Liberals fleeing...to YOUR church?

From an Indianapolis Star book review of Dave Shiflett's "Exodus": Shiflett describes himself as "an itinerant Presbyterian" who sometimes attends a mainline Presbyterian church. He says that - surprise, surprise - Americans are fleeing liberal churches for conservative Christianity.

From his interviews with Episcopal priests who no longer believe basic Christian doctrines, he concluded that "these clerics are doing missionary work. They have considered God's ways, as revealed in their faith's Scriptures and traditions, and have found them wanting. They have a higher agenda to advance. This allows them to turn Holy Writ on its head: what was once forbidden becomes acceptable, if not celebrated; admonitions toward holy living suddenly become hate speech."

The result is that mainline churches have become so secularized that they have accepted society's culture.

The second part of the book tells us where those who are leaving mainline churches are going. He begins with the Catholic Church, which welcomes 200,000 adult converts in America in any given year. As one of his interviewees said, the Catholic Church "not only offers a sound liturgy but stands firm where other faiths no longer do. (It) deserves allegiance because it is a bulwark against a lot of the rotten things like euthanasia, abortion, and the devaluation of life."

Shiflett writes about the Rev. John McCloskey, head of Catholic Information Services in Washington, who has converted hundreds of people to Catholicism, including noted conservatives such as Al Regnery, Robert Bork and Robert Novak. His converts, McCloskey says, share a "voracious and insatiable appetite for books. I show them the intellectual beauty of the church through the great writings." He mentions 15 names of "great minds (who) have crossed over."

Shiflett acknowledges that Catholicism also "remains a warm home for some of the world's most vigorous leftists," and gives examples. But, he opines, "The dynamism is on the right."

Shiflett also has chapters on those who have accepted the Orthodox Church, the Southern Baptists and evangelical churches. He says that the Orthodox Church appeals to Protestants who like its "mysterious" liturgies and who can't accept the role of the papacy in Catholicism.

The Southern Baptist Convention is America's largest non-Catholic Christian group, with 16 million members, and growing. Shiflett says that this religion, too, was becoming liberal before conservatives conducted a purge. Today the stress is on the "inerrancy" of the Bible. Shiflett conducted interviews with two leaders of the Southern Baptists, R. Albert Mohler and Dr. Richard Land.

Well, then, the question is - are the liberals coming to your church and denomination? I confess, I don't think they are exactly flocking to mine. My family is Nazarene, previously Free Methodist, previously United Methodist. It was always thought by the Nazarenes, Wesleyans and Free Methodists that the more the United Methodist Church lost membership, the more the evangelical Wesleyan denominations would pick up their people.

I don't think that has happened to any great degree.

Why?

Catholicism and the Orthodox have certainly grown that way. Are we missing something?