Could re-branding rouse the dwindling troops?

The Mainline – the umbrella term for about a dozen churches including United Methodists, Episcopalians, Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterians (USA) and American Baptists – is now 18 percent of U.S. adults in 2008. Fifty years ago, it was the church of the Establishment.

Writing in the flagship mainline magazine Christian Century, scholar and Presbyterian pastor Carol Merritt raised the thought that a new name , one that conveys the Mainline’s rising diversity and social justice leadership, could stem the slide: ...