Hi Billy, On Nov 1, 2012, at 9:04 AM, [email protected] wrote:
This is really quite profound: > The Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith has observed, “Liberal > Protestantism’s organizational decline has been accompanied by and is in part > arguably the consequence of the fact that liberal Protestantism has won a > decisive, larger cultural victory.” The “cultural victory” Smith and others > write about happened not because more Americans joined liberal churches, in > other words, but because liberal religious values and sensibilities became > more and more culturally normative. And no single cultural force has been > more significant to this profound religious shift than the unabashed > consumerism of the religious book business in the twentieth century. > I can't believe I didn't notice this before. The conservatives like to point out that liberal Christianity is losing the pews, but it may well be true they've won the culture. While not exactly something I want to celebrate, it is a significant achievement, and worthy of study. -- Ernie P. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
