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JACKSON, Tenn.?David Dockery began his presentation about the rise and decline of Christian denominationalism by citing a 2009 Gallup poll: 16 percent of respondents said the role of denominations are important; 19 percent said the same thing about their brand of toilet paper and 21 percent about their brand of toothpaste.
Brand loyalty isn’t what it once was.
But, said Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., in addressing the conference “Southern Baptists, Evangelicals and the Future of Denominationalism,” held Oct. 6-9 at Union, denominations and Southern Baptists, specifically, can play an important role if they wisely handle changing attitudes about church brands while continuing to provide the structure, accountability and doctrinal moorings necessary to carry forth the gospel mandate.
Dockery, one of 14 presenters at the conference, which included three members of the SBC’s Great Commissions Resurgence Task Force?seminary presidents Albert Mohler and Danny Akin, along with Dockery?prefaced his presentation with Ephesians 4:1-6, a text that speaks of keeping “the unity of the spirit with the bonds of peace” and “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
“Denominations that thrive,” Dockery said, “will remain convictionally connected to their tradition, the Scripture and the gospel, while working to explore new ways of partnership with affinity groups and networks, moving out of their insularity while seeking to understand better the changing global context.”
Dockery said the “new, interlocking networks” that began in the 1940s in the response of evangelicals to sweeping liberalism on the one hand and reactionary fundamentalism on the other “have formed and framed the center of American evangelicalism over the past 60 years” more so than denominations. Consequently, Dockery argued, most people at least partially identify with parachurch movements in addition to their denominational membership; for others, these “horizontal relationships” eclipse denominational identity.
A study this year reported 8 million people who self-identify as “nondenominational,” compared with 200,000 in 1990, Dockery said.
Quoting author Robert Wuthnow’s book “The Restructuring of American Religion,” Dockery said: “This shift toward transdenominational movements is the biggest change in Christianity since the Reformation. It’s the biggest change because people no longer think of themselves in vertical alignments. Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists?instead they think primarily around identifying marks like fundamentalists, conservatives, evangelicals, moderates, liberals, spiritualists. Thus liberal Anglicans and liberal Methodists have much more in common than liberal Anglicans and conservative Anglicans. Evangelical Baptists and evangelical Presbyterians have much more in common than liberal Baptists and evangelical Baptists.”
Dockery traced the explosion of Protestant denominations to the 16th and 17th century Puritans’ quest for a purer, more biblical form of Christian preaching and practice.
“Some things about the decline [of denominations] may be good; others may not be,” Dockery argued. “The question for us tonight is this: If the denominational structures that have carried forward Protestant Christianity since the 16th century are on the decline, what will carry the Christian faith forward in the 21st century? How are we going to respond to the challenges around us?”
To answer the question, Dockery said, one must follow the “chain of memory” along Christian history, which must not be lost in adjusting to 21st century challenges, he argued. Citing a book that described the profound memory loss of some amnesia patients that led to the loss of their personal identity, Dockery stated: “I fear that American Christianity is on the verge of losing its hope and its identity in a similar kind of disorientation. The problem for many is not so much doubt but a loss of memory.”
Dockery said evangelical theologians have admirably championed biblical fidelity and a sound theological core “but for the most part evangelicals have not done a good job of articulating a theology of the church.”
