Trump sparking an increase in Progressive church attendance

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In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, some conservative Christians have been reckoning with feelings of alienation from their peers, who generally voted for Trump in strong numbers. But at least some progressive Protestant churches are experiencing the opposite effect: People have been returning to the pews.

“The Sunday after the election was the size of an average Palm Sunday,” wrote Eric Folkerth, the senior pastor at Dallas’s Northaven United Methodist Church, in an email. More than 30 first-time visitors signed in that day, “which is more than double the average [across] three weeks of a typical year,” he added. “I sincerely don’t recall another time when it feels like there has been a sustained desire on people’s part to be together with other progressive Christians.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests other liberal churches from a variety of denominations have been experiencing a similar spike over the past month, with their higher-than-usual levels of attendance staying relatively constant for several weeks. It’s not at all clear that the Trump bump, as the writer Diana Butler Bass termed it in a conversation with me, will be sustained beyond the first few months of the new administration. But it suggests that some progressives are searching for a moral vocabulary in grappling with the president-elect—including ways of thinking about community that don’t have to do with electoral politics. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... source=fbb

Re: Trump sparking an increase in Progressive church attenda

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I recently got in a conversation with a Unitarian in which I let slip that I came from a long line of Quakers on my mother's side. The Unitarian said that she couldn't understand Quakers because they have some "strange beliefs".
I replied "you mean like denying the Trinity?" She shut up after that.
Point is: progressive denominations are as splintered/fractured as the conservative ones, if not more so, and just as small-minded in their way. They won't be much help.
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Re: Trump sparking an increase in Progressive church attenda

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Anecdotal proof:

Following the election and the rise in greed, explicit racism and general narcissism I've noticed, I decided it's time I start attending church a bit more with my kids.

They find the Episcopal ritual a bit stodgy, but the homily is usually a good antidote to the Trump message of selfish individualism, misogyny and fear.

I was planning to go this morning.... but PJs, Xbox and hot chocolate won out! :)
Last edited by Dropbear on Sun Dec 18, 2016 11:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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