Conclusion
5
Denominations
Contemporary Forms of Christianity
In the previous chapter we explored the development of Christianity, noting such landmarks as the Great Schism of 1054 between East and West (pp. 138–139), the emergence of Protestantism in the sixteenth century (pp. 151–154), the birth of the Pentecostal movement in the twentieth century (pp. 212–213), and the Second Vatican Council (pp. 189–191). This complex history means that contemporary Christianity is variegated, characterized by quite different understandings of church government, styles of worship, and cultural roots. In what follows we shall explore some of the major forms of Christianity in today’s world.
The term “denomination” is widely used to refer to families of Christian churches. Although this practice is widespread, especially in the media, it is not universally accepted. The term was originally used to designate the various Protestant groups that emerged as a result of the sixteenth-century Reformation (pp. 151–158), and it came to mean something like “self-governing ecclesial body” – such as Lutheranism or Methodism. Neither Catholicism nor Orthodoxy considers itself to be a denomination; both regard themselves as churches that trace their origins back to the apostolic era. Yet the term “denomination” has come to be so widely used to refer to groups of Christian churches that it will be used in this chapter, despite these concerns.
Catholicism
Catholicism is by far the world’s largest Christian church and is widely expected to be the most successful one in the next generation. Although some refer to it as “Roman Catholicism” in order to emphasize the central role of Rome in its past history and present government, there is an increasing trend to use the simpler term “Catholicism” instead (note the use of the initial capital letter). This practice will be followed in this work. Catholicism is presently the largest religious group in the United States, where it has four times the membership of its nearest rival, southern Baptist. Recent statistics suggest a modest growth in its membership in the United States over the last few years. Catholics are by far the largest and most widely distributed Christian group in the world, and Catholicism continues to expand. It can expect to face problems everywhere; nevertheless, its past history suggests that it will be able to face them and to make the necessary adjustments.
Yet the future of Catholicism was once seen to be in doubt. To appreciate this point, we need to go back two centuries and consider the situation of the Catholic church in Western Europe following the French Revolution of 1789 (pp. 168–169). As the nineteenth century cautiously opened, there was a general feeling that the future of Roman Catholicism was very much in doubt. The French Revolution had virtually wiped out the influence – and even the presence – of the church in France. Revolution was to be exported, both through the spread of its leading ideas and through the activities of French revolutionary troops, which invaded parts of until then Catholic Europe. Things looked grim. The Napoleonic era was widely seen as presaging the end of any role for Catholicism in Europe. Yet, with the defeat of Napoleon and the reshaping of Europe at the Congress of Vienna (1815), things began to stabilize.
Although missions had established a significant Catholic presence in regions such as South America, Japan, and India (pp. 149–150), Catholicism was still to a great extent a European religion (pp. 173–174). This situation began to change as Catholicism began to be established in the Americas, Asia, and Africa through the expansion of European economic and political influence. In the case of the United States, the expansion of Catholicism took place mainly during the nineteenth century, primarily through emigration from Catholic nations of Europe, such as Ireland and Italy. The inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy as the first Catholic president of the United States in 1960 was seen by many observers as demonstrating that Catholicism had become part of the social fabric of the nation.
In reflecting on the present state and form of Catholicism, it is important to bear in mind the achievements of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), especially the reforming and renewing agenda that it imposed during a period of rapid social change in the West (pp. 189–191). The 1960s are now widely regarded as the high-water mark of a period of secular optimism in western culture. The question of the relevance of Christianity within such a context came to be of considerable importance. Sensitive to a whole range of issues, John XXIII (pope from 1958 to 1963) summoned the Second Vatican Council in order to deal with “updating” the agenda of the church (pp. 189–191). The council began its meetings in October 1962. In four sessions spread over the fall of each year during the period 1962–1965, more than 2,450 bishops from all over the world met at Rome to discuss the future direction of the Catholic church.
The council helped define the place of the Christian faith and of the Catholic church in the modern world; it focused particularly on the nature of the church itself, the relation between bishops and pope, the relation between Christians and non-Christians, and the relation between Catholics and other Christians. The importance of evangelism was affirmed in a context of respecting the identities and integrities of non-Christians.
A concern for social justice has propelled the Roman Catholic church to the forefront of the global struggle for human rights – as can be seen in recent decades from the role of the church in the overthrow of President Marcos of the Philippines, in the liberation of East Timor from a particularly vicious annexation of its territory by Indonesia, and in the libertarian struggle in South America under military dictatorships, which claimed the lives of several notable bishops.
After the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic church came to see itself more as a community of believers than as a divinely ordained and hierarchically ordered society. The laity was given an increasingly important place in the life of the church. The council also followed the example of Leo XIII in stressing the social aspects of the Christian faith, including its implications for human rights, race relations, and social justice. Within the church, the idea of “collegiality” took on greater importance. This expresses the notion that the church is itself a community of member churches, with the authority dispersed to some extent among its bishops rather than concentrated in the pope.
The Second Vatican Council is a landmark in the history of Catholicism. It remains to be seen how it will influence the development of Christianity into the next millennium. While many Catholics welcomed the new atmosphere that it introduced, others felt that it had betrayed many central concerns of traditional Catholic teaching and practice. Traces of this tension remain in the modern Catholic church. It is, however, a creative tension, and it can be expected to lead to a healthy process of self-examination in the future.
Other tensions have subsequently emerged as significant within Catholicism. Increasingly, Christianity is becoming a religion of the developing world, with its center of gravity moving – at least numerically – away from the western world and toward the emerging nations of Africa and Asia. Much the same pattern is reflected in other Christian churches. Yet there are some specific issues relating to Roman Catholicism, including a startling decline in the number of men offering themselves for the priesthood. This is especially evident in the Irish Republic, until recently a Catholic bastion in Western Europe. Allegations of child abuse have seriously eroded the status of the priesthood. A serious shortage of priests now confronts the Irish church. Similar patterns can be discerned throughout the western world. In the developing world, however, things are much more encouraging.
This means that the agenda of the developing world is increasingly coming to dominate Catholicism, as the traditional agenda of the West becomes less important. The election of the Argentinian Jorge Mario Bergoglio (born 1936) as pope in 2013 was widely seen as highlighting the importance of the global South in contemporary Catholicism. (Bergoglio took the papal name “Francis.”) This development is interpreted by some observers as showing that Catholicism has moved decisively from seeing itself as a western faith in the last two centuries. It is widely expected that the Catholic church will continue to be the major player in global Christianity in the next generation.
The distinctive ethos of Catholicism is difficult to summarize, on account of the complexity of the movement. However, the following points are important:
Eastern Orthodoxy
Whether in its Greek or Russian forms, eastern Orthodoxy – sometimes referred to simply as “Orthodoxy” (and note the initial capital letter) – represents a form of Christianity that retains a strong degree of continuity with the church of the eastern Mediterranean (pp. 169–170) and traces its liturgy and doctrines directly back to the early church. Orthodoxy is numerically strongest in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Greece, where it has had a major influence in shaping a sense of national identity. However, it has also established a major presence in North America and Australia through emigration. The Australian city of Melbourne, for example, is home to one of the largest Greek Orthodox communities in the world.
Any attempt to describe the distinctive ethos of Orthodoxy would include the following elements:
Protestantism
The term “Protestantism” is widely used to refer to those churches which trace their historical origins back to the European Reformation of the sixteenth century (pp. 151–154). The term is potentially misleading, in that most Protestant churches stress their historical and theological continuity with the early church. It must be insisted that the term “Protestant” is not in tension with the idea of being “catholic.” The orthographical distinction between “catholic” and “Catholic” is of critical importance. To be “Catholic” is to be “catholic” in a particular way, which Protestants reject. Anglican and Lutheran writers, for example, place special emphasis on their continuity with the life and thought of the early church and affirm their “catholic” credentials. Similarly, in 1536 John Calvin, the reformer of the city of Geneva, vigorously defended the Reformation against the charge that it had no place for the patristic heritage. Here we shall follow the general convention of using the term “Protestant” to refer to those churches whose historical origins are to be traced back to the divisions that opened up in the sixteenth century.
Protestant churches have had particularly close links with the state in a number of areas of Europe. Lutheranism, for example, has had close links with the state in Scandinavia, just as various forms of Presbyterianism have been influential in Scotland and in the Netherlands or Anglicanism in England. Partly on account of these links, and more generally through their continuity with the mainline Reformation, these churches offer baptism to infants who are too young to confess the Christian faith. This serves to distinguish them from Baptists, who hold that baptism should be administered only to those who are already believing Christians (pp. 207–209).
Evangelicalism (pp. 213–214) is now a major influence within most mainline Protestant denominations in the English-speaking West, although until relatively recently its influence has been significantly smaller in continental Europe. A number of independent churches have now sprung up with a distinctively evangelical ethos, especially in South America and Southern Africa.
The charismatic movement (pp. 212–213) has also been of significance in the life of many mainline Protestant churches, and its influence has also been felt in Catholicism. A number of specifically charismatic denominations (such as the Assemblies of God) are now of growing importance in global Protestantism. In what follows we shall focus on five major Protestant denominations; it must be appreciated that the rapid growth of evangelicalism and of the charismatic movement means that numerical growth within Protestantism is now increasingly likely to happen outside the mainline denominations.
All Protestant denominations permit their ministers to marry. In recent years, most Protestant denominations – but not, it must be stressed, all of them – have permitted women to be ordained to full-time ministry within the church. Other means by which Protestants can be distinguished from Catholics include the following:
Readers interested in following up on some of these historical and theological points are recommended to read works that deal with the history and theology of the Reformation, which will provide considerably more detailed explanations of these points, as well as expanding on them.
Now we shall briefly comment on several mainline Protestant denominations, before moving on to consider two important movements – Pentecostalism and evangelicalism – which are best seen as distinct from mainline Protestantism despite their connections with it.
Anglicanism
“Anglicanism” is the term usually employed to denote the distinctive features of the ecclesia Anglicana – the national Church of England, as it emerged from the sixteenth-century Reformation (pp. 156–157). The worldwide expansion of England’s influence – initially through the annexation of Ireland and Scotland and subsequently through the colonization of North America in the seventeenth century, of the Indian subcontinent in the late eighteenth century, and of sub-Saharan Africa in the nineteenth – brought with it a significant enlargement of the sphere of influence of Anglicanism. The parody of Anglicanism as “the British empire at prayer” contains at least an element of truth: Anglicanism has exercised relatively little influence outside those realms that were once subject to British presence or rule.
Here are is a summary of the main features of Anglicanism:
The Baptists
The origins of the Baptist churches are to be found in the seventeenth century. The more radical sections of the Reformation had always insisted that the church was to be a pure society of believers rather than a mixed body. During the seventeenth century, particularly in England, there was growing support not only for the idea that congregations should consist only of those who explicitly and publicly affirmed their faith, but for the related idea that baptism should be reserved only for those who affirmed their faith in this way. This contrasted with the Church of England, which permitted infants to be baptized (see p. 156).
The movement gained momentum in England during the nineteenth century, with great preachers such as C. H. Spurgeon (1834–1892), who drew huge audiences for his sermons. The foundation of the Baptist Missionary Society (1792) by William Carey (1761–1834) led to considerable effort being invested in missionary work. Baptist congregations were established in North America, where the movement has grown to have great influence on public life in the United States of America. The Southern Baptist Convention is one of the most important forces in modern American Christianity; its six seminaries have been of major importance in shaping the distinctive ethos of the denomination. Perhaps the best-known Protestant Christian of the twentieth century – Billy Graham (born 1918) – is a Baptist.
The Southern Baptist Convention was founded in Augusta, Georgia, in May 1845. Up to that point, individual Baptist congregations in the area had operated without feeling the need for any national or regional structure, and never thought of themselves as belonging to a “denomination.” Yet there was a growing recognition that a centralized denomination would be more efficient and more powerful, capable of achieving greater social and political influence. Anxious not to compromise the autonomy of local Baptist congregations, the convention adopted a model of church governance that was essentially congregationalist. The autonomy and independence of individual congregations was thus affirmed.
This meant that the policies of a local Baptist congregation in a matter of doctrine, discipline, or church order could not be overturned by any superior body, since there is no body that has authority over the local church. This principle of congregational autonomy was vigorously upheld by the second president of the Convention, R. B. C. Howell, during the period 1851–1858. Congregations may affiliate to (and disaffiliate from) the convention as they see fit. This local independence is essential to any understanding of the subsequent dynamics of southern Baptist life, especially in the later twentieth century.
The Baptist ethos is difficult to summarize on account of the denomination’s diversity worldwide. However, the following will be helpful if you wish to gain something of an understanding of the movement:
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is the form of Protestantism that derives directly from Luther’s reformation of the German church in the 1520s. Lutheranism was initially restricted to parts of northeastern Germany; however, by a gradual process of expansion, the movement established itself in Scandinavia and the Baltic states. Although there were early indications that Lutheranism might become the dominant form of Christianity in England during the late 1530s, it never gained the influence that some expected. The movement was active in missionary work, especially in India.
The movement’s greatest expansion came about through the emigration of Lutheran communities from Scandinavia and Germany to North America. The settlement of Swedish communities in Minnesota is a particularly good example of this phenomenon. Lutheran communities also settled in Australia through a similar process. As a result, Lutheranism today is to be found chiefly in Germany, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, and especially the northern states of the USA. North American and European Lutheranism have tended to pursue somewhat different agendas during the past century – agendas reflecting their different contexts. However, the formation of the Lutheran World Federation has gone some considerable way toward giving Lutherans a common sense of identity and purpose.
The Lutheran ethos reflects, to some degree, the central themes of Luther’s personal program of reformation, which stressed continuity with the medieval church while at the same time introducing doctrinal and other changes where change was regarded as necessary.
Methodism
Methodism was a movement within the Church of England that subsequently gave birth to Methodism as a denomination in its own right. Its origins are especially associated with John Wesley (1703–1791), one of its founders and early leaders. When Methodism broke away from the Church of England, this was contrary to Wesley’s intentions. The distinctive emphasis of the early Methodists was on the need for personal holiness. The term “Methodist” was originally a nickname, based on the methodical nature of the devotions and disciplines of the Wesleys and their circle.
The early history of English Methodism demonstrates the innate tendency to fragmentation that is characteristic of Protestantism. Divisions arose over a series of issues, including church order and discipline – though not, significantly, matters of doctrine. A dispute in the northeast of England led to the “Methodist New Connection,” which formed in 1797. A decade later the “Primitive Methodists” broke away, believing that the Wesleyan Connection was losing its enthusiasm for revivalism. The Bible Christian Church was founded by a Wesleyan preacher in England’s west country in 1815; unusually, it made extensive use of women preachers.
Yet English Methodism also illustrates Protestantism’s capacities to set past controversies behind it and to secure reconciliation. In 1857 three Methodist groups united to form the United Methodist Free Churches; in 1907 these were incorporated, together with the New Connection and others, into the United Methodist Church; in 1932, the Wesleyans, the Primitive Methodists, and the United Methodists merged to establish the Methodist Church in Great Britain.
Generally Methodism has tended to be found primarily in English-speaking regions of the world, showing a parallelism with Anglicanism in this respect. As a result of various union schemes, in various parts of the world such as Canada and Australia, Methodism has ceased to exist as a distinct denomination. The formation of the World Methodist Council has gone some way toward maintaining Methodism as a distinct entity within global Christianity.
Presbyterianism and other reformed denominations
If the Lutheran churches owed their historical origins to Luther, the reformed churches owed theirs to Calvin. Reformed versions of Christianity were soon established in Western Europe, whence they spread to North America. In Europe itself Scotland and the Netherlands were soon established as particularly important centers of reformed thought. In England the two major reformed traditions have been referred to traditionally as Presbyterianism and Congregationalism; they reflect two different systems of church government.
Presbyterianism takes its name from the Greek word presbuteros (“elder”) and applies to a form of church government that is exercised by representative groups of senior congregation members. Although this form of church government is encountered across Protestant denominations, the qualification “Presbyterian” is given particularly to those churches that arose in England and Scotland during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, taking their theological lead from John Calvin. Congregationalism recognizes the autonomy of the individual congregation.
As a result of Dutch colonial policy during the nineteenth century, forms of reformed Christianity were established in South Africa, the northeastern parts of South America, and parts of Southeast Asia. In the United States the Princeton Theological Seminary was established as a leading center of Presbyterian thought and practice. In recent years South Korea has become a leading center of reformed church life, as a result of the very rapid growth of Christianity in that region. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches, constituted in its present form in 1970 (although tracing its origins back to 1875), provides a means of allowing the various reformed churches to maintain their common identity.
The diversity within the reformed churches is such that it is difficult to make generalizations about them. However, the following aspects of the reformed ethos are salient:
Pentecostalism
The origins of Pentecostalism are complex, but this movement is usually traced back to the first day of the twentieth century – January 1, 1901. Charles Parham (1873–1929) had launched the Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas a few months earlier. One of his particular interests was the phenomenon of “speaking in tongues,” which is described in Acts 2: 1–4. Most Christians had taken this to be something that happened in the early church but was no longer part of the Christian experience. On New Year’s Day, 1901, one of Parham’s students experienced this phenomenon. A few days later, Parham experienced it for himself (pp. 179–180).
Parham began to teach about this apparent recovery of the gift of tongues. As we have seen earlier, he was heard by the African American preacher William J. Seymour (1870–1922), who subsequently opened the Apostolic Faith Mission at 312 Azusa Street, Los Angeles in April 1906. The term “Pentecostalism” began to be applied to the movement, taking its name from the “Day of Pentecost,” when the phenomenon was first experienced by the early Christian disciples (Acts 2: 1–4).
The movement spread rapidly in America, appealing especially to the marginalized. Unusually, it seemed to appeal to and be embraced by both white and African American Christian groupings. Although Pentecostalism can be thought of as traditionalist in its Christian theology, it differs radically from other Christian groupings in the emphasis it places on speaking in tongues and in its forms of worship. These styles of worship are strongly experiential and involve prophesying, healings, and exorcisms. These forms and the perceived lack of intellectual sophistication of the movement led to its being ignored by mainline denominations and the academy. Yet, after World War II, a new phase in its expansion began, which paved the way for a massive growth in the second half of the twentieth century.
The incident that brought Pentecostalism to wider public attention took place in Van Nuys, California, in 1960. The rector of the local episcopalian church, Dennis Bennett, told his astonished congregation that he had been filled with the Holy Spirit and had spoken in tongues. Reaction varied from bewilderment to outrage; the local episcopalian bishop promptly banned speaking in tongues from his churches. However, it soon became clear that others in the mainline denominations had shared Bennett’s experience. They came out of their closet and made it clear that they believed that they had experienced an authentic New Testament phenomenon, which would lead to the renewal of the churches.
By the late 1960s it was evident that some form of renewal based on charismatic gifts such as speaking in tongues was gaining a hold within Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian circles. Perhaps most importantly of all, a growing charismatic movement began to develop within the Roman Catholic church. Using the term “Pentecostal” to describe this now became problematic, as this name was used to refer to a family of churches – such as the Assemblies of God – which placed particular emphasis on speaking in tongues. Accordingly, the term “charismatic” was used to refer to movements within the mainline churches based upon the ideas and experiences of the Pentecostal movement. Charismatic renewal within the mainline churches has led to new and informal worship styles, an explosion in worship songs, a new concern for the dynamics of worship, and an increasing dislike for the traditionalism of formal liturgical worship, especially when the latter involves the cumbersome use of hymn books or service books.
The Pentecostal movement – which we shall here take to include charismatic groups within mainline churches – has changed considerably since World War II. The most obvious change is its massive surge in growth. It is now estimated that there are 500 million Pentecostals in the world, with a very wide geographical distribution. Although the movement may be argued to have its origins primarily within African American culture, it has taken root in South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Why has this form of Christianity become so popular? Two factors are generally recognized as playing a significant role in the growing global appeal of Pentecostalism. First, Pentecostalism stresses a direct, immediate experience of God and avoids the rather dry and cerebral forms of Christianity that many find unattractive and unintelligible. It is thus significant that Pentecostalism has made huge inroads in working-class areas of Latin America, since it is able to communicate the divine without any need for the alienating impedimenta of a bookish culture. Second, the movement uses a language and a form of communication that enables it to bridge cultural gaps highly effectively. Pentecostalism is best seen as an oral religion, which communicates its vision of life in stories, testimonies, and songs.
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism has become a phenomenon of major importance in the mainline Protestant churches since 1945. Although some new Protestant denominations have been formed that are explicitly evangelical in orientation, the general pattern that has emerged indicates that evangelicalism is a movement within the mainline denominations. Hence evangelicals within the reformed churches retain much of the ethos of those churches (including its church structures), while supplementing it with at least some of the characteristics of evangelicalism noted below. Similarly, evangelicals within Anglicanism adopt many of the characteristics of the latter (such as the episcopal system of church government and the use of a fixed liturgy), while retaining an evangelical ethos in their church.
The four main distinctive features of the evangelical ethos are generally agreed to be the following:
The Ecumenical Movement and the World Council of Churches
As will be clear from the analysis presented in this book, Christianity has its fair share of internal divisions. The separation of the Latin-speaking West from the Greek-speaking East had been under way for some time before the Great Schism of 1054 made it official. The sixteenth-century Reformation led to the establishment of a group of Protestant churches – Anabaptist, Anglican, Lutheran, and reformed – that disagreed with Rome and (perhaps more importantly) with each other. Protestantism turned out to be a movement with an inherent tendency to fragment. Today it is estimated that there are at least 20,000 Protestant denominations in the world.
Could these differences be set aside, allowing the churches to reunite? Or at least achieve better working relationships? These aims underlie the ecumenical movement, which began to develop momentum after World War II. The term “ecumenical” comes from the ancient Greek word oikoumenē, meaning “the known inhabited world.” Although informal efforts to achieve better relationships between churches had been made for some time, the events of the twentieth century gave a new impetus to ecumenism. In 1920, in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide (p. 181), a synod of the Orthodox church issued an encyclical calling for a “fellowship of churches” similar to the League of Nations.
Following the end of World War II, concerted attempts were made to reconcile wartime enemies – especially France and Germany – in order to reconstruct Europe and ensure that it had a viable future. A parallel movement developed within the churches. Was not this a God-given moment, in which Christian unity might be pursued and achieved? It was against this background that the World Council of Churches was created in the aftermath of World War II. The decision to headquarter the council in Geneva was based partly on the fact that this Swiss city was host to the prewar League of Nations and to many postwar international organizations.
The first assembly of the World Council of Churches, held in August 1948 in Amsterdam, was seen as a beacon of hope for postwar Europe. Although the plans to inaugurate this organization went back to 1936, World War II both delayed this event and highlighted its potential importance. The main Protestant churches in the West agreed to work together and to keep doing so. Although there were obvious tensions between liberal and progressive Christians and their more conservative counterparts, this potential difficulty was defused through skillful footwork on the part of the conference organizers.
So what is the World Council of Churches? From the outset, it was clear that this was a Protestant body. Catholic and Orthodox churches might send observers; initially, however, full membership was limited to Protestant churches. Although the new body initially described itself as “a fellowship of churches which accept our Lord as God and Savior,” it became clear that clarification was needed. How did this body relate to others – such as denominational leadership structures? These questions were engaged at the second meeting of the World Council of Churches, held in Toronto in 1950, and further developed at later meetings.
According to the council’s declaration in Toronto, its purpose is “to bring the churches into contact with one another and to promote discussion of questions of Church unity.” Its initial intention was to transform the prevailing indifference to the need for ecumenical fellowship and unity, through theological dialogue and spiritual fellowship, into a deep and conscious conviction of the need for Christian unity.
The World Council of Churches has always made it clear that it is not some type of “megachurch,” which exists over and above its constituent churches. The constitution of this body excludes any role that might take away authority from member churches. “The World Council shall not legislate for the churches.” Neither the Assembly nor the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches were to possess any “constitutional authority whatever over its constituent churches.” Ecclesiological pluralism was thus built into the structures and thinking of the World Council of Churches from its inception. This was “a fellowship of churches” that sought to encourage its members to work toward the goal of their visible unity. But there was no agenda designed to impose such a union on its members.
There was no doubt that this was seen as a welcome and necessary move, not least as the situation of the churches began to change in the West. In the 1970s and 1980s, a growing sense that western culture was becoming increasingly secular and hostile to the Christian faith led to many Christians wondering if they ought to suspend hostilities between Christian groupings and concentrate upon the issue of survival. Furthermore, the expansion of Christianity into traditionally Islamic areas of the world, together with the growth of significant Islamic groups in the West through immigration, has led many Christians to predict that this will be the next major area of confrontation. Should not Christians unite in the face of a possible threat? Might future survival depend on unity? As Benjamin Franklin famously quipped at the signing of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Yet the history of the World Council of Churches has not been entirely happy and persuaded many that this body had failed to live up to its high expectations in the immediate postwar period. The council found itself experiencing difficulty in holding its members together. The organization increasingly drifted toward a more liberal theological stance during the 1960s and 1970s and alienated much of its naturally conservative constituency. Its token demonstrations of support for armed liberation movements in Africa alarmed those who saw Christianity as espousing nonviolent resistance to oppression and looked to Martin Luther King (1929–1968) as an example.
By about 1990 it became clear that there was diminishing enthusiasm within the mainstream churches for the form of “visible unity” that had become the hallmark of the thinking and policies of the World Council of Churches. With the passing of time, it became increasingly clear that this vision was somewhat unrealistic and failed to take seriously the realities of church life. What most grassroots Christians wanted was better working relationships with their fellow Christians in other denominations. They did not want their denomination either to be swallowed up by or to swallow another. They wanted better relationships with other Christians at both the individual and the institutional level. The rise of bottom-up grassroots ecumenism has significantly reduced the role of top-down ecumenical efforts in the twenty-first century.
The World Council of Churches now plays a token and somewhat peripheral role in global Christianity. Yet the ecumenical vision that inspired it has not faded; it has simply changed direction, the initiative shifting to individuals and voluntary organizations. By the end of the twentieth century, new ecumenical alliances were in the process of emerging at grassroots level, which have eclipsed and marginalized the old-style top-down ecumenism of the World Council of Churches.
The Erosion of Protestant Denominationalism in the United States
The religious landscape in the United States has been substantially shaped by the structures and habits of thought of its European origins. The Protestant denomination is essentially a European phenomenon, reflecting the shifting patterns of church life and controversy in Western Europe from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Patterns of religious affiliation and belonging reflecting the general situation of Western Europe, and often the very specific conditions of religious life in England, were exported to Africa, America, Asia, and Australia by both settlers and missionaries. As a result, the emerging church life of four great continents has been shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by the historical contingencies of Western Europe.
The Protestant denomination initially seemed to thrive in the United States, possibly reflecting ecclesial loyalties on the part of immigrants that arose from their European roots. World War II may be seen as marking a change in the essentially static situation in the United States. Throughout the 1950s, the growth of the traditional Protestant denomination soared in the United States. Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians reported net annual membership gains. Each denomination vigorously defended its sovereignty and its vested interests. In 1956 a survey showed that 80 percent of episcopalians believed that it was wrong to hold worship service with other Christian groups. A year earlier, A Gallup poll showed that 96 percent of the adult population of the United States belonged to the same denomination as their parents. Their churchgoing habits had not changed over a generation. Yet by 1990 many of these mainline Protestant denominations were in decline and had lost between one fifth and one third of their 1965 memberships, at a time when the population growth of the United States had surged. A real numerical decline thus converted into a significant reduction in the proportion of America’s population associated with these denominations.
Christian denominations in America are one of the very few institutional expressions of early modern European culture still in existence. But why, many Americans are increasingly asking, should modern America’s religious life be made dependent upon a European model – especially when that model is now seen as having failed in its own homelands? Both individual churches and individual Christians in America are showing an increasing reluctance to define themselves denominationally. Many churches have named themselves after their localities, skillfully dropping any reference to a denomination. The same issues can be seen in the titles of seminaries. The institution now known as Denver Seminary was formerly Denver Conservative Baptist Seminary; the Virginia Theological Seminary was formerly the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia. These changes suggest that the inclusion of denominational identities is no longer viewed as a positive feature in marketing terms.
In the 1990s some strongly entrepreneurial Protestants found themselves more and more frustrated by the institutional inertia of traditional denominational structures. They regarded these as unresponsive bureaucracies, uninterested in local initiatives or innovations. Frustration with denominational structures is not, of course, anything particularly new. The great New York preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969), who played such an important role in the great fundamentalist controversies of the 1920s (pp. 184–186), once made the astonishing revelation that he had once considered leaving the historic Christian organizations in order to start his own independent movement. Fosdick was dismissive of those who demanded ecclesiastical loyalty, holding that his only loyalty was to Christ. Yet, despite his frustrations, he never set up his own denomination, even though his personal reputation was such that its future would have been secure.
Yet, since the 1990s, American Protestantism has been increasingly characterized by the growth of market-shaped or market-driven congregations. A good example is Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago. These large churches tend to be established and led by strongly entrepreneurial individuals. Their sense of theological vision, coupled with a “can do” mentality that was nourished and inspired by the Protestant work ethic, eventually drove them to achieve their goals outside the structures of traditional denominations, especially in the aftermath of the theological and cultural turmoil of the 1960s. Like Martin Luther, they did not particularly want to work outside their mother churches – but the needs and realities of the new cultural situation seemed to leave them with no alternatives. The outcome was a surge of new initiatives, which met needs that were held to be largely ignored by mainline denominations and set new patterns for how churches work, develop, and organize themselves.
The theological basis for this development was laid during the opening decades of the history of Protestantism. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), John Calvin had argued that a true Christian church was not defined by its institutional history or connections, but by the proper exercise of preaching and sacramental administration. In the late twentieth-century American context, this was interpreted to mean that new churches and denominations could be founded, provided they were based on good preaching and the proper administration of the sacraments. Enterprising individuals, often fired up by a vision for a specific form of ministry, could start their own congregations, or even their own denominations.
The outcome was inevitable: the emergence of a consumerist mentality, through which Protestants felt able to pick and choose the local church that suited their needs, beliefs, or aspirations. And if they didn’t find one that was just right, they would establish their own. Catholic critics of Protestantism often point to its innate fissiparous tendencies, which they suggest indicates a lack of concern for the fundamental unity of the church.
While this congregational inflationism is unquestionably problematic, it has two fundamental strengths, both of which are of decisive importance for the shaping of Protestantism in the United States and beyond.
C. S. Lewis’s notion of “mere Christianity” seems to have had an impact here. This way of thinking, set out by Lewis in his widely read book Mere Christianity (1952), undermines the importance of denominational identity by arguing that the various Christian churches are simply different implementations of an underlying consensual core Christianity. Lewis’s Mere Christianity was, and remains, a manifesto for a form of Christianity that exults in essentials, regarding other matters as being of secondary importance.
Yet Lewis’s notion of “mere Christianity” was more than a rejection of denominational supremacy. It was also a subtle critique of the abuses of power and privilege that so easily arise in more institutionalized forms of Christianity. Lewis is generally critical of the clergy in his writings. As a lay Christian, he came to see himself as representing a form of Christianity that recognized the crucial role of the laity, allowing neither clergy nor ecclesiastical institutions any special privileges.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have considered the shape of contemporary Christianity, focusing especially on the families of Christian churches that are found across the world. Yet this is an incomplete and inadequate account of Christianity. What about day-to-day Christian life? What does the Christian life look like? In the next chapter we shall present an extended sketch of ordinary Christian existence. It cannot hope to do justice to the complexity and richness of this subject, but it can at least alert readers to what they can expect to encounter, and it can explain something of the subject’s history and significance.