Posted on 07/21/2008 1:44:48 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
America was Methodist, once upon a time-Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian. A little light Unitarianism on one side, a lot of stern Calvinism on the other, and the Easter Parade running right down the middle: our annual Spring epiphany, crowned in bright new bonnets.
The average American these days would have trouble recalling the dogmas that once defined all the jarring sects, but their names remain at least half alive: a kind of verbal remembrance of the nation's religious history, a taste on the tongue of native speakers. Think, for instance, of the old Anabaptist congregations-how a residual memory of America's social geography still lingers in the words: the Hutterites, Mennonites, and Amish, set here and there on the checkerboard of the nation's farmland. The Quakers in their quiet meetinghouses, the Shakers in their tiny communes, and the Pentecostals, born in the Azusa Street revivals, like blooms forced in the hothouse of the inner city.
And yet, even while we may remember the names of the old denominations, we tend to forget that it all made a kind of sense, back in the day, and it came with a kind of order. The genteel Episcopalians, high on the hill, and the all-over Baptists, down by the river. Oh, and the innumerable independent Bible churches, tangled out across the prairie like brambles: Through most of the nation's history, these endless divisions and revisions of Protestantism renounced one another and sermonized against one another. They squabbled, sneered, and fought. But they had something in common, for all that. Together they formed a vague but vast unity. Together they formed America.
In truth, all the talk, from the eighteenth century on, of the United States as a religious nation was really just a make-nice way of saying...
(Excerpt) Read more at virtueonline.org ...
If Mainline Protestant churches in America have declined, members have only their leaders to blame.
Read this article.
It is an interesting article about how one got from the founders of American to now Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“Mainline Protestantism” is crumbling under immense pressure from a secular culture, and more the focus of this article, rot from within.
What created American Culture is in rapid decline. What will replace it?
bump for later
Several years ago you could buy a grilled cheese sandwich on Ebay that has the image of the Virgin Mary cooked onto it.-somehow -
Once and a while her image appears on the underpasses of highways, and as a reflection of the sides of buildings.
The USA's 'culture line' is moving to the southwest as fast as the ACLU can say 'amen'.
Interesting article, Alex.
Very interesting.
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