The Death of Denominations and the Future of CBF
Denominations have defined Protestant Christianity in America for most of its history. They’ve included Congregationalists, Methodists, Episcopals, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. But about 40 years ago, these denominations began a steep decline. It started with more liberal denominations, but spread rapidly to moderate ones. For example, the United Methodist Church has lost about three million members over the last 40 years.Â
Conservative denominations like Southern Baptists have appeared to be immune to this decline. But this may not be the case. Statistics show that the average weekly worship attendance in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is about 6 million. That’s down from slightly more than 7 million in 1980.Â
Where have the people gone? Many have quit going to church entirely, many have gravitated to chuches of other denominations, and many appear to have migrated to non-denominational churches.
I’m challenged by the fact that when I talk to our high school and college-age students, I find that they find no attraction on any particular denomination or to the idea of a denomination. They feel that denominational distinctives are unimportant. I’ve also noticed that once they get out on their own, they tend to go to non-denominational churches, despite my best efforts to make good Baptists out of them!
What does all this mean to CBF? I remember when I attended one of the early gatherings of what would become the CBF there was a lot of discussion about what the group would be. Would it be a split-off denomination, a network within the SBC, or what? I must confess that I was one of those who wanted to see the CBF become a denomination.
The CBF has developed into a kind of quasi-denomination and mission society. While that frustrates people whose organizational model is the SBC, I’ve reversed my opinion and think that’s a good thing. Why become a denomination when the denomination is a model of the past? Though there are many things about the structure of CBF that are frustrating to those of us who grew up in the denominational model, I think it’s the form of the future: a partnership of Baptist churches, individual Baptists, Christian institutions, and outside denominational entities that continues Christ’s work.
The CBF has many challenges ahead. But I think it’s better equipped to deal with the future than many other groups.
Filed under: Robert Prince, pastor | Tagged: CBF, decline, Denominations
I agree that folk increasingly move their participation from church to church without regard to denominational affiliation. Most of the new members at the church I attend are transfers from other churches, often crossing denominational boundaries. It is likely that is even more prevalent amongst the attending worshipers who are not members. Overall, the percentage of folk who do not participate with a church at all is increasing.
The fact that independent churches can be, and are, birthed more efficiently, and successfully, than denominationally sponsored churches is a testimonial that denominational baggage is not essential for the trip.
When we get the ministry correctly targeted, such as NC Baptist Men’s Disaster Response, folks from all kinds of churches will do extraordinary participatory things.
A major positive factor for the CBF is that being a younger traveler it has not accumulated excessive extraneous baggage. Even if time and success might tend to cause excessive baggage, the opportunity for Christlike ministry in the meantime abounds.
I agree that the trend is certainly moving away from denominationalism, and it is a trend that I am in many ways happy to see. I do wonder, though, how this trend will deal with some of the theological and polity issues that resulted in the formation of denominations in the first place.
For example, how will the trend away from denominationalism deal with questions of baptism? Infant baptism or believer’s baptism? Sprinkling or dunking?
Perhaps the CBF model will become the new model in the sense that the denominational body will be replaced by a network of like-minded churches whose main focus is the sharing of ideas and mission resources. No denominational printing house, seminaries would be more independent, etc.
I agree with you that many people are becoming less attached to denominational identities. Chapter two of the recently published, and very thorough, Pew Center Religious Landscape survey (http://religions.pewforum.org/), for instance says “The Landscape Survey confirms that, indeed, there is a remarkable amount of movement by Americans from one religious group to another. Together with other sources of
change in religious affiliation, such as immigration and fertility rates, this shifting helps account for the great dynamism of American religion. Looking only at changes from one major religious tradition to another (e.g., from Protestantism to Catholicism, or from Judaism to no religion),more than one-in-four U.S. adults (28%) have changed their religious affiliation from that in which
they were raised.”
However, what I’ve always liked about CBF is that, in my opinion, the “B” has always been lowercase; meaning we have been not at committed to “baptist” as a denomination but to baptist principles. Do you feel that those principles (e.g soul freedom, bible freedom, church freedom, religious freedom) are becoming more popular–especially when you consider the ascendancy of the non-denominational church?
Joel,
I think several of those Baptist principles are becoming common to non-denominational churches. Soul freedom and church freedom seem to be on the ascendancy. I’m not so sure about Bible freedom and religious freedom. I see in some younger non-denominational evangelicals a longing for authority in the interpretation of scripture. The rise of Calvinism in this group is a sign of longing for authority and order in theology. In relation to religious freedom, opinion polls done with these same groups suggest that they believe church-state separation has gone too far. Paradoxically, many in this same group believe that God has revealed himself through non-Christian faiths.
Daniel Vestal has an article entitled The Baptist Family in the print CBFfellowship! magazine for May/June 2008. I couldn’t find an online version of it to link. Generally, Vestal is more optimistic than the notions posted here though he refers to The Baptist Family more often than denomination.