Mainline Churches

Mainline Churches. Protestant churches are a group of denominations in the U.S. and Canada considered “normal” or “good” by the ruling class – made up of Mainline Protestants, arbitrators of lineage, prestige and influence. It consists today of individuals with theologically liberal or progressive beliefs. The Mainline churches are dying out and belief in their superiority with them.

Mainline Protestant churches have stressed social justice and personal salvation, and both politically and theologically. They share a common approach that often leads to collaboration in organizations such as the National Council of Churches.

Some have criticized the term mainline for its alleged White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) ethnocentric and elitist assumptions, and its erroneous association with the term “mainstream,” since the term mainline almost exclusively described White, non-fundamentalist and non-evangelical Protestant Americans from its origin to the late twentieth century.

The term Mainline Protestant was coined during debates between modernists and fundamentalists in the 1920s. Several sources claim that the term is derived from the Philadelphia Main Line, a group of affluent suburbs of Philadelphia; most residents belonged to mainline denominations.