Changing Religious Traditions: Not New but Accelerating
by Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

The recently released report on shifting religious affiliations among Americans is receiving significant media attention. Prepared by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the report followed interviews with over 35,000 adults in the United States and gives a detailed picture of what most religious leaders had already assumed.

Such changes are not new in the United States; dramatic shifts in the religious landscape have occurred throughout the nation’s history. In the late 18th century, two-thirds of church members belonged to three denominations – Congregationalist, Episcopal, and Presbyterian. As the 19th century unfolded, Methodists and Baptists emerged in far larger numbers among Protestant church members. And then there has been the movement from the U.S. being a predominantly Protestant nation to the situation today in which Protestants make up about half the population and their percentages continue to decline.

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BOOK REVIEW
What’s Theology Got to Do with It? Convictions, Vitality, and the Church
By Anthony B. Robinson, Alban Institute, 2006
Reviewed by Lewis A. Parks

Many of us intuit that there is a critical deficit of theology in contemporary congregations. Like Anthony Robinson, we have seen the “ Pecos River syndrome,” a congregation that is a mile wide and a foot deep. Like Robinson, we have groped for a middle way between congregations that are indifferent to core beliefs and congregations that are uncharitable in handling their core beliefs. And like Robinson, we have longed for viable models of congregations grounded in solid theology, here defined as “core convictions and wisdom proper to the life of all believers.” What makes this book unique is what Robinson does next.

Robinson attempts to show specific connections between core theological beliefs and the practices of healthy congregations. These core beliefs include revelation, canon of scripture, the Trinity, God as creator, the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the image of God and original sin, justification and sanctification, Church, the sacraments, the calls of clergy and laity, and eschatology.

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Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.

In deciding whether to spend money for a specific purpose, a congregation might ask these questions:

What specific outcome are we seeking?
How certain is the outcome?
How long will it take?
Will this outcome advance our church’s mission?
Would other uses of the funds advance our mission
more directly or effectively?

Editors:  Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel
Production and distribution:  Joe Arnold

Copyright © 2008 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright).