Right and I agree. But that’s only more recently. Back in the Swaggart/Schuller/Roberts/Bakker ere is when it really started taking hold, What I mean is that prior to that. there’s a big gap where we still hold ‘power’ in the churches and they could not rely on it. So for that model you mention to hold true, there has to be a ‘replacement leg’ so to speak during the period before they seized power thare and I’m saying I do not understand what that is.
What I’m saying is they did take the education function but did not take the religion function, but are infiltrating it. Liberalism started infiltrating our mainlines churches since about the end of the 1800’s, and really began in earnest in the pre-depression era. Liberal theology sought their inroads through hyper-criticism of the bible, and they found opportunity in the seminaries of the hierarchical mainlines. The Catholics were harder to change, I think because of their having one guy at the top who called the shots. Evangelical/fundamental churches were harder to infiltrate because so many had an independent local church governance, so weren’t subject to rules and rulers from denominations.