Back in 2004, when I decided to leave the Catholic Church and to be received into the Episcopal Church, people told me that I had chosen “Catholic Lite,” as in “all the grace but none of the guilt.” Just this morning, I read a blog by a woman who has read the Pew Research Center’s report on America’s Changing Religious Landscape, and she concludes that liberal mainline churches like the Episcopal Church are declining because we don’t “go all the way” with our Christianity; we have catered to the masses, whereas evangelical Christian churches are gaining in numbers due to their strict absolutist stances on social issues such as same-sex marriage.
To this author, to “go all the way” means to swim upstream against societal currents and to cleave to a life of prayer and Bible study. Evangelical Christians, she writes, are paying the greatest cost–giving themselves over completely to Christianity and paying a personal price.
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