Being the Body of Christ in the Age of Management

Shakespeare

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498232111
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

"The church needs effective leaders."

1

The Problem of Decline

In 1972 Dean M. Kelley, an executive of the National Council of Churches in the United States, provoked a storm of controversy, especially among Christians within the denominations that identify as “mainline,” with his book Why Conservative Churches Are Growing. His first sentence declared, “In the latter years of the 1960s something remarkable happened in the United States: for the first time in the nation’s history most of the major church groups stopped growing and began to shrink.”34 By “major church groups,” Kelley had in mind the collection of Protestant church denominations categorized as “mainline.” Such groups include the Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches. These Protestant denominations represent a mainstream in the religious landscape: the dominant, culturally established, and theologically progressive35 churches that the majority of self-confessed Protestant Christians would identify through membership and participation.36 In general, the mainline churches in the twentieth century invested heavily in the ecumenical movement and in social causes, including civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the pursuit of equal rights for women.37 According to Kelly, the time of cultural dominance by the mainstream was over; a new era was emerging, the era of independent and religiously conservative churches who observed organizational “strictness” in matters of belief and practice.38

By the latter half of the twentieth century, sociologists and historians were beginning to recognize what Kelley announced in his book: the sudden rise of the conservative faiths and the rapid decline of the more liberal “mainline” denominations.39 Some sociologists suggest that this decline extends back to 1776, at the very moment the colonies of North America sought independence from English sovereignty.40 Although the prevalence of religious belief remains high within the American public,41 this has not resulted in stable participation in organized religious traditions, like that of Protestant denominations. Research data demonstrates the decline of attendance in mainline churches from 40 percent in 1965, to 26 percent in 1997,42 to a further drop to 15 percent by 2009.43

The data of the decline in attendance is underscored by the simultaneous decline in the cultural influence of mainline Christians. Historians Randall Balmer and Lauren Winner quote George A. Campbell Jr., publisher of the periodical The Christian Oracle, declaring on the eve of the twentieth century, “We believe that the coming century is to witness greater triumphs in Christianity than any previous century has ever witnessed and that it is to be more truly Christian than any of its predecessors.”44 Despite the self-confident predictions, mainline Protestantism suffered the greatest decline in the very century its influence was to extend into every aspect of American social, political, and economic life. This trajectory, according to historian Martin Marty, was partly the result of the particular nature of churches thought to be mainstream. “Mainline churches always have the advantage,” Marty argues, when,

the official culture is secure and expansive . . . [but they] suffer in times of cultural crisis and disintegration, when they receive blame for what goes wrong in society but are bypassed when people look for new ways to achieve social identity and location. So they looked good in the 1950s as they looked bad in the 1970s.45

Balmer and Winner support Marty’s conclusion. They end their analysis by noting, “even though mainline Protestantism continued to embody the aspirations of middle-class Americans, as it had in the 1950s, Americans’ allegiance to its denominations dropped precipitously in the final decades of the twentieth century.”46

The factors of decline notwithstanding, there remain disagreements as to the degree of the decline in mainline churches.47 The counter argument states that while the data used to measure the decline is accurate, it does not tell the full story. In other words, the analysis is missing essential elements not taken into account when calculating the data. According to historian E. Brooks Holifield, participation in congregations in the U.S. has remained relatively constant from the latter half of the eighteenth century to the present. During the 300 years of European settlement, from 35 to 40 percent of the population has actively participated in American congregations.48 Sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark concur with Holifield’s general argument about the lack of decline in church participation, but go further in suggesting that religious adherence in mainline churches has actually increased over the years from 1776–2000. In their study of census records, denominational reports, and yearbooks of churches throughout the U.S. and Canada, Finke and Stark place the rate of religious adherence in the year 2000 as 40 percent higher than in 1776.49 The decline noted by other scholars, Finke and Stark argue, is more representative of the measurement of religious attitudes than it is with an actual portrayal of the percentages of people who claim membership in a congregation or denomination.50

The results of this analysis have been challenged as simply another form of misreading data. For instance, Mark Chaves argues that what Finke and Stark fail to reveal is the shift in church practices relating to the measurement of congregational membership. Based upon the more restrictive practices of limiting church membership to those who meet specific criteria, practices that are more recent allow membership to a wider population and with fewer restrictions. Chaves notes, “Today, fewer people attend religious services than claim formal membership in religious congregations, but that situation was reversed earlier in our history”.51 Drawing on the scholarship of Robert Putnam,52 Chaves argues that when it comes to a whole range of civic and voluntary associations (including churches), “virtually every indicator of civic engagement currently available shows decline in the last third of the twentieth century”.53 In light of the conclusions of sociologists like Finke and Stark, Chaves continues that those wishing to maintain that religious participation has been stable over the last three or four decades “must explain how it could be that religious trends are so different from trends affecting virtually every other type of voluntary association”.54

The question of the degree of decline remains active in scholarly debate. What remains uncontroversial, however, is that the data indicates a general shrinking of mainline denominational bodies. In light of decline, the pressing question has become, what can be done, and by whom? This and like questions have seen the increase of appeals to church growth and renewal within mainline traditions. A significant part of this appeal is the reliance by the leadership of these traditions on research and strategies that reflect the rationalized ends of the contemporary corporate culture, in particular: efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control.55

Responding to Decline with Organizational Strategies

The sociological and historical research that traces the declining trends within mainline churches details th...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Problem of Decline
• Chapter 2: “We are All Managers Now”: The Church and Management
• Chapter 3: The Shape of Management or What Kind of Body Is a Managed Organization?
• Chapter 4: What Difference Does a Body Make? A Holistic Alternative according to a Thomistic Theological Anthropology
• Chapter 5: What Difference Does a Social Body Make? A Unifying Alternative according to a Thomistic Sacramental Theology
• Chapter 6: To What End? Organizing the Ecclesial Body
• Bibliography