Suchergebnisse

The liberal Protestant denominations, long the most influential of America's mainline religious bodies, have suffered serious membership losses since the late 1960s. The principal sources of the losses are in the failure of the children of members to remain affiliated; this failure has been traced to a value shift that began among college-educated youth in the 1960s. Although this shift caught the liberal churches by surprise, their leaders contributed to the intellectual climate that made it possible. This climate was created in the 1930s by Reinhold Niebuhr in his critique of the optimistic religious liberalism of his day as the self-serving ideology of the bourgeoisie. As an alternative he urged theology to recover a sense of the sinful and tragic side of life and urged Christians to support the struggles of oppressed peoples. Although these themes profoundly affected liberal Protestant leaders, they failed to attract most lay people. In the 1950s Protestant intellectuals began mounting a frontal assault on the popular piety of the laity. This assault, which eventually extended even to theistic belief itself, was thematically similar to secular intellectuals' critiques of American culture and institutions, which were later embodied in an exaggerated form in the youth rebellions of the 1960s. If the liberal churches are to recover their strength and cultural influence they will have to make liberal Christianity more relevant and compelling to its own constituency.

The liberal Protestant denominations, long the most influential of the US's mainline religious bodies, have suffered serious membership losses since the late 1960s. Principal sources of the losses are in the failure of the children of members to remain affiliated; this failure has been traced to a value shift that began among Coll-educated youth in the 1960s. Although this shift caught liberal churches by surprise, their leaders contibuted to the intellectual climate that made it possible. In the 1950s, Protestant intellectuals began mounting a frontal assault on the popular piety of the laity. This assault, which eventually extended even to theistic belief, was thematically similar to secular intellectuals' critiques of US culture & institutions, which were later embodied in an exaggerated form in the youth rebellions of the 1960s. If the liberal churches are to recover their strength & cultural influence, they will have to make liberal Christianity more relevant & compelling to its own constituency. Modified HA

A study of 365 M members of the Eugene, Oregon LF to test the hypothesis that religious involvement is 'directly related to preference for the Republican Party among fundamentalists & inversely related to Republican preference among liberals, regardless of econ class. Moreover, when religious involved persons of the same econ class are compared, fundamentalists should be more inclined to be Republicans than liberals.' The various sects of `Ascetic Protestantism' - denominations within the Calvinist, Pietist, & Revivalist traditions - were classified as fundamentalist or liberal, & church attendance was used as the major index of religious involvement. Contrary to the usual relationship between SS & pol'al preference, 'the denominations which have come under liberal influence are relatively middle Uc in the composition of their membership, whereas the denominations where fundamentalism holds sway are relatively We in composition.' This may be accounted for by the fact that the higher class congregations have chosen ministers who received their training from the more influential & prestigeful seminaries, & these 'have participated in the trend toward liberal humanitarianism that has been going on in intellectual circles for many yrs.' Results confirmed the hyp's, & indicated that 'because of the relationship of the factions of Ascetic Protestantism to the class system, it is likely that religious influences operate far more frequently to reduce or narrow class-cased pol'al diff's than to accentuate them.' I. Taviss.