Different views of Church and State...

[HondurasKeiser]

I agree with Barnhart that Mainline Protestantism has become irrelevant though I see John’s point that much of the mainline spirit lives on in modern, secular liberalism. I commend Jody Bottum’s stellar piece in First Things from back in 2008, The Death of Protestant America:

Which makes it all the stranger that, somewhere around 1975, the main stream of Protestantism ran dry. In truth, there are still plenty of Methodists around. Baptists and Presbyterians, too — Lutherans, Episcopalians, and all the rest; millions of believing Christians who remain serious and devout. For that matter, you can still find, soldiering on, some of the institutions they established in their Mainline glory days: the National Council of Churches, for instance, in its God Box up on New York City's Riverside Drive, with the cornerstone laid, in a grand ceremony, by President Eisenhower in 1958. But those institutions are corpses, even if they don't quite realize that they're dead. The great confluence of Protestantism has dwindled to a trickle over the past thirty years, and the Great Church of America has come to an end.

And that leaves us in an odd situation, unlike any before. The death of the Mainline is the central historical fact of our time: the event that distinguishes the past several decades from every other period in American history. Almost every one of our current political and cultural oddities, our contradictions and obscurities, derives from this fact: The Mainline has lost the capacity to set, or even significantly influence, the national vocabulary or the national self-understanding.

For an even earlier take here’s an essay from the same journal from back in 1993: https://firstthings.com/mainline-church ... r-decline/

[barnhart]

When the church believes it's power and purpose lie in the capacity to reform government or set the national discussion, it is very near the tipping point of irrelevance. From that point on it has nothing to offer that cannot be found in political organization. One factor that lubricates the transition is political success, winning political battles means joining forces with political power which further degrades moral authority. The mainline churches crossed this line sometime mid century and the Evangelicals crossed over in the period between Presidents G.W. Bush and Trump.

Let the weak say "I am strong"
-Joel 3:10

[barnhart]

Ernie's AI categories are to vague for my taste. I would collapse them into four models.

A. Responsibility for secular rule falls on the church (1. Theocracy, 12. Liberation Theology, 13. Christian Nationalism)

B. Unitary authority (2. Erastian, 3. Constantinian)

C. Two realm, co-equal authority (4. Catholic 2 swords, 5. Lutheran 2 kingdoms, 6. Reformed Calvinist, 7. Establishmentarianism)

D. Separation Theology
i. Institutional separation (8. Separationist, 9. Free church)
ii. Radical separation (10. Anabaptist)

This type of analysis is probably the opposite of what Ernie has in mind. As I understand it he would like to arrive at definition that each group will embrace which means creating more categories, not collapsing them down further.

[Ernie]

Ernie's AI categories are to vague for my taste. I would collapse them into four models.

A. Responsibility for secular rule falls on the church (1. Theocracy, 12. Liberation Theology, 13. Christian Nationalism)

B. Unitary authority (2. Erastian, 3. Constantinian)

C. Two realm, co-equal authority (4. Catholic 2 swords, 5. Lutheran 2 kingdoms, 6. Reformed Calvinist, 7. Establishmentarianism)

D. Separation Theology
i. Institutional separation (8. Separationist, 9. Free church)
ii. Radical separation (10. Anabaptist)

This type of analysis is probably the opposite of what Ernie has in mind. As I understand it he would like to arrive at definition that each group will embrace which means creating more categories, not collapsing them down further.

I don't mind sticking with these four (or a few more or few more subpoints) as long as most any professing Christian can read over this list and find one that "generally describes my belief".

The definitions you were working on earlier are the sort of thing I am looking for, although it seemed that some members felt they needed tweaked some.

[joshuabgood]

Ernie's AI categories are to vague for my taste. I would collapse them into four models.

A. Responsibility for secular rule falls on the church (1. Theocracy, 12. Liberation Theology, 13. Christian Nationalism)

B. Unitary authority (2. Erastian, 3. Constantinian)

C. Two realm, co-equal authority (4. Catholic 2 swords, 5. Lutheran 2 kingdoms, 6. Reformed Calvinist, 7. Establishmentarianism)

D. Separation Theology
i. Institutional separation (8. Separationist, 9. Free church)
ii. Radical separation (10. Anabaptist)

This type of analysis is probably the opposite of what Ernie has in mind. As I understand it he would like to arrive at definition that each group will embrace which means creating more categories, not collapsing them down further.

I don't mind sticking with these four (or a few more or few more subpoints) as long as most any professing Christian can read over this list and find one that "generally describes my belief".

The definitions you were working on earlier are the sort of thing I am looking for, although it seemed that some members felt they needed tweaked some.

I struggle to find one that I feel articulates my "belief.' In some ways I feel most alignment with B...however, the lever of the unitary authority isn't the "sword" but instead the way of the cross. The Kingdom is on earth, but it isn't worldly, that is a geopolitical state. In that sense, I really appreciate the hardcore reformed postmillenial perspective if you will, but a different mechanism/lever.

[JohnH]

When the church believes it's power and purpose lie in the capacity to reform government or set the national discussion, it is very near the tipping point of irrelevance. From that point on it has nothing to offer that cannot be found in political organization. One factor that lubricates the transition is political success, winning political battles means joining forces with political power which further degrades moral authority. The mainline churches crossed this line sometime mid century and the Evangelicals crossed over in the period between Presidents G.W. Bush and Trump.

Let the weak say "I am strong"
-Joel 3:10

Part of that "irrelevance" starts when churches and Christians think they need to be "bear witness" or "speak truth to power", etc., to the government in a broad manner. It is a very short trip from there to actually participating in attempting to reform government. This is one of the reasons I think liberal-progressive Anabaptism has completely lost its way, yet I see the drift towards that kind of thinking lurking in the shadows in plain Anabaptism as well.

[HondurasKeiser]

Part of that "irrelevance" starts when churches and Christians think they need to be "bear witness" or "speak truth to power", etc., to the government in a broad manner. It is a very short trip from there to actually participating in attempting to reform government. This is one of the reasons I think liberal-progressive Anabaptism has completely lost its way, yet I see the drift towards that kind of thinking lurking in the shadows in plain Anabaptism as well.

This from a letter to the editor in response to Bottum's essay:

As Bottum points out, “a new version of the social-gospel movement became the default theology of church bureaucracies in the Mainline.” Ideology increasingly trumped theology as the gospel became politicized.

In 1968, I was invited to join the Reformed Church bureaucracy at 475 Riverside Drive”the year that the WCC met in Uppsala, Sweden. One day, during a flight to an NCC meeting, I sat next to George Vecsey, the sports-columnist-turned-religion-editor for the New York Times . “You know,” he said to me, “I could just as well have written my report while staying home; there will be no surprises.” It was the Vietnam War era, and “prophetic pronouncements,” composed by committees and usually cast in United Nations English, had become that predictable.

Sad things happen in the land of ecclesia when a social gospel is based on the cheapest of graces, allowing “prophetic critique” without feel-ing the slightest need for self-confrontation.

[temporal1]

When the church believes it's power and purpose lie in the capacity to reform government or set the national discussion, it is very near the tipping point of irrelevance. From that point on it has nothing to offer that cannot be found in political organization. One factor that lubricates the transition is political success, winning political battles means joining forces with political power which further degrades moral authority. The mainline churches crossed this line sometime mid century and the Evangelicals crossed over in the period between Presidents G.W. Bush and Trump.

Let the weak say "I am strong"
-Joel 3:10

MLK Jr, i hope inadvertently, formally led his flock and beyond onto the path of seeking answers in government.
How it’s been exploited for personal gain! Fortunes made.

[JohnH]

When the church believes it's power and purpose lie in the capacity to reform government or set the national discussion, it is very near the tipping point of irrelevance. From that point on it has nothing to offer that cannot be found in political organization. One factor that lubricates the transition is political success, winning political battles means joining forces with political power which further degrades moral authority. The mainline churches crossed this line sometime mid century and the Evangelicals crossed over in the period between Presidents G.W. Bush and Trump.

Let the weak say "I am strong"
-Joel 3:10

MLK Jr, i hope inadvertently, formally led his flock and beyond onto the path of seeking answers in government.
How it’s been exploited for personal gain! Fortunes made.

In fairness to MLK Jr, that had been the precedent in America society since the Second Great Awakening and the resultant massive, seismic changes that hit American society with the revivalism that ultimately led to passing universal suffrage and prohibition as Constitutional amendments. The fusion of church and state was nearly complete - with the thought that we could bring about morality and goodness in men through state action.

Of course, the end result is that such a "church" finds itself obsolete, as the all-powerful state eventually can just do everything, right? And religion simply becomes a matter of personal choice, such as whether one prefers Burger King or Wendy's.

[temporal1]

When the church believes it's power and purpose lie in the capacity to reform government or set the national discussion, it is very near the tipping point of irrelevance. From that point on it has nothing to offer that cannot be found in political organization. One factor that lubricates the transition is political success, winning political battles means joining forces with political power which further degrades moral authority. The mainline churches crossed this line sometime mid century and the Evangelicals crossed over in the period between Presidents G.W. Bush and Trump.

Let the weak say "I am strong"
-Joel 3:10

MLK Jr, i hope inadvertently, formally led his flock and beyond onto the path of seeking answers in government.
How it’s been exploited for personal gain! Fortunes made.

In fairness to MLK Jr, that had been the precedent in America society since the Second Great Awakening and the resultant massive, seismic changes that hit American society with the revivalism that ultimately led to passing universal suffrage and prohibition as Constitutional amendments. The fusion of church and state was nearly complete - with the thought that we could bring about morality and goodness in men through state action.

Of course, the end result is that such a "church" finds itself obsolete, as the all-powerful state eventually can just do everything, right? And religion simply becomes a matter of personal choice, such as whether one prefers Burger King or Wendy's.

not wrong.
television played a role in featuring MLK Jr as leader. he/they “formalized” it. the public loves packaging.

JFK was the first television president.