November 11, 2002
600 mainline conservatives form network
___INDIANAPOLIS (RNS)--More than 600 conservatives from mainline Protestant churches met in Indianapolis Oct. 25-27 to launch a counter-assault on their liberal-leaning denominations.
___"The Holy Spirit has not abandoned our churches, neither will we," a group of 18 theologians wrote in a joint "Letter to Confessing Christians," released Oct. 25 at the meeting of the Association for Church Renewal.
___For the first time, the leaders of 30 evangelical "renewal movements" from eight mainline denominations met together to plot strategy and outline reasons why conservatives should not flee their churches.
___"Churches need faithful confessors for one essential reason--a church that is unable to confess its faith is a lame and withered church," said the letter, spearheaded by Thomas Oden, a United Methodist theologian from Drew University. "The church needs faithful witnesses in order to be the church of Jesus Christ."
___Conference participants came from the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Episcopal Church, American Baptist Churches in the USA and the United Church of Canada.
___Mainline evangelicals say their denominations have abandoned Scripture by embracing homosexuality, an anything-goes theology and liberal causes like abortion and, in some cases, opposition to war with Iraq.
___Organizers took deliberate steps to weight the conference with theologians, hoping denominational leaders might pay more attention to scholars when they might easily dismiss right-wing activists.
___The question facing the conservatives is whether to attempt a political takeover through legislation and elections, or rather fashion together a fragile co-existence with progressives yet still have their voices heard.
___Experts, however, don't predict a takeover like the one executed by conservatives in the Southern Baptist Convention in the late 1970s.
___"I can't imagine any of these denominations completely dominated by a conservative agenda," said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn.
___The ideological tug of war has played itself out differently across the mainline. In the Episcopal Church, a breakaway movement, the Anglican Mission in America, has offered to shepherd disillusioned conservatives. In the Presbyterian Church (USA), 1,200 congregations have signed on to the Confessing Church Movement, which demands allegiance to a three-point statement upholding the authority of the Bible and heterosexual purity.
___In other churches, such as the United Church of Christ, liberals have steered the agenda for decades, while evangelicals in the United Methodist Church have successfully derailed attempts to liberalize church policies.
___For some, the battle starts with a simple shift in mentality. James Heidinger, president of the Good News movement in the United Methodist Church, said his organization chose last year to stop seeing itself as a minority faction within the church.
___"The main thing about a majority mentality rather than a minority one is that we want to move in terms of setting an agenda rather than responding to one," he said.
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