In the blogosphere, things move pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while (or leave for a week for Mrs. The Burner’s sister’s wedding), you could miss it.

So, TB is late to the party, but the peeps over at the Public Queue have brought in intellectual heavyweight Eugene Suen to respond to Ross Douthat’s article in the NYT the mainline church attendance implosion. Writes Suen (when he’s not memorizing arcane trivia from every. movie. ever. made.):

Douthat articulated something I intimately felt whenever I used to show up at theologically liberal Episcopal parishes on Sundays. The services often ran like secular progressive rallies playing Christian dress-up, where heavy advocacy for progressive values (which I happen to embrace) was often done with minimum, superficial appeal to Christian theology, which, by the way, was rarely ever subscribed to in any form that resembles traditional orthodox Christianity when you really dug deep into it…

I’d submit that the lack of spiritual rigor and the failure to substantiate radical political and social engagement with robust theology, along with the not-uncommon smugness (“Look at how enlightened we are compared to our misguided brothers and sisters in the conservative evangelical wing”), are quite precisely why secular people don’t care to bother with mainline churches. I wouldn’t if I was an unbeliever…

In offering the secular world less and less to disbelieve in, many mainline churches have become more and more uninteresting. Whereas conservatives make the terrible mistake of ignoring the radical dimensions of Christianity theology, theological liberals make the equally regrettable mistake of practicing laudable progressive values apart from serious wrestling with faith and scripture…

Great thoughts from one of Fuller’s most engaged and articulate minds. Read the rest here.

Tags: Eugene Suen, Liberal Christianity, Mainline, Ross Douthat