One reason for the dying of the churches is that God’s truth died in so many of them many years ago. We are merely living at a time when the interest payments have come due.

Reports of the financial struggles and decline in membership among large American denominations have become so commonplace that they often elicit little more than a shrug. But every now and then, a report arises that warrants attention. A recent Religion News Service article gives helpful insight as to why “Protestant denominations are losing members, particularly the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist and other historic mainline groups,” including the Southern Baptist Convention. The inclusion of the SBC is significant because, unlike the other denominations, which “have suffered schisms as they moved in more progressive directions,” the SBC is theologically conservative. Conservative Christians should take note.

The article ironically features a photograph of two queer clergy. If ever one wished to render the church’s message obsolete and her existence pointless, adopting queerness would seem a most excellent way to do it. Queer theory is the perfect tool for demolishing any “oppressive” dogma or claim to transcendent truth. But if the church has no truth to proclaim, why does she exist? Or, more pointedly, why should anyone bother with her? H. Richard Niebuhr aptly summarized the irrelevance of liberal Protestantism: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” And yet even that seems quite robust compared to queer Jesus and a gospel with no apparent purpose other than decrying traditional Christianity and affirming the fluid identities of autonomous individuals. One reason for the dying of the churches is that God’s truth died in so many of them many years ago. We are merely living at a time when the interest payments have come due.

Cuts to the administrative structure of these denominations look set to be swift and sharp. Yet that hints at another problem in American Christianity: a decades-long creeping prioritization of church agencies over local church ministry. Following the money is a sound way to see who and what an organization deems most important. Overpaid administrative agencies are one good example of this. Now, this is not a monopoly of the liberal mainstream. In the conservative Presbyterian world there are denominations where agency heads earn in excess of $300,000, typically much more than the average congregant or even the most well-paid ministers. Yet it is the ministers who preach each week and do the work of frontline ministry.

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