My son Zac and I recently attended a Mariners baseball game for his seventh birthday. On the way home we were rolling along in my 1978 Chevy truck with a bacon air freshener and passed a liberal mainline church. He asked me what that church believed and I told him they do not believe people are sinners, do not believe the Bible is to be taken literally but is more like a fantasy video game, do not believe you need Jesus to go to heaven, and do believe that being gay is cool with Christ.

For a minute he looked like a dog that had just heard a high-pitched whistle and there was an awkward silence as he waited for me to say I was just kidding. After a few moments he could tell I was being serious and then said, "That is the exact opposite of what God says in the Bible. How can they still call themselves a church? They should get another name because they're just confusing people if they say they are a church."

I gave my son the Driscoll-boy knuckle-to-knuckle handshake because he was right. The most left-leaning end of mainline Protestant Christianity is much like an insane asylum where the prisoners have taken over. I will pull highlights out of a recent story in the Los Angeles Times that describes some of the insanity.

Episcopalians
Not only do the Episcopalians have gay bishops, a female Presiding Bishop who prayed to "our mother Jesus" at her installation, and a blessing of same-sex unions, but also a complete meltdown and fractured communion that can never be repaired. A recent attempt to have pastors and leaders vote on whether or not you need Jesus to get to heaven garnered less than 30 percent support to even be voted on. The Rev. McDowell of the Diocese of North Carolina told VirtueOnline after the floor vote, "[i]n the Episcopal Church we don't do up and down votes on Jesus Christ as Lord, and to do so is potentially a mean-spirited approach, to ask questions that aren't meant to be questions." McDowell explained that how one lives his life is more important than whether one affirms Jesus as Lord. To place a statement of belief over actions is the essence of "self-righteousness," he said. "Actions speak louder than proclamations . . . What Jesus calls us to do is to live our lives."

Presbyterians
They can praise Baal that local churches are now free to ordain lesbian and gay pastors who are living together without even being married. Their diversity also includes a handful of pastors who worship the goddess Sophia instead of Jesus; these pastors are led by a woman who hears from Sophia but has failed to notice that she is consulting with demons. I guess this is where absolutely tolerant, non-judgmental spirituality ends up.

But my favorite is their push to legalize marijuana. That point seems to clear everything up. Maybe the ex-hippies running the mainline denominations are not evil liberals but rather just a bunch of stoner-potheads? If so, it all now makes sense and I'm shocked that we have not yet had brownies for communion, hemp robes for pastors, and Jerry Garcia icons in worship.

If the mainline Protestant leaders weren't filled with reefer instead of the Spirit, they would have read the part of the Los Angeles Times article that said:

When a church doesn't take itself seriously, neither do its members. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1960, members of mainline churches( Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and the like) accounted for 40% of all American Protestants. Today, it's more like 12% (17 million out of 135 million). Some of the precipitous decline is due to lower birthrates among the generally blue-state mainliners, but it also is clear that millions of mainline adherents (and especially their children) have simply walked out of the pews never to return. According to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, in 1965, there were 3.4 million Episcopalians; now, there are 2.3 million. The number of Presbyterians fell from 4.3 million in 1965 to 2.5 million today. Compare that with 16 million members reported by the Southern Baptists.

When your religion says "whatever" on doctrinal matters, regards Jesus as just another wise teacher, refuses on principle to evangelize and lets you do pretty much what you want, it's a short step to deciding that one of the things you don't want to do is get up on Sunday morning and go to church.

It doesn't help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches. A causal connection between a critical mass of female clergy and a mass exodus from the churches, especially among men, would be difficult to establish, but is it entirely a coincidence? Sociologist Rodney Stark ("The Rise of Christianity") and historian Philip Jenkins ("The Next Christendom") contend that the more demands, ethical and doctrinal, that a faith places upon its adherents, the deeper the adherents' commitment to that faith. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which preach biblical morality, have no trouble saying that Jesus is Lord, and they generally eschew women's ordination. The churches are growing robustly, both in the United States and around the world.

In summary, here are ten easy steps to destroying a denomination:

1. Have a low view of Scripture and, consequently, the deity of Jesus.
2. Deny that we were made male and female by God, equal but with distinct roles in the home and church.




3. Ordain liberal women in the name of tolerance and diversity.
4. Have those liberal women help to ordain gay men in the name of greater tolerance and diversity.
5. Accept the worship of other religions and their gods in the name of still greater tolerance and diversity.
6. Become so tolerant that you, in effect, become intolerant of people who love Jesus and read their Bible without scoffing and snickering.
7. End up with only a handful of people who are all the same kind of intolerant liberals in the name of tolerance and diversity.
8. Watch the Holy Spirit depart from your churches and take people who love Jesus with Him.
9. Fail to repent but become more committed than ever to your sinful agenda.
10. See Jesus pull rank, judge you, and send some of your pastors to hell to be tormented by Him forever because He will no longer tolerate your diversity.