Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?

Thanks for bringing that column to our attention. Also, the comments that were posted in response presented diverse views, most very thoughtful.

America remains very overtly religious but the 30 and younger millennials voice their religious doubts more openly than prior generations. More sociologic study is needed but I do wonder how much of this open doubting represents real changes in religious attitudes and dispositions versus how much might come from the destigmatization of doubt-voicing? Emerson said something along the lines that God will arrive when the half-gods depart. I wonder, too, whether young doubters are truly dispatching God or, in some cases, the half-gods of their elders. I also wonder how many misunderstand the polar reality of faith and doubt and how doubt is integrally and necessarily part of the faith experience, even as I fondly recall my own youthful consolations, upon my first encounter of Tillichs concept of faith as ultimate concern.

Perhaps part of this phenomenon of the increasingly unchurched can be explained from an increase in noninstitutional religious participation? It is precisely in the progressive cohorts of our great traditions that noninstitutional vehicles do seem to be emerging and their nonhierarchical character does tend to keep them under our sociodemographic radar, not to suggest that numbers or visibilty have ever been the sole or even major criteria of the degree of a religious communitys level of cooperation with the Spirit. This is just to recognize that we should not overidentify the life of faith with institutional forms, placing style over content, form over substance. Some of what Douthat unwittingly describes is but part of the life cycle of all institutions, as accounted for in Emergence paradigms.

Also, in a departure from Douthats assessment, I would not draw as strict a dichotomy between the secular and religious vis a vis faith practices, as the secular often includes both expressions of implicit faith as well as a sort of pneumatological consensus, or Spirit-animated socio-economico-politicocultural fabric, especially when woven together in religiously pluralistic societies like the US.

Finally, tradition remains integral to our faith experience, but only in its

essence and not its accidentals, which are clung to by traditional-ISM. Of course, sometimes, a progressive-ISM will toss essentials aside. Some of what Douthat laments is a loss of mere accidentals. In resonse to: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/opinion/sunday/douthat-can-liberalchristianity-be-saved.html?_r=1&hp