Great item and comments at Gerard Serafin’s re: the future of Christianity. One comment predicts a general persecution in the first half of this century. I’ve long expected that and it had something to do with my coming to the Church – no protestant group has the same experience in dealing with persecution.

The more immediate picture, though, has to do with the observation that the more liberal churches consistently lose members and those that are more conservative grow (discussed well at ibidem, BTW). The liberals have control of several denominations (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S., ELCA and whichever set of Presbyterians that are “mainline” come to mind first and foremost), but aren’t able to (a) bring people in either by evangelization or other means or (b) even keep those they have. Why? I’d like to propose that “liberal” religion – religion stripped of its ancient moral context and even of its tangible symbols (see Lileks for more on this) might seem to be more comfortable and contemporary for a time, but after the novelty wears off, it shows itself to be lacking. Religion that focuses on the natural (and only on what is wrong in the world around us) wears us down. Religion that focuses on the supernatural and those miraculous instances when something is right in the world around us, inspires.

We’ll wait out the “liberals” well enough (not to mention that the next generation is likely to contain a great many more children raised by conservative parents than those raised by liberal parents or whatever new non-sexist, fully-inclusive term they’ll devise).