The "other" white Christians have a lane

Will mainliners seize the moment?

Happy Easter to all who celebrate! A little bonus for you, an article that I have tried (but failed) for months to get published elsewhere, mainly because I wanted a broader audience to know about our friend Diana’s amazing work in this moment. Oh well. I’m finding freelancing is really not worth it, especially when you all are giving me so much love right here. Thank you!

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Photo by Chris Linnett on Unsplash

Diana Butler Bass speaks gently yet resolutely through a Zoom screen to a few hundred paid subscribers of The Cottage, her popular Substack newsletter named for the quaint back house that serves as her office at her home in the Washington, DC area. Lined with overflowing bookshelves inside and window boxes outside, the cottage, like Bass, is erudite and homey, scholarly and comforting, its vibe part professor, part mom. She calls The Cottage, "Part retreat, part think tank."

In the Trump era, she is part activist, part spiritual guide for a segment of white American Christians you rarely hear about: Mainline Protestants, or members of mostly white, theologically liberal denominations. But these typically retiring, less politically noisy counterparts of white evangelicals--whose MAGA allegiances have made them a media obsession--may be starting to find their voice. They definitely have the opportunity, if they choose to take it.

It is a few weeks after Donald Trump's inauguration, and Bass speaks frankly, as is her way, of her own bedraggled state. Before the election, she relentlessly criss-crossed the country with her her Convocation Unscripted podcast co-hosts, fellow historians Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes Du Mez and sociologist and PRRI chair Robert P. Jones. From the lenses of religion, race, gender, and history, they explored the drivers of the MAGA movement and starkly warned of its dangers. For Bass, the devastation of Trump's win was punctuated by exhaustion. Since election day, she has been in and out of the hospital for a medical condition made worse by stress.

She usually toggles seamlessly between her roles as scholar and shepherd in the same essay or speaking engagement, but on this Zoom call, with her paid subscribers, she's all pastor, if not simply friend. "Don't ask Richard [her husband] how many things I've thrown and how many times I've sworn," she confesses. "Today my goal was to use some of the trust you have given me...to remind us all that the only way out is through...and the only way through is together."

She has acquired that trust over decades, during which time she has gone from professor of religious studies at an evangelical college to best-selling author of multiple books, public theologian, and ad hoc pastor of a digital congregation of primarily mainline Protestant Christians. But her readers and followers include people from every faith and none at all, drawn by her welcoming, expansive approach to Christianity that weaves liturgy and scripture together with poetry, literature, and writings from other faith traditions.

For some, her "church" is the only one to which they belong, and she delivers a full slate of Christian practice. This past advent, she treated her readers every day with short, video taped meditations on joy from her wide circle of friends and colleagues, who include best-selling author Anne Lamott and celebrity historian Heather Cox Richardson. Bass kicked off her Lenten observation with her characteristic vulnerable determination, first admitting, "If anyone tells me I came from ash and will return to it, I may well laugh in their face," before ending with a passage from Isaiah she reads as an exhortation to "[Get] up off the floor." Her next book, A Beautiful Year, which comes out in November, is a full liturgical calendar of meditations.

The MAGA movement, and particularly its unholy alliance with a large segment of the white American church, has increasingly thrust Bass, and her mainline Christian audience, more overtly into politics. But in fact, Bass was in the vanguard of white evangelical exiles-turned-critics and warned of Christian nationalism long before that term was in wide usage. In 1995, the evangelical college at which she taught did not give her tenure because, she was told, she didn't "fit," meaning she didn't tow the strict doctrinal line, and worse, she did that as a woman. Since the early 2000s, her work has helped many disenchanted evangelicals, and all kinds of other Christians in an increasingly secular age, reimagine their belief and practice.

Now, as most observers of American religion continue to fixate on white evangelicals' empowering of Trump, Bass's dual-hatted work, as scholar of religion and informal pastor, has become more valuable than ever, and more popular, for her primary audience, those "other" white Protestant Christians. Her subscriber list has scaled a sheer cliff since the election, something she told me via text she finds "kind of scary," as it speaks to the seriousness of the moment.

It's early days yet, and Bass still sees plenty of hesitancy, but many mainline Protestants may be awakening to a clear mission for themselves at this time of peril for American democracy: to vocally represent a version of Christianity that is more compatible with a secularizing, pluralistic society than white evangelicalism has proven to be, to defend and support those most threatened by the MAGA movement as they believe Jesus would do, and to do so with more determination, commitment, and visibility than mainliners are accustomed to.

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There are in fact as many mainline white Protestants as there are white evangelicals in America, with each group claiming about 13 percent of the population according to 2023 data from PRRI. Twenty years ago, however, there were significantly more white evangelicals, accounting for 23 percent of Americans vs. 17.8 percent for mainline white Christians. While all groups of white Christians have lost members in this century, the decline has been sharpest for white evangelicals.

This helps explain their attraction to an authoritarian movement that promises to restore their influence through power rather than persuasion. Over 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in all three elections. In 2024, 85 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump, according to PRRI.

Among mainliners that number was 57 percent, suggesting politics have not dominated white mainline Protestant life and identity to the extent they have for white evangelicals. There is a long history of mainly progressive activism amongst these groups going back to the Social Gospel movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and continuing to the present day (as well as some less flattering dalliances with eugenics and other forms of racism). Today, many, but definitely not all, mainline churches overtly associate themselves with the progressive side of issues like climate change, Black Lives Matter, gay and trans rights, and immigration. It's instructive that, according to PRRI data, mainliners who regularly attend church were less likely to vote for Trump, while white evangelicals who regularly attend church were more likely to do so.

But based on their voting patterns, there is far from a political orthodoxy amongst these Christians, and certainly they have not functioned as the cohesive, influential political bloc that white evangelicals have been for decades. Nor are they the insular, tribally-minded subculture that white evangelicalism has become. In general, mainline Protestantism is more of a practice or an association than an identity or culture. Mainliners' beliefs are less strident, rigid, and self-conscious, and they are more integrated into the mainstream of American culture.

Not surprisingly, then, mainliners have been less invested in expanding their influence. Theirs is not a model committed to growth as it is for evangelicals, who believe the eternal fate of every person, and the earthly fate of human society, depends on their success. “Because conversion is often at the heart of evangelicalism, there’s often also a need to convince people," author and Episcopal priest-in-training Cara Meredith told me. “Mainline churches approach church growth from a whole different perspective. Sometimes that means not advertising the God who doesn’t need to be advertised in the first place.”

The moral dimensions of Trump's second term and its exploitation of Christianity offers mainline Protestants an opportunity for more bold and direct engagement with politics on the basis of faith and for a deeper devotion to their faith on the basis of politics. For one thing, the MAGA movement appears to be targeting them.

First came the attacks on the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde, for her ripped-from-the-Gospel plea for mercy to Donald Trump's face on behalf of vulnerable groups threatened by his policies (following the attacks came a flood of fan mail for Budde, too, and increased attendance at the National Cathedral's services). Then there was Elon Musk's accusations that Lutheran Services, one of the major agencies involved in refugee resettlement in the US, was a "money laundering operation," conjuring up absurdist images of elderly church ladies rolling around in dollar bills.

There are the threats, and some real manifestations, of immigration raids on churches, prompting an interfaith coalition of two dozen religious organizations, including all mainline Protestant denominations, to sue the federal government for a permanent injunction on immigration enforcement activities at houses of worship based on religious freedom claims. The suit shrewdly sites previous conservative religious freedom cases, such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, similarly arguing that complying with government policy violates the plaintiffs' core religious beliefs. Some commentators have surmised that Trump's Faith Office will be used to narrowly define Christianity and harass churches that don't bend the knee.

I've heard multiple mainline clergy express a new sense of urgency and purpose in following the teachings of Jesus in this moment, when the Trump administration rampantly abuses power and persecutes and scapegoats marginalized communities. They are inspired to speak out against the government more boldly and explicitly than is their habit. Bass recently said on the Convocation podcast that she enjoys being in the pulpit right now because "the absolute, literal words of Jesus, every single Sunday from the lectionary, are preaching themselves."

"Nearly every sermon since the inauguration has had a word against this administration," Rev. Sara Porter Keeling, Senior Pastor of Mt. Olivet United Methodist Church in Arlington, Virginia (my church), told me in an email. "I haven’t heard a peep of criticism about that, and in fact, it’s the opposite, folks affirm that this is what they need to hear right now... Attendance in both services is up since November as well." Her goal has been to "lead with hope" and to create more opportunities for community. "People want to be together," she said.

Mainline Protestant leaders are also pointing to the example of the Black church, the entire history of which has been spent fighting against injustice and oppression. Jemar Tisby--best-selling author, historian, Black theologian, and Bass's Convocation co-host--has repeatedly reminded white Christian audiences, who may be more familiar with Deitrich Bonhoffer, of the Black church's rich heritage of resistance as a model they might follow.

"The Black Christian tradition has stood against authoritarian and white supremacist movements in the United States just as the Confessing Church stood against fascism and genocide in Germany. Like the Confessing Church, the Black Church is a minority among the majority of white Christians who chose compromise and complicity with white Christian nationalist, anti-democratic forces," he writes.

While the Black church has always been focused, by necessity, on political issues of justice and equality, the white mainline church as a whole, despite sizable pockets of progressive activism, including during the Civil Rights movement, has been more squeamish. But now many more may be concluding that they have little choice. The teachings of Jesus--not to mention the attacks on their specific organizations, churches, and members--are carrying them to the doorstep of politics.

"You have been politicized," Bass told the Zoom audience after the inauguration. By using Christianity to exploit political power, she explained, Trump and his fellow MAGA leaders have invaded religious spaces and forced the sort of Christians who have rarely spoiled for a political fight into the arena. "They are in our lane! They have come into the Jesus lane," she said emphatically. "They came into our space...and [are] telling us that we don't know our own God. And so we have been politicized."

"I don't think of us as the left, I think of us as the Jesus people," she continued. And her work, and that of other mainline writers and leaders, constantly demonstrates the fresh relevance of the Gospel--at bottom a story about confronting and subverting power, turning hierarchy on its head, and championing those on its bottom rungs--for our current moment.

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I watched Bass, along with multiple other mainline and Black Christian speakers, present at the Southern Lights Conference in St. Simon, Georgia in mid-January, when the world still had hope that Trump 2.0 might not be the cataclysm it has manifested. She had just been released from the hospital and discussed her health openly with the crowd of almost 1,000 primarily white mainline Christians. On breaks, well-wishers and fans swarmed her while she doled out plenty of hugs and smiles and signed books, while her husband and The Cottage's behind-the-scenes wizard, Richard Bass, observed with concerned pride.

"Don't let her overdo it," I said to him. "Oh, I can't stop her," he replied.

Her physically weakened state didn't prevent her from giving a grand narrative, tour de force presentation of American history. Starting in the late 1800's, she argued, American society has experienced multiple "ruptures," when the constructs through which people interpreted their worlds and addressed their basic needs for security, safety, and belonging collapsed amidst new threats.

She described the January 6 insurrection as one such rupture that offered two possible new constructs, one of submission to authoritarianism and the other of greater connection and community across differences. "With the 2024 election, I fear we have chosen a culture of submission, if not surrender," she lamented.

But her work, and what many are seeing in Christian spaces and beyond, suggests an alternative path remains open. While the widely observed "loneliness epidemic" may have contributed to the breakdown of our democracy, the reaction to that threat offers the chance for new bonds of community and connection, both online and in real life, in church and in society as a whole.

And while one version of white Christianity in large part has brought us to the brink, another version, in conjunction with other faith communities, could help bring us back, by articulating and publicizing a faith does not shirk from a direct confrontation with authoritarianism, speaks with moral clarity, strengthens human connection in a pluralistic context, and reclaims the Gospel from those who have perverted it. It's too early to say if this is a mantle mainline Protestants are ready to seize or if doing so will inspire a resurgence in mainline Christian adherence.

Bass herself is steadfast in her own calling and is encouraged by the community she's created, but she worries mainline denominations as institutions will miss the moment. On a recent episode of the Convocation podcast, she bemoaned the timidity, relative to the crisis facing the nation and the church, that she still sees from mainliners. She contrasted their response with the religious ferment in the lead-up to the Civil War, when almost all Protestant denominations formally split over the evil of slavery.

"I do not want your quietude anymore," she said, with rising conviction in her voice. "I've had it up to here with, oh, no more division, how to heal our divides. That is not Christianity in this moment. That is what you call cowardice."

I can't speak for mainline Christianity as a whole, but I can speak for myself, a now mainline Christian who spent decades in white evangelicalism. And something in me is stirring. I feel emboldened and more committed, both in my Christian adherence and in my responsibility to my country and community. More than ever before, I can see a broader rationale for my faith that is positive, vital, and inspiring.

I grew up as an evangelical being told that mainline "liberal" Christians were not really Christians at all, but rather deluded people of nominal faith whose devotion amounted to showing up to Christmas and Easter services. And to be honest, in my experience, the collective level of religious commitment amongst mainliners is weaker than that of evangelicals.

But the Trump era has exposed the weaknesses and dangers of the zealous, self-assured Christianity of my childhood. And as I reckon with what it has wrought, I feel a push toward the doors of my Methodist church and a longing for its warm community, its respite amidst chaos, and its simple yet profound focus on the teachings of Jesus Christ, the real ones, the ones concerned with lifting up the least of these in the midst of injustice and oppression.

I went to my first-ever Ash Wednesday service this year (evangelicals do not observe it). And as my pastor traced the sign of the cross on my forehead, I believed just a little bit more, not that everything will be OK, but that I am not lost, and I am not alone.