Mainline or
mainline Protestant (also sometimes called
mainstream)
denominations are those that comprised the vast majority of
American Christianity from the colonial era until the early 1900s. Most of these denominations were brought to America by their respective historic immigrant groups. Today, most are rooted in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States.
As a group they have maintained theologies that stress social justice concerns together with personal salvation and evangelism. In addition, mainline churches and laity founded most of the leading educational institutes in the US.
Mainline denominations peaked in membership in the 1950s and have declined steadily in the last half century. From 1960 to 1988, mainline church membership declined from 31 million to 25 million, then fell to 21 million in 2005. Today, they are a minority among American Protestants, claiming approximately 15 percent of American adults among their adherents. This places them to the ideological left of the evangelical and fundamentalist churches.
Denominations
The largest U. S. mainline churches are sometimes referred to as the
Seven Sisters of American Protestantism. The term was apparently coined by William Hutchison in reference to the major liberal groups of
American Baptists,
Disciples of Christ,
Congregationalists / United Church of Christ,
Episcopalians,
Lutherans,
Methodists, and
Presbyterians during the period between 1900 and 1960.
With almost 8 million members in 2008, the United Methodist Church is the largest U. S. mainline Protestant denomination.
The second largest mainline denomination is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), with approximately 4.7 million members in 2008.
International Council of Community Churches 108,806 members (2005)
National Association of Congregational Christian Churches 65,569 members (2000)
North American Baptist Conference 64,565 members (2002)
Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches 44,000 members (1998)
Moravian Church in America, Northern Province 24,650 members (2003)
Moravian Church in America, Southern Province 21,513 members (1991)
Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 12,000 members (2007)
Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church
Congregational Christian Churches, (not part of any national CCC body)
Moravian Church in America, Alaska Province
The Association of Religion Data Archives has difficulties collecting data on traditionally African American denominations. Those churches most likely to be identified as mainline include these Methodist groups:
African Methodist Episcopal Church
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Some denominations with similar names and historical ties to mainline groups are not considered mainline. The Southern Baptist Convention, Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, the Churches of Christ, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) are often considered too conservative for this category and thus grouped as evangelical.
Theology
The anti-slavery debates in the antebellum United States sparked a turning point in American theology from which mainline theology emerged. The issue of slavery forced antislavery theologians, including
William Ellery Channing,
Francis Wayland, and
Horace Bushnell, to reconcile their contradictory loyalties to the Bible and to antislavery reform. Unable to use the letter of the Bible to make a scriptural case against slavery in itself, the moderates argued that although slavery had been acceptable in biblical times, it had become a sin. Antislavery Protestantism required a theory of moral progress, a deeply unorthodox idea that became fundamental to the development of late-19th-century liberal Protestantism. The antislavery argument from moral progress, along with the moral progress represented by abolition, established a progressive conception of revelation that was further developed by late-19th-century liberal theologians, including
Newman Smyth,
Lyman Abbott, and
Theodore Munger. Once they had adopted the idea that moral values evolve, it was not hard to come to terms with the impact of modernity, critical biblical scholarship, and Darwinism.
Mainline theology tends to be open to new ideas, new standards of morality, and societal changes without abandoning what they consider to be the historical foundations of the Christian faith. For example they have been increasingly open to the ordination of women.
They hold a wide range of theologies—conservative, moderate and liberal. While about half of mainline Protestants label themselves as liberal, nearly one-third call themselves conservative. Most local mainline congregations have a strong, active conservative element.
Mainline theology tends to be moderate and influenced by higher criticism, an approach used by scholars to separate the Bible's earliest historical elements from later additions and even intentional distortions. Mainline denominations generally teach that the Bible is God's Word in function, but that it must be interpreted both through the lens of the cultures in which it was originally written, and examined using God-given reason. Mainline Christian groups are often more accepting of other beliefs and faiths.
Theologically, mainline denominations are historically Trinitarian and proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Son of God; they adhere to the historic creeds such as the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.
Variations
The inclusion of a denomination in the mainline Protestant category does not imply that every member of that denomination, nor even every member of their
clergy, accepts some of the beliefs generally held in common by other mainline churches. They allow considerable theological latitude. Moreover, mainline denominations have within them
Confessing Movements or
charismatic renewal movements which are more conservative in tone.
Justice
The mainline denominations emphasize the biblical concept of justice, stressing the need for Christians to work for
social justice, which usually involve politically liberal approaches to social and economic problems. Early in the 20th century, they actively supported the
Social Gospel.
Mainline churches were basically pacifistic before 1940, but under the influence of realists such as Reinhold Niebuhr they supported World War II and the Cold War. They have been far from uniform in their reaction to homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals, though generally more accepting than the Catholic Church or the more conservative Protestant churches.
Statistics
Protestant churches as a whole have held steady in total membership in the last half century, but since the national population has grown they have shrunk from 63% of the population in 1970 to 54% by 2000. The Mainline denominations comprised 55% of all Protestants in 1973, and 46% in 1998.
While the term "mainline" once implied a certain numerical majority or dominant presence in mainstream society, that is no longer the case. Both evangelical and fundamentalist Christian groups have been growing, but mainline Christianity—both membership and worship attendance—has been shrinking.
The number of mainline congregations in the U. S. declined from more than 80,000 churches in the 1950s to about 72,000 in 2008. About 40% of Mainliner Protestants in the 1990s were active in church affairs, compared to 46% of the conservatives.
Various causes have been cited, including monotonous and ponderous liturgies, intimidating worship surroundings, and too much tradition. Behaviorally, only one-third (31 percent) of mainline adults believe they have a personal responsibility to discuss their faith with people who have different beliefs. Tenure of pastors in mainline churches tends to be somewhat brief. On average, these pastors last four years before moving to another congregation. That is about half the average among Protestant pastors in non-mainline churches.
There are four basic factors: birth rates; switching between denominations; departure from Protestantism; and conversions from non-Protestant sources. By far the main cause is birth rates—low for the mainline bodies, and high for the conservatives. The second most important factor is that fewer conservatives switch to mainline denominations than before. Secularization (moving to "no religion") is a third factor.
Despite speculation to the contrary, switching from a mainline to a conservative denomination is not important in accounting for the trend, because it is fairly constant over the decades. Finally, conservative denominations have had a greater inflow of converts.
Minorities
Mainline churches have had difficulty attracting minorities, particularly Hispanics and Asians. Hispanics comprise 6 percent of the mainline population but 16 percent of the US population. The Barna Group considers the failure of mainline Protestants to add substantial numbers of Hispanics to be significant portent for the future, given both the rapid increase of the Hispanic population as well as the outflow of Hispanics from Catholicism to Protestant churches in the past decade, most of whom are selecting evangelical or
Pentecostal Protestant churches.
The Association of Religion Data Archives ARDA counts 26,344,933 members of mainline churches versus 39,930,869 members of evangelical Protestant churches.
References
Further reading
Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People (1976; 2004) excerpt and text search
Balmer, Randall. Grant Us Courage: Travels along the Mainline of American Protestantism (1996) online edition
Balmer, Randall, and Fitzmier, John R. The Presbyterians (1993). 274 pp. survey by two scholars
Billingsley, K. L. From Mainline to Sideline: The Social Witness of the National Council of Churches (1991)
Coalter, Milton J.; Mulder, John M.; and Weeks, Louis B., eds. The Mainstream Protestant "Decline": The Presbyterian Pattern. (1990). 263pp.
Dorrien, Gary. The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805–1900 (2001); The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900–1950 (2003); The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950–2005 (2006).
Hutchison, William R. ed. Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900-1960 (1990) excerpt and text search
Marty, Martin E. "The Establishment That Was, " Christian Century November 15, 1989, p. 1045. online
Marty, Martin E. Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960 (1999)
Murchison, William. Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity (2009)
Roof, Wade Clark, and William McKinney. American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future (1990) excerpt and text search
Tipton, Steven M. Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life (2008) excerpt and text search
Utter, Glenn H. Mainline Christians and U.S. public policy: a reference handbook (2007)
Wuthnow, Robert, and John H. Evans, eds. The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism, (2002), 430 pp.; essays by scholars
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