritt quoted Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on the status of mainline Protestantism. “Congregationally speaking,” he observed curtly, “Protestant liberalism is deader than Henry VIII. While survey after survey shows a secularizing American population, this hasn’t helped the growth of liberal Protestant churches.” Then he asked: “Where are the Unitarian mega-churches, the Episcopalian church-planting movements?” Moore’s point, Merritt explains, was “that the type of religion that survives and shapes cultures shows up in local congregations.”¹ Similarly, historian Matthew Hedstrom concedes that in the twentieth century, “liberal Protestants so thoroughly embraced the culture, politics, and intellectual life of the wider society that their own Christian distinctiveness was diminished. . . . The cultural victory of liberal Protestantism actually contributed to its institutional decline, partly because religious individualism naturally resists institutionalization” (Hedstrom, pp. 6, 10).

Scholars routinely use the adjective “mainline” to label a group of historic Protestant denominations that for nearly two centuries exercised prodigious cultural authority in American society. Today this group includes the United Methodist Church; the Presbyterian Church, USA; the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; several northern Baptist bodies; the United Church of Christ; Disciples of Christ; the Reformed Church of America; and the Episcopal Church, USA. While the political and cultural engagement of evangelical Protestants has been extensively studied, scholars have recently begun to reassess what constituted the vital center of American Protestantism for much of the twentieth century. All three of the books under review observe that historians “now have an extensive and increasingly helpful literature on evangelical Protestantism . . . but studies of ecumenical Protestantism remain fewer in number, narrower in scope, and lower in professional visibility” (Hollinger, p. 21). Historians stand to miss a good deal if they ignore the Protestant mainline and the cultural clout it exercised, especially during the mid-twentieth century. Because “the idea of a unified American Protestantism, culturally dominant, socially progressive, fulfilling its obligation as shepherd of the nation’s soul” achieved, in Elesha Coffman’s words, “unprecedented success in the late 1940s and early 1950s,” it merits closer study than it has hitherto received (Coffman, p. 147).

Drawing upon Alasdair MacIntyre’s understanding of intellectual traditions, Coffman begins her thoroughly researched history of mainline Protestantism’s unofficial organ, The Christian Century, by characterizing liberal Protestantism in America as “an historically extended, socially embodied argument.” The Century, she maintains, was long “the premier forum” for the spirited discussion that defined the liberal Protestant community of discourse (p. 6). Like the mainline it helped define, the Century was an important cultural player but never enjoyed grassroots lay support. Coffman chronicles how the Century’s editor from 1908 to 1947, Charles Clayton Morrison, arose from humble beginnings on the rural periphery to study at the University of Chicago, where he was exposed to a cosmopolitan liberal Protestantism. Morrison, who had little experience as an editor, must have struck many as an odd choice for what was initially a Disciples of Christ denominational journal when he was named editor in 1908, but he proved to be the single most important influence on the Century’s character and content. At Chicago, Morrison studied philosophy with John Dewey and spent much of the rest of his career attempting to reconcile Dewey’s pragmatism with liberal Christianity. Ecclesiastical battles within Disciples circles enabled the young editor to see how debates could enliven the pages of the journal and also taught him that a religious magazine did not require official denominational support. Wise business and editorial decisions helped the Century attain a...