In October, I had the pleasure of attending both the lecture and subsequent seminar given for First Things by Ross Douthat on the crisis in conservative Catholicism. Not being a Roman Catholic, I was there very much as an outside observer of the discussion but it raised for me the obvious questions: Is there a parallel crisis in conservative Protestantism and, if so, in what does it consist?
Douthat’s argument—that conservative Catholics overestimated their success and influence both in the political and ecclesiastical sphere, has limited parallels in conservative Protestantism. Certainly, the cultural power of conservative Protestants has massively declined since the days when threats of a boycott by the Southern Baptist Convention could strike fear into the heart of a corporate CEO. As with their Roman Catholic counterparts, politically conservative Protestants are coming to realize that they placed too much faith in the political process. Yet, on the ecclesiastical front, Douthat’s crisis assumes the importance of a unified, institutional church. The fissiparous nature of Protestantism means that such a crisis cannot happen. We are, after all, by definition schismatics from a Roman Catholic perspective. In this sense, Roman Catholics would no doubt see Protestantism in itself as constituting a permanent crisis.
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