One of this issues that have worried church leaders in the last couple of decades is the decline in church membership and the rise of the group called “nones.”We know the statistic as presented by the PEW research group:
Mainline Protestants have one of the lowest retention rates of any major religious tradition, with only 45% of those raised in the faith continuing to identify with it as adults. Young adults are particularly unlikely to stay with mainline churches -–just 37% of Millennials who were raised in the mainline tradition still identify with mainline Protestantism,1Solutions abound.
One of the most interesting comes from Bill Leonard, professor of Baptist Studies and church history at Wake Forest University School of Divinity, who suggests that the decline of church membership is a result of “the demise of church and city-wide revivals once common in the United States, especially in the South.”
He goes on to say:
“There was a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries where you would have six-week revivals. They would go into little towns and at night everything was shut down,” Leonard said. “This was true for Methodists and Baptists in particular. It was the best show in town,” he said.2
It was also something that few of us in northern, mainline, denominations ever experienced.
Most Yankees, I would wager, had never even heard the term “Born Again” until Jimmy Carter ran for president. And, we were completely in the dark about what went on at a “revival.”
The closest we ever came was a Billy Graham crusade. These were a lot like church except for the altar call at the end where people would stream out of the stands while the choir sang “Just as I Am” over and over again as Graham’s voice boomed forth, “The busses will wait! The busses will wait!” These crusades were very benign affairs when compared with what came after.
I believe that the decline in church attendance coincides with the rise and fall of “televangelists” who used the expansion of cable television to their advantage.
Their exploits are excruciatingly detailed in Lutheran Pastor, Nadia Bolz-Webers’ book Salvation on the Small Screen. In which she, for our good and the good of the whole church, watched 24 hours of Christian television. I could explain what she saw to you but instead I suggest you follow this link to “Crazy Televangelists” on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odLDEcRoZf8
I must confess that watching the video I laughed until I cried for there was much to laugh at and cry about.
Since it was on television it had to be real, right? Whether it was or not the charlatans became the face and voice of the church. When the fledgling news networks needed someone for an interview to boost ratings they did not turn to the relatively unknown preachers like William Sloan Coffin at the Riverside Church in New York or any mainline seminary professor who labored in obscurity, but to their own.
Before we even knew it Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, D. James Kennedy and Robert Schuller becames our spokesmen. In the interest of full disclosure I did watch Schuller and Kennedy but more for the music than the preaching. (I was in seminary, what did I know besides everything?)
To say the least they were an abrasive bunch.
However, they were the embodiment of an article I have saved from my seminary days: “Rinky Dink Religion Goes Big Time.” In this 1977 article Church of the Brethren scholar, Murray L. Wagner becomes almost prophetic:
As I shudder over the Christian "schlock wave" of the future, I can hear practically every air wave pulsating with rinky-dink religion. It will be piped into Christian elevators. Christian steak and shake drive-ins, the offices of Christian business executives, into the hair driers of Christian beauty parlors, and the locker room of the Dallas Cowboys..
What's more, I fully expect rinky-dink religionists to start cashing in on the booming tourist trade. I can envision a day in the not-too-distant future when the arrival of the ticky-tack millennium will be announced from "Godland," probably to be built in the American heartland, at a place on a straight continuum between Busch Gardens and Seven Flags.
(This) wave of popular piety (will) inundate us as hucksters discover that ''old time religion" is the formula for quick money and publicity.3Remember that this is one year before Heritage USA opened in 1978.
By 1986 it attracted nearly 6 million visitors annually and employed around 2,500 people. The facilities included the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, Main Street USA, an indoor shopping complex, the Heritage Village Church, a 400-unit campground, The Jerusalem Amphitheater, conference facilities, a skating rink, prayer and counseling services, full cable TV network production studios, Bible and evangelism school, visitor retreat housing, staff and volunteer housing, timeshares and the Heritage Island water park and recreational facilities.
Next time I go to the track to watch and bet the ponies I’m taking Murray Wagner with me!
He would become even more prophetic when he wrote:
Claptrap has so pervaded the pop-culture of Christian America that it is now very dangerous to suggest that the God of the prophets and of the prophets' sons and daughters might just devour rinky-dink religion and throw it up - and out of the garden of living things.The devouring came when these “religious empires” began to fall.
The Charlotte Observer caught Jim Bakker and his PTL overselling “lifetime memberships” to a hotel he was building on the grounds of Heritage Village U.S.A. For $1000 a throw you were promised a three night stay at his luxury hotel. You and thousands of others!
It turned out that not enough rooms were built to accommodate all the partners who bought into the promise. The other money went to operating expenses including Bakker’s salary and a payout of hush-money to his mistress Jessica Hahn. 4
Then there was Jimmy Swaggart who in February of 1988 was caught with another woman who was not his wife. In a YouTube video his weeping (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWkVa-_sd24) became the image of Christianity.
In effect it was the beginning of the end of a decade long party.
The problem was that those of us in the mainstream church never realized that our party would be ending too.
I was just starting in the ministry when all this happened and I was sure that people could
differentiate what was happening on television from what was going on in their local parishes where women and men were faithfully preaching, teaching, baptizing, and visiting the sick.
It’s not that the faithful couldn’t but those who were looking for excuses never to darken a church door again had them served up to them in a silver chalice. The church they saw on television was loaded with charlatans whose prayers preyed on the emotions of the desperate.
“Got an earache send in your $75 ‘love gift’ for a healing cloth.” “Need a new car ‘sow of seed of faith’ of $500 for a new one.” “About to lose your home ‘write a letter with a check for $1,000 enclosed’ and you will be living in a mansion.”
In the meantime, mainstream Christianity was offering up exactly nothing. Few churches north of the Mason-Dixon line were anywhere to be found on television.
If there were any offerings it was “30 Good Minutes” produced by the Chicago Sunday Evening Club. It was crushing boring and laughably bad. You could flip from the music of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church to the stark studio of Channel 11 and feel the air get sucked out of your spiritual sails.
“Is this the best we can do?” I found myself wondering again and again.
The only good news is that those television charlatans who once were everywhere are now found only on the highest numbers of the cable or satellite menus. But the same faces are still there.
One Saturday night I was channel suffering and there was Brother Swaggart, now 81, still preaching his message of division and damnation to those who don’t believe like he does on any given issue.
Most amazing of all was when, one afternoon, again riding the remote, there was another familiar face. “Where have I seen that old goat before?” I asked myself.
It was Jim Bakker broadcasting from a place called Morningside “where [the] 74-year-old pastor, is preaching an imminent end of the world and, for those who survive it, survivalist meals.
He is also promoting Morningside - - a Christian retreat and retirement community set on 600 acres of land near Branson, Missouri.5
Seeing these two birds still in business the only response I could think of was: “We’re going to have to drive a stake through their hearts to get rid of these guys.”
Perhaps our only hope is to return to being what “Rinky-Dink” author suggests. Let’s hope the prophetic longings of Murray L. Wagner will come true:
I want some honesty. I want confession time for those who yelp the loudest about their love of the Word, their devotion to the Scriptures, and their allegiance to the Kingdom of God. Spare the electric bands, cut the splashy productions. Put as much energy in justice and mercy: the world will get the message.
Without one neon sign or a single bumper sticker, the world will know exactly who we are (and) the world will hear the name we bear.Let’s pray that sometime soon after the tumult and the shouting dies the church’s prophetic voice will be heard once again in the land.
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1. Michael Ripka, “Mainline Protestants make up shrinking number of U.S. adults.” May 18, 2015. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-u-s-adults/
2. Jeff Brumley, “Looking for the origin of decline in the U.S. church? Baptist historian thinks he may know the answer.” August 12, 2016. https://baptistnews.com/article/looking-for-the-origin-of-decline-in-the-u-s-church-baptist-historian-thinks-he-may-know-the-answer/#.WAfkEYWcHIU
3. Murray L. Wagner, “Rinky-dink Religion Goes Big Time.” The Messenger. January, 1977. http://www.manchester.edu/OAA/Library/Archives/index.aspx?q=Wagner
4. Emily Johnson, “A Theme Park, a Scandal, and Faded Ruins of Televangelism. Politics and Religion fit for Polite Company. October 28, 2014. http://religionandpolitics.org/2014/10/28/a-theme-park-a-scandal-and-the-faded-ruins-of-a-televangelism-empire/
5. Maggie Harbour, “Jailed Televangelist Jim Bakker is Back in Business.”
The Daily Mail. September 15, 2014. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2752391/Jailed-televangelist-accused-rapist-Jim-Bakker-business-hawking-survivalist-kits-including-padded-clothing-buckets-beans-enemas.html#ixzz4NT3FaGpX)
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