By Chris Satullo
I’m a white guy, grew up in a leafy suburb, attended an equally leafy college, and had a nice professional run where people actually paid me to spout opinions. So, not someone used to feeling invisible.
But, in a core part of my identity, I am feeling just that these days.
You see, I’m what’s called a “mainline” Protestant. An Episcopalian, to be exact.
The roster of other big mainline churches in the United States includes our good buddies the Lutherans, as well as Presbyterians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and the United Church of Christ. Around where I live in Pennsylvania, smaller mainline denominations like the Mennonites and Moravians are also prominent.
What makes an American church “mainline”? Well, we’ve got deep roots in American history. We are really, really white, though we lament that about ourselves. We’re ecumenical, stressing fellowship over dogmatic difference. We hold the Bible to be sacred, but not unerringly factual. We have some sort of national structure. We tend to have set liturgies, which are quiet, even austere compared to Black, evangelical or Pentecostal churches. We are big on social justice, systematic charity, gender equality and radical welcome to all people. Our ministers never, never, never go on television to strut on stages, angling for money.
And to most secular progressives, and the subset of them who cover national politics for big media, we don’t exist.
When they say Christians, they have solely in mind the type of religious people of whom they most strenuously disapprove. In other words, either right-wing Catholics (not, by far, the only kind) or those evangelical Christians who attend mega-churches, vote conservative, doubt evolution, fret about abortion, gay marriage, and critical race-theory, and tend to follow the lead of well-known, well-coiffed, highly political superstar preachers. And who, lately, seem to worship Donald Trump as passionately as they do their Lord and Savior.
David Brooks of the New York Times recently wrote a long, well-reported and mostly savvy essay about the fissures and fallings-out afflicting major evangelical Christian institutions in America, thanks to sexual scandals, George Floyd, and Trump. His piece makes it clear that the evangelical ranks include many thoughtful, sincere, generous Christians who are deeply troubled with how some of their congregations have become so deeply enmeshed with Republican power politics, racist backlash, and the hypocritical defense of sexual misconduct.
But even the well-informed Brooks lapsed a number of times, using the phrase “Christians in America” as a synonym for evangelicals, erasing the entire constellation of mainline faiths from his portrait of American religion. A piece last year on the evangelical mindset by Michael Luo of the New Yorker was even sloppier in that regard, standing as the single most ignorant thing I ever read in that usually excellent publication.
On the one hand, mainline churches are in fact shrinking, as more and more Americans opt for being vaguely “spiritual” rather than practicing members of an actual church. Episcopalians in America number about 1.7 million, which is about a half-percent of the number of Ariana Grande’s followers on Instagram.
But in 2020, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, members of mainline denominations still represented 16 percent of Americans, compared to the 14 percent who described themselves as evangelicals.
It’s true that an earlier Pew Research tally had self-identified evangelicals weighing in at 25.4 percent. But here’s something to know about that number – something about which most political reporters, who like simple and can’t be bothered to learn the nuanced distinctions among types of Christianity, do not have a clue: A huge chunk of those self-proclaimed “evangelicals” – as many as 40 percent, according to one researcher – admit they go to church only about once a year.
As David French, an authentic conservative Christian intellectual, once told me, “I may not be up on every last variation of evangelical theology, but I’m quite sure not a single one of them says it’s OK to go to church just once a year.” French insists that many of the people passing for “evangelical” in standard political reporting actually are something quite different: subscribers to what he calls “the God and country lifestyle brand.”
This helps to explain why so many alleged “Christians” so slavishly support Trump, the single most un-Christian person currently on the national stage.
But it’s also true that some sincerely “born again” evangelicals have been twisting themselves into theological pretzels to make excuses for Trump’s evil deeds since Day One. Other evangelical leaders, appalled, have publicly criticized this blind spot, leading to the nastiness and broken friendships that David Brooks describes.
But enough about this brand of Christianity that the ill-informed and the hostile now tend to equate glibly with all Christianity.
Let me tell you who we, the mainline Protestants, tend to be:
Gray-haired, unfortunately. White, as I mentioned. Stuffy, even. Deeply uncomfortable with the kind of voluble, pushy proclamation of one’s faith that some evangelicals seem to see as their religious duty.
On top of that, our reading of the Christian Gospels, our understanding of what Jesus said and why he died, tells us to focus upon his command to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” This leads us to many of the same social and political conclusions as secular progressives. Since we’re politically on the same team with them – and we know how vociferously these teammates tend to denounce “religion in the public square” – when we attend that rally or march in that march, we tend to tuck the Gospel into our back pocket and meekly decline to mention that it was Jesus who sent us.
It’s a mistake mainliners have been making for decades, much to my exasperation. It has led us to the point where even someone as smart as Brooks completely forgets us when he’s writing about Christianity in America.
Jesus says: Do not hide your light under a bushel, but that’s one piece of advice from him that we have a hard time following. We are much more inclined to heed St. Paul when he writes that “love…is not boastful” and warns us not to be “a clanging cymbal.” (To my atheist friends, if you’re wondering where you’ve heard that one before, it was at that church wedding you once attended. 1 Corinthian…you could look it up.)
OK, I’m done with such Christian modesty. Let me tell you, David Brooks, and Michael Luo et al., who my people are. And let me be clear, emphatically, at the outset, about something: I know that I, personally, am the least of my brothers and sisters; so many in my church, and in others like it, do so much more than I.
What do they do? They (laity and clergy alike) feed the hungry. They welcome and shelter the refugee. They visit the ailing and the prisoner, and comfort the troubled. They preach justice and seek it. They probe the deep wounds of racism, hungry for healing. They welcome all, no matter who they are and where they are on life’s journey, to their table fellowship. They march against violence and for school equity. They welcome women and gays and all races to be part of their ministry, even to don the collar.
They read, they listen, they think, they discuss, and they vote their values.
And they get no credit for it. They politely bow their heads and stay silent when their secular friends spout ignorant, biased opinions about the horrors of religion and the pathetic superstitiousness, intolerance, and hypocrisy of all who believe “that nonsense.”
We are now in the season of Lent, the period of reflection and penitence leading up to the centering joy of Easter. As always, my church congregation began the season by reciting a litany of penance. I want to share some of the litany with you, to help you grasp the values that the majority of Protestants in this country – both mainline and evangelical – still hold and seek to live out in an often-hostile secular world:
“Have mercy on us, Lord.
“We confess to you, Lord, our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives. We confess to you, Lord, our self-indulgent appetites and ways and our exploitation of others. We confess to you, Lord, our anger, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves. We confess to you, Lord, our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts and our dishonesty in daily life and work. ….
“Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done, for our blindness to human need and suffering, our indifference to injustice and cruelty. Accept our repentance, Lord, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors and our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us. Accept our repentance, Lord, for our waste and pollution of your creation and our lack of concern for those who come after us.”
This is who millions of Christians in America are, the values they hold sacred.
My secular friends, I don’t expect you to love us. I don’t imagine you’ll join us. But at least see us. Acknowledge that we exist, and who we try to be in the world and for the world.
All I’m asking for, I guess, is a little respect.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia