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After attending a conference at Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral seven years ago, leaders of the Lutheran Church of the Master in Sylmar, California, started thinking about changing their congregation’s name. The trend of erasing denominational identity from church names had been well under way in the West among independent evangelical and charismatic churches—and with iconoclasts like the famed pastor of the Crystal Cathedral.

Despite the size and historic importance of mainline churches, say sociologists Robert Wuthnow and John Evans, “their activities and the ways in which they seek to influence public policy are poorly understood.” Compared to the noisy political activity of conservatives and evangelicals, that of quieter mainline Protestants can indeed be overlooked. Wuthnow and Evans have assembled a group of scholars with the aim of giving attention to mainline Christians’ ways of doing politics.