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In my opinion the two go hand in hand. I believe the first wave of this campaign was to "dumb down" the mainline churches in their approach to the Bible. The Methodist church of today is not the one of John Wesley, nor even the one of 50 years ago.

Once they had the people less literate in the Bible, they could incrimentally bring in people who accepted this kind of activity. Once a sizeable number had infiltrated the hierarchy, they made this move to force the rest out in order to control the power and financial wealth, because most people who are left, even if a bit shaky on the Bible, know that this is WRONG.

I would like to proffer another idea to the liberalization of many main line denominations.

Since many of these denominations long ago deviated from original teaching of a literal Bible it opened the door for deviants to slowly change church doctrine. I belong to one of the most conservative protestant denominations (LCMS) and the only thing that is keeping the Missouri Synod away from liberalistic teaching is the adherance to a literal translation of the Bible.

True, church property is a motivator, but I believe that Satan is using liberalism to destroy the church to deceive the faithfull as is profecied in the Bible.

The Episcopal church has reached a turning point where it is openly condoning and welcoming unrepentant sinners as teachers and pastors of their congregations. This is totally contradictory to the scriptures.

We are all sinners, but only those who recognize their sin and repent are washed clean. Unfortunately all others have a warmer destination ahead of them.

A well-read man in my church has been telling me that he thinks that one reason our society is in the shape it's in today, allowing in such influences as post-modernism, for example, is because the church didn't do its job and speak out against the heresies that came to displace Christianianity as the bedrock of our thought and society in the second half of the 19th century. One reason our society is coming to be so fractured today is that the church, at least the Bible-believing church, IS doing so. As a result, belief in theories like evolution are being challenged by beliefs like intelligent design. The church is taking back some ground, but because we lost so much of it last century and the beginning of this one, we're coming up square against the enemy and he's fighting us tooth and nail, ready to take down our entire culture. I think there's truth in this. I think your observations are spot on, too, and this money issue is another tool the enemy is using to fight for the territory he's been winning awhile.