Same labels, different Protestants

The reevaluation of liberal Protestantism and its real but perhaps overstated decline—a topic that the Century has covered with this review, and related commentary by Martin Marty and by John Buchanan—was picked up by the New York Times this week.

The Times story does a decent job summarizing the debate, in which the overarching question is posed by historian David Hollinger (interviewed by the Century last year): Did liberal Protestants of midcentury win the culture war but lose the church? Did their ideas triumph, but at the cost of eroding their own institutions?

What often gets lost in discussions of liberal and conservative winners and losers is just how much both liberal and conservative Protestants have changed internally over the past 60 years in response to each other and in response to larger cultural and intellectual shifts.  The same labels get used, but the products inside the wrapping are different.