This transformation in the Episcopal Church was done to make the church “relevant and vital.” Instead, people stopped going because, as Douthat points out, there was nothing these churches offered that they “[couldn’t] already get from a purely secular liberalism.”

In 2006, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, told the New York Times that Episcopalians were not interested in “replenishing their ranks by having children.” Instead, the church “[encouraged] people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”

“Stewardship of the earth” and having children are not incompatible, but if Schori’s goal was a principled extinction, she’s about to succeed. The Episcopal Church, you see, is in a statistical free-fall.

Since 2000, the Episcopal Church has lost 23 percent of its members. At this rate, there will be no Episcopalians in 26 years.

My friend and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat noted that the collapse occurred at the same time that the church was transforming itself “into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States.”

Ironically, this transformation was done to make the church “relevant and vital.” Instead, people stopped going because, as Douthat points out, there was nothing these churches offered that they “[couldn’t] already get from a purely secular liberalism.”

What’s true of the Episcopal Church is also true, to a large extent, of much of the Protestant mainline. As these churches have lurched leftward in the name of “relevance” and “vitality,” their numbers have plummeted.

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