'A world without Protestantism': really?
According to a recent First Things article, not much imagining is required. The magisterial Protestant traditions, we are told, have almost entirely disappeared:
The world I invite you to imagine, then, is one in which this middle way—neither Roman nor Anabaptist, both traditional and reformed—has vanished. Is such a world possible? It is. In fact, we are living in it right now. Ours is a world without Protestantism.
The slight problem with this assessment is that it is nonsense. To be more specific, it is nonsense in large swathes of the globe. Admittedly we can find evidence to support it in a particular North Atlantic context. We might, for example, point to the profoundly depressing account offered by the outgoing bishop of the Yukon, a diocese in the Anglican Church of Canada which, in 2019, had an average Sunday attendance of 191. Yes, you read that correctly: 191 for an entire diocese. That shameful figure is unfortunately understandable when we consider the words of the outgoing bishop:
And so we’re finally starting to get away from, ‘Oh, we have to get all the bums in the pews’ to being more mission-focussed and caring about community.
With such a radical failure to understand that the church is defined by faith in Jesus Christ through prayer, scripture, and sacrament - which requires "bums in the pews" - it is actually surprising that the Diocese of Yukon has managed to hang onto 191 souls.
But then consider the pictures above and below, shared by the Anglican Church of Kenya, as the Right Reverend Gerald Muriithi was consecrated and enthroned as Bishop of the Diocese of Mount Kenya West. Is this a world without Protestantism? Of course, the author of the First Things article somehow manages to convince himself that Anglicanism is not actually Protestant - which will come as something of a surprise to the Anglican Church of Kenya. Leaving aside the ahistorical myth that Anglicanism is not Protestant (and do read Ben Crosby's superb piece on this issue), the wonderful sight from Saint Peter's Cathedral, Nyeri, is testimony to the fact that magisterial, mainline Protestantism is flourishing in many parts of the globe.
The First Things article tells us that 12% of Christians belong to Orthodox churches and 13% are Pentecostal. What of the magisterial Protestant traditions? The World Communion of Reformed Churches represents 100 million Christians; the Anglican Communion 85 million; the World Methodist Council 80 million; the Lutheran World Federation 78 million. That is 343 million Christians, nearly 12% of all Christians. (In addition to this, a very significant proportion of Christians in China belong to a magisterial Protestant tradition.) Basically, in other words, the same proportion, as the Orthodox and the Pentecostals.
Despite these facts, the First Things article tells us that most Christians already "inhabit a world without Protestantism":
In short, the original Protestant vision, articulated and enacted by the first generations of Reformers, is on life support. It barely registers in surveys. Perhaps ninety-five out of one hundred Christians in the world already inhabit a world without Protestantism. This may strike students of the sixteenth century or lovers of Reformed theology as bad news. As for catholic and evangelical believers, it isn’t clear that they much care, or whether they have noticed at all.
Why this determination - a barely disguised gleeful determination - to proclaim, contrary to the facts, that we live in a world without Protestantism? The answer is suggested by the title of the article, 'Goldilocks Protestantism'. Magisterial Protestantism must fail because, of course, magisterial Protestantism is wrong:
there is a structural instability at the heart of the Reformation vision that undermines any attempt to strike a durable middle path between catholic and evangelical Christianities. My term for this problem is Goldilocks Protestantism. Heirs of Calvin and Luther don’t want to give up, for instance, Nicaea or infant baptism or the necessity of ordination for the administration of the Supper. Neither, though, do they want a magisterium or bishops, saints or icons. Not too high, not too low. Just right.
This approach is finally unsustainable.
It is not a serious analysis. If Orthodoxy can exist without a magisterium, why not Protestantism? If Oriental Orthodoxy can faithfully witness over centuries without Chalcedon, why not Protestantism without Nicaea II? If Roman Catholicism existed for centuries without the Cup for the faithful at the Eucharist, why not Protestantism without a cult of the saints?
There is no "structural instability at the heart of the Reformation vision" that is not also present in all Christian traditions. All Christian traditions negotiate with divergent and disparate traditions and historical contexts. We all grapple with aspects of the Christian past that do not neatly coincide with our current practice. In doing so, we make choices about which aspects of the Christian past have a particular significance for us. To suggest otherwise is, quite frankly, to engage in an act of ecclesial self-delusion.
The determination of the First Things article to deny the magisterial Protestant route is perhaps made most clear in its declaration that only two routes are available for Christians:
The point is not that populist biblicism is wrong, but rather that it is the sole statistically meaningful Christian option in the world today that is not catholic. Magisterial advocates should admit this fact and respond accordingly.
It seems we magisterial Protestants must - yes, must - choose between "populist biblicism" or the rich, thoughtful, deep catholic churches. Hand waving or incense: the choice must be made.
Well, no. Kenyan Anglicans, Korean Presbyterians, and members of the Church of Pakistan not only point to this suggestion being inaccurate nonsense. They also highlight how repeating it is to slander fellow-members of the Body of Christ.
What, then, is the source for the article's insistence that magisterial Protestantism is dead? Ironically, it is a reflection of the very North American "liberal mainline" that the article critiques. The assumption that the cultural mores of 21st century North American elites are determinative and universal underpins the conviction that we must be "living in a world without Protestantism". This requires the article to deny the experience and voices of Kenyan Anglicans, Korean Presbyterians, and brave members of the Church of Pakistan.
The article also requires us to ignore signs of life in North Atlantic magisterial Protestant traditions. We might think of St. Martin's Episcopal church in Houston, the largest Episcopal church in North America with 10,000 members. Now listen to the author:
I live in west Texas, in a blood-red county with a church on every corner. If you asked me to find a bona fide representative of magisterial Protestantism on a given Sunday morning, I wouldn’t have a clue where to start. Mine is a landscape without Protestantism: You can go high and you can go low—most people in my town go low—but you will struggle to find a single congregation in line with the Reformation vision. The few that perhaps remain are either liberal or in hospice care.
Accepting that my knowledge of Texas geography is very limited, and that TEC does have a significant and worrying problem with rural communities, it does seem odd that the author does not reference the fact that his home state has the Episcopal church with the largest membership and congregation of any Episcopal church in North America. Or that the Church of the Incarnation, Dallas, has an average Sunday attendance of 600. Or that St. Alban's Episcopal church in Waco grew from an average Sunday attendance of 150 in 2013 to 500 in 2024. Of course, his odd view that The Episcopal is not Protestant helps him here - albeit it does require ignorance of the opening sentence of TEC's Constitution: "The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, otherwise known as The Episcopal Church ...".
The weeks surrounding the publication of the First Things article also had signs of the surprising vitality of magisterial Protestantism in other North Atlantic societies. News spread online that the Church of Norway has, in recent years, seen a notable increase younger members, with one in five new members being between the ages of 25 and 34. Novelist, cultural commentator, and faithful Presbyterian Marilynne Robinson had a superb article on the cultural meaning of Calvinism. In the culturally secular United Kingdom, the media reported very significant increases in the purchases of Bibles, as first indicated by a SPCK statement:
At SPCK Publishing, we've witnessed numerous cultural shifts throughout our rich 327-year history, but none quite as striking as the recent surge in Bible sales. According to Nielsen BookScan data, UK Bible sales grew from £2.69 million in 2019 to £5.02 million in 2024—an increase of £2.33 million over just four years. In contrast, between 2008 and 2019, total yearly Bible sales increased by just £277,188, making the past four years one of the most significant periods of growth in recent history. This dramatic rise highlights a renewed interest in Scripture, driven largely by Generation Z—a group once considered distant from traditional religion.
This is not, of course, a phenomenon to be exclusively identified with magisterial Protestantism, but - as anyone who has read Cranmer's homily 'A Fruitful exhortation to the reading of holy Scripture' will know - it is certainly not unrelated to magisterial Protestantism.
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