The Vanishing Church and Faith Retention

My essay “How Do Our Kids Stay Christian?” has been included in Mere Orthodoxy‘s inaugural ebook, Spiritual Formation for the Family. If you become a member of MO you have access to this and all future ebooks. That essay was the origin of Keeping Kids Christian, which is published in one week! You can find it for pre-order with free shipping at BakerBookHouse.com; on pre-order and 40% off at Westminster Books (it was WTS Books’ promotional focus last week, which was cool and humbling); and for pre-order at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Christianbook.com.

Ryan Burge is the guru sociologist of religion who writes at Graphs about Religion. I’ve followed and appreciated his work for years now, and have read all of his books. His most recent is The Vanishing Church. It explores the decline of the mainline tradition and its central thesis is that the moderate sensibilities of mainline congregations couldn’t handle the increased polarization of American culture and that very sensibility is something desperately needed to moderate the most extreme impulses in our society, both religious and secular. It was classic Burge: lots of statistics that are easy to digest, the familiar recounting of the American religious landscape over the last 75 years, with the vulnerability of a pastor whose church shut its doors.

What left me scratching my head was how he contrasted mainline with evangelical sensibilities when it comes to Christian discipleship…