While the family is the most important unit in the social fabric of a nation, it’s axiomatic that the most stabilizing institution in any country is the church, and for purposes of this essay the collective branches of the Judeo-Christian church. In this country, the church has always stood as a bulwark against the encroachment of social ills, not as an arm of government, certainly, but as a primary influence in the lives of the citizens who run the socio-economic machine and determine the mandates and parameters of government. As the nation slips and slides toward more and more coarseness (denoted in such things as TV entertainment, inordinate obsession with sports, intolerable weakening of education systems, deplorable antics of politicians, an “anything goes” attitude about sex), it would be expected that the church would put on the brakes and then reverse the trends. This is not happening.
On Independence Day in Atlanta, the governing body of the United Church of Christ officially sanctioned the marriage of men to each other and the wedding of women to each other, thus approving as perfectly normal the consequent homosexual practices regarded as unnatural, unseemly, and sinful in holy scriptures and, on merit and by definition, perverted as a common-sense matter. Though hard to believe in the raucous atmosphere of today, there once were “sodomy laws” (fairly recently declared unconstitutional by the Supremes), and, though they were virtually unenforceable, they at least made a statement, to wit, that perversion was not acceptable even in private. The UCC, disregarding its own scriptural foundation, has done spiritually what the SCOTUS did legally, a far worse violation of the being made in God’s image. Thus, the UCC joined the slipping and the sliding, rather than dig in its heels.
Not all churches/denominations have been willing to join in the journey to oblivion, a la the licentious journeying of other social orders throughout history. Was it the Romans who thought pedophilia a perfectly normal pastime? The so-called evangelical groups and Roman Catholics have dug in their heels and are roundly and consistently criticized by the sophisticates, both secular and sacred, for their insensitivity to the fact that no one’s psyche should be disrupted by an absolute; rather, they insist that all things come in shades of gray or that everything is relative or that there is no such thing as perversion per se, since all is in the mind of the practitioner of whatever.
The evangelical groups, while not racking up huge increases in membership, are at least not losing members, though they tend to adopt “worldly” standards and methods (rock bands, alternate worship styles, casualness, etc.) in an effort to hang on at a time when secularism increases in intensity, and churchgoers seem more interested in entertainment and feeling good than in serious worship and sacrifice. Not so with the “mainliners,” the old-line Protestant groups that were once the bedrock of U.S. Christianity. In their constant bickering especially about homosexual marriages and ordination of homosexuals to church offices, they have leaned toward political correctness to the point that they face the total loss of spiritual correctness, turning on their respective heads the centuries-long and time-tested doctrines that have obtained during the time the church has been strong. As a result, while many evangelical groups have sort of stagnated at worst, the mainline denominations have been losing membership consistently for years, even as the population has grown.
During 1996-2004, the UCC has lost 13% of its membership while it has catered to political correctness. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA, and the Episcopal Church have lost, respectively, 11, 4, 8, and 8 percent of their memberships while all of them have argued over the homosexual question and seem increasingly to lean toward doing what the UCC has officially done. Indeed, the Episcopal Church, a part of the Anglican worldwide community, probably would already have done what the UCC has done, absent the ferocious opposition of fellow communicants in Third World countries. The nadir was reached recently when an openly, practicing homosexual was ordained a bishop in New Hampshire. The average loss in membership 1996-2004 of the five mainline denominations noted here is nine percent, the obvious conclusion to be drawn simply that they are withering on the vine.
At least in part, this explains why the so-called religious right (evangelical folks) is so much in the news and so venomously attacked by those who claim it forms a threat to the well-being of the nation, i.e., that it opposes the “anything goes” insistence declared by the sophisticates to be politically, and therefore spiritually, correct. These evangelicals form a large voting bloc, not just in the South but throughout the nation, and, of course, are logically found predominately to be conservative voters (therefore republican-oriented), never mind their party affiliations. They see the movement in the mainline churches as not just disruptive of sacred canon, but as totally destructive of it. Since destruction of what they consider their personal moral compass is operative, they go toward the church-think that most nearly comports with their think.
Despite all the noise about the marvelous superiority of those who recognize diversity, multiculturalism, political correctness, and “entering the real world” as infinitely more to be desired than the stodginess they see connected with traditional Christian principles, reasonable people are loath to embrace or have forced upon them as normal and desired what amounts to pernicious perversion, no matter from the church, government, PACs, or any other entity. The UCC has laid down its marker, and it appears that its fellow denominations mentioned above are about to deploy the same marker. More’s the pity as their actual worth and work are sacrificed on the altar of conceived expediency, when the marker laid down by Jesus Christ had to do with sacrifice and a hard swim up the stream…another way of saying “digging in one’s heels.”
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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