Eventually, the churches who choose to exclude will look like the last country clubs and others now who still discriminate on one basis or another, tiny islands in the larger social sea.
I agree...the trend is clear. Right now churches already are all over the place as to how tolerant to be on social/moral issues such as abortion, homosexuality, illigitimate births, etc. in terms of standards of behavior they ask their congregations to uphold or adhere to. Remember the sole purpose of a church is to try to teach and motivate its members to behave in ways that would be pleasing to God and to Jesus Christ, and those behaviors are clearly laid out in the Bible and easy to read. (Anyone who doesn't believe in the reality of God or JC wouldn't be a member in the first place.) So by neccessity there naturally emerges a list of do's and don'ts, what's moral and what's immoral. More progressive or liberal churches, in my experience, either totally ignore certain things and/or have lists that are rather mushy with lots of qualifiers.
Off the top of my hand, I haven't detected any movement toward revising down those standards by the Catholic, Mormon, Baptist or Evangelical churches, each of which are pretty big and some growing rapidly in terms of membership.
Nevertheless, there are now some very progressive churches
Last night I was stunned to learn about two fairly large (I think) denominations and how far they have gone in their tolerance of abortion. It's not for the squeamish, but it's worth watching just to see Bill O'Reilly actually rendered speechless (twice).
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