Butler Bass takes questions on USA Today's 'faith forum'

Diana Butler Bass is the guest host at the USA Today forum on Faith and Reason today. Your can ask her questions about her research and what she is thinking about now. She says she will haunt the site and answer questions all day. She says her main topics are vital mainline churches and "beyond liberal and conservative" but people can ask about anything they want.

Here is the USA Today write up:

Is mainline Protestant Christianity -- which includes denominations such as the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Episcopal Church -- dying away in America?

Statistically, the mainline has declined by the millions in recent decades. But church historian Diana Butler Bass makes a contrary case: That it is thriving despite the odds. She once told me,

Mainline congregations have a beautiful world where they are enacting service, doing justice, learning to pray and caring for one another. And no one seems to realize they are there.

Do you agree? Ask Bass yourself -- and learn more about the dimensions of faith in practice in the USA now. I've invited Bass to be today's guest host on the Faith & Reason Forum. She's the first of several guest experts who will host the Forum while I’m away this week.

Here's the link.

Posted by Andrew Gerns on February 2, 2009 11:00 AM | |
Comments (2)

All right. All right.

I followed the link in your post and it took me to a very handsome page which said:
"You can reach the Forum by clicking here or head there any time by clicking the link in the blue bar below my photo at the top of the page."

So I clicked "here" and it took me to an eight-page list of forum topics not organized by date. I used the SEARCH box to search for Butler Bass - no results.

I did it all again, going for the blue bar this time. Still nothing.

This makes me feel old and pathetic. Would anyone from Episcopal Cafe like to come out to Indiana, hold my hand for a while, and make me a cup of tea?

(Deep sigh.)

Pamela Grenfell Smith

Posted by Baba Yaga [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 2, 2009 11:32 AM

Baba Yaga,

Following up on your query I can see where you are coming from. It could have been you got there so early that others had not started a conversation. If you just want to listen in click the thread the someone started in the last few hours on "mainline..." Or why not start your own thread? As I understand it DBB at the helm today and is likely to be the one you'd be getting a response from.

I see there's interchange between DBB and commenters here,
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2009/02/62171280/1#uslPageReturn

Posted by John B. Chilton [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 2, 2009 4:06 PM

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