Influence of Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity was most influential with mainline Protestant churches in the early 20th century, when proponents believed the changes it would bring would be the future of the Christian church. Other subsequent theological movements within the Protestant mainline (in the US) included political liberation theology, philosophical forms of postmodern Christianity such as Christian existentialism, and conservative movements such as neo-evangelicalism, neo-orthodoxy, and paleo-orthodoxy.
However, the 1990s and 2000s saw a resurgence of non-doctrinal, scholarly work on biblical exegesis and theology, exemplified by figures such as Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong, and Scotty McLennan. Their appeal, like that of the earlier modernism, also is primarily found in the mainline denominations.
However, liberal or mainline churches in America experienced a decline in membership of 70%—from 40% of the American Christian population to 12%—between 1930 and 2000, now being no longer "mainstream", but a small minority, where the evangelical denominations have grown greatly in size, and the Catholic Church has seen more modest gains. Conservative branches of Lutheranism such as the Confessional Lutherans of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS) have remained comparatively strong.
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