Princeton Seminary President Craig Barnes, former pastor of evangelical-leaning National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., urges in Christian Century that Mainline Protestants stop obsessing over their decline.
Most of the people who used to fill the pews of the mainline congregations long ago decided that the church has little relevancy to their souls, which are worn down by work, family, and a world that seems to be coming apart at the seams. They didn’t leave in a huff. They didn’t nail up 95 theses that called for reform. They wandered away and found that a Sunday morning spent with the New York Times or cheering for a child’s soccer game came closer to a sabbath than what they found in a sanctuary.
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