Why Conservative Churches/Growing
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The liberal churches are tolerant, rational, democratic, cooperative, and dogmatically flexible. And they are dying. The conservative churches are zealous, puritanical, authoritarian, xenophobic, and monolithic - and they are thriving. Why? Because people join churches in order to find guidance, to satisfy the need for group identification, to feel that they are changing their lives. If a church is able to provide those elements, it survives and grows, but if it is indistinguishable from any other church - and, indeed, indistinguishable from society at large - then there is nothing in it to at...
The liberal churches are tolerant, rational, democratic, cooperative, and dogmatically flexible. And they are dying. The conservative churches are zealous, puritanical, authoritarian, xenophobic, and monolithic - and they are thriving. Why? Because people join churches in order to find guidance, to satisfy the need for group identification, to feel that they are changing their lives. If a church is able to provide those elements, it survives and grows, but if it is indistinguishable from any other church - and, indeed, indistinguishable from society at large - then there is nothing in it to attract members or to retain those that it has. This, as Kelley recognizes, is not a welcome explanation of the decline of the liberal churches; but it is an inescapable one and one that is pragmatically verifiable. The churches, the author concludes, have a hard choice: be strict, or be extinct. He does not go into the deeper question of whether survival for the sake of survival is a true religious value; but he says enough to awaken second thoughts among the liberal clergy who are determined, in any case, to survive. (Kirkus Reviews)