Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
The negative world is almost defined by institutional incompatibility or hostility to historical Protestantism. This necessitates a countercultural approach and bars the door to a mainline relationship of the church to culture. 

Jake Meador wrote a recent interesting piece on a topic of great interest to me, namely about a call to attempt to create a new Protestant mainline. He says:
So to bring the discussion to reformed catholicity and what reformed catholic churches can do in our current context, here it is: The old Mainline is dead. American Catholicism is likely terminal as well, even prior to the plausible turmoil to come under Pope Francis’s successor. American Evangelicalism is now encountering its own dechurching crisis and loss of influence. The Christian movement in America is thus at a crossroads. Something new will need to be built. But I do not think we should build a new evangelicalism; I think we should build a new mainline.
That mainline should be centered around the EPC, PCA, and ACNA with room for the possible addition of Lutheran, Methodist, or Baptist denominations, should denominations interested in this project emerge from those streams. The old mainline encompassed Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Baptists. We currently have Presbyterian and Anglican communions that might plausibly grow into the “continuing church” vision once articulated at the PCA’s founding. It remains to be seen if the Global Methodists can join this movement, let alone if the LCMS can stave off its own demographic collapse or if a strengthened Baptist commujnion can emerge from the chaos and corruption currently vexing the SBC. These are the institutional pieces to watch, then: the PCA, EPC, ACNA, Global Methodists, LCMS, maybe WELS, and SBC.
I agree that America lost a lot with the decline of the mainline denominations. Attempts to at least salvage or reclaim some of that is of great interest to me, and also others as well. I think you can see Tim Keller’s plan for the renewal of the American church through this lens, and I might be collaborating on an article about that in the future.
Lind’s Four American Republics
Before digging in, however, I thought it was interesting to see Meador lay out a “four Americas” framework from Michael Lind that was very similar to my own version. I did not draw from Lind, though had heard he had something like this. But I think this sort of division of American history is one very obvious way to do it, so I’m sure it has recurred many times.
Where I differ from the framework Meador gives is that I see the “fourth republic” or “America 4.0” as less emerged than he does (or at least that’s my impression). I see us as in a liminal period where we can’t yet see the contours of what the future system will look like, just as those in the Depression didn’t know what postwar America would be like. The old is passing away but the new has not yet been born. Hence we should be cautious about over fitting solutions to the present movement.
Through Catholic Eyes
Meador is also influenced by Joseph Bottum’s An Anxious Age, which I actually read after I saw him make a previous reference to it. It’s an interesting book in which Bottum makes the common argument that contemporary elite morality and culture is a form of secularized mainline Protestantism (a view with some degree of truth). In his telling, Catholics (with evangelicals in a supporting role as public mouthpiece for Catholic natural law arguments) were the would be replacement for the mainline role in society, but that project failed because America ended up being too Protestant to submit to a Catholicism that was weakened at the time by internal issues.
You won’t be surprised to hear that Bottum himself is a staunch Catholic. That is, like 90% of the people I read who center America’s problems in mainline Protestantism, he himself is not a Protestant. Invariably in these readings, any role Ellis Islanders (like my family) might have played in contemporary America’s failings is minimized or avoided altogether. Just once I’d like to see a Catholic writer say something like, “The WASPs handed over the keys, but we ran the car into a ditch.”
This is one reason I have been arguing that Protestants must stop outsourcing their thinking to Catholic intellectuals. Invariably this leads to us repeating essentially Catholic serving talking points, as Bottum himself basically says in his book (e.g., of George W. Bush).
Meador’s Mainline Restoration Project
With those preliminaries, what does Meador’s mainline restoration project look like?
Institutionally, he sees it centered in the conservative “shadow denominations” of the mainline, mostly splinter groups (EPC, PCA) but some which are not (LCMS). He goes on to say:
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Those who have experienced great loss and difficulty in life often treasure this truth more than those whose bellies and bank accounts are full. For those desperately seeking Him can be assured that God will work all things they have been given— gifts and trials alike— together for good. He has given us the greatest good of His Son, which can not be taken from us, and has given us more than we could ask for or desire in the unsearchable greatness and inexhaustible fountain of riches in Christ.

A man loses his fortune in a fire. Shortly after, all four of his young children die in a tragic shipwreck. A young woman’s husband is brutally murdered. Her second husband dies of cancer, and she herself passes away after a decade-long battle with dementia. A promising teenager becomes a quadriplegic in a diving accident. For the rest of her life she is confined to a wheelchair; from the neck down unable to move her once active body.
And yet, Joni Eareckson Tada, after learning to write with a pen in her mouth, reflected: “It is a glorious thing to know that your Father God makes no mistakes in directing or permitting that which crosses the path of your life.”
And when it seemed providence had dealt her a cruel hand in the death of her two husbands, Elisabeth Elliot wrote, “God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good.”
And even as his ship slowly passed by the place where his children drowned, Horatio Spafford penned the beloved lines, “Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say it is well with my soul.”
There seems to be a shocking dissonance between the words and the lives of these individuals. Were they deluded into thinking that God has been good to them? Or, had they taken hold of the promise many of us have a difficult time grasping— that God withholds nothing good from the upright, for God Himself is our greatest gift and gives Himself freely to us.
When the psalmist writes, “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly,” our first instinct is to make a mental list of all the good things that we do not have. Like our first parents, we are tempted to believe that God is keeping something from us.
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Written by T. Desmond Alexander |
Sunday, November 5, 2023
In these and other ways, the author of Chronicles highlights an intimate bond between the temple and the Davidic king. Since the temple has been restored, there is hope that the Davidic dynasty will be restored. To this end, the author of Chronicles reminds his readers that the temple is the place of prayer, and he encourages them to repent and pray for God’s healing of their land (see 2 Chron. 7:14). 

The book of Chronicles is an important part of our divinely inspired Bible, but two factors often deter modern Christian readers: (1) the opening nine chapters are filled with genealogical information that makes far from compelling reading, and (2) everything that follows in some measure repeats information about the Davidic dynasty that has already been recorded in the books of Samuel and Kings. The contents of Chronicles are often identical to what is found in these earlier books. Why, we might ask, do we have in the Bible a second history of Israel that overlaps in varying degrees with what is already recorded in Samuel and Kings? Three important observations may help answer this question.
1. For the author of Chronicles, the Davidic monarchy is central to God’s plan of redemption for the entire world.
We need to appreciate the context in which Chronicles was composed. Samuel and Kings were written around 550 BC, in the wake of Jerusalem being sacked by the Babylonians. This devastating event resulted in the temple’s destruction and the end of the Davidic dynasty’s rule over the nation of Judah. According to Kings, these tragic developments were a consequence of God’s judgment on the people of Judah and especially the Davidic kings, who turned away from worshiping God. However, circumstances had changed dramatically by the time Chronicles was composed between 450–400 BC. By this stage, many Judeans had returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon to rebuild the temple and the city walls.
The historical context of when each book was composed influences its overall message. Kings explains why destruction and exile befalls Jerusalem due to the corruption of the Davidic monarchy. In marked contrast, the author of Chronicles encourages his readers to believe in the continuing importance of the Davidic monarchy and to pray for its restoration. For the author of Chronicles, the Davidic monarchy is central to God’s plan of redemption for the entire world.
2. Chronicles holds out hope that God will raise up a descendant of David to establish God’s kingdom in the world.
Despite the absence of a king in Jerusalem after 586 BC, Chronicles holds out hope that God will raise up a descendant of David to establish God’s kingdom in the world. This eventually comes to fulfilment in Jesus Christ. However, for the people of Jerusalem in the late fifth century BC, doubts must have existed regarding God’s commitment to the Davidic dynasty.
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