It was Wilfred Brown’s understanding of power and authority that made me consider again one of the things that I find most frightening about current trends in American Protestantism.

American religious life differs in many ways from that in other Western countries. For one, while attendance is in decline, it’s not nearly as precipitous as in Europe. Religion still matters, which is why we have a strong political movement based in conservative Protestantism.

My concern is that the previous tradition of Democratic Religion has been replaced by the Great Man. It’s what Americans have come to want in corporate leadership, even though Great Man rarely works. The Great Man is troubling because religious life has always been important to America in helping to define its core democratic beliefs as the local congregations were important associations. While other associations exist, they have less community to them; that is, the associations work less like an extended family in caring for their members.
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