Pluralism, megachurches, Generation X, interfaith dialogue, full service churches, praise choruses, the Charismatic Movement, Promise Keepers, New Age, Contemporary Christian Music, Televangelism— words and phrases that characterize segments of American religion in what some would call a postmodern era. Whatever else they may mean, it is certain that these religious ideas and movements presage change in the religious environment of that land once know as the New World.

Contemporary religious trends, and the practices behind them, illustrate what many believe to be a state of permanent transition in religious institutions in the U.S. That is, the old structures are changing rapidly, but new ones are difficult to establish. Popular movements and institutions blossom, flourish, and wither all too quickly. They often maintain a limited shelf life, burning out only to be replaced by todays new wave of spirituality, church growth method, or liturgical fad.

In this transitional environment, old denominational alignments still exist, but loyalties to national eccesiastical institutions seem to be in steady decline. Regionalism and localism are on the rise for corporations, government, and church organizations alike. National denominational bureaucracies downsize because of declining revenues and energies. Controversies over scripture, ethics, eccesiology, sexuality, and assorted hot button issues rage across the religious landscape, further dividing constituencies. Fewer and fewer religious Americans think of their primary religious identity in terms of a denominational identity. Denominations, for over two centuries the dominant method of religious organizations in America, now seem increasingly less viable. Some even speak of a post-denominational age, when new religious structures rise to meet the challenges of the future replacing traditional denominational structures and alliances.

Yet denominations survive, reshaping their identities as they always have, increasingly only one of multiple resources in the broad, ever changing culture of American religious life. Our era may be less a post-denominational age, than a highly pluralistic environment of multiple religious options, of which denominations are one of many possibilities.

This book explores the future, indeed, its author, Professor Robert Nash, suggests that the future is now. He addresses the changing nature of American religious life with particular, though not exclusive, attention to its impact on the people called Baptists. In some sense the Baptist community, at least in its Southern Baptist form, has mirrored contemporary culture, often while attacking it. Southern Baptists have made no secret of their denominational debates and fissures, internecine struggles that have captured headlines in the secular press for almost two decades.

Nash believes that it is time for Christians, Protestants, and Baptists in America to come to terms with the transitions that are at hand. He provides perceptive analysis based on solid scholarship and practical insights. With clarity and thorough documentation, he describes the issues at hand in what he calls the postmodern world. He links our past and our present, reminding us of the ways in which previous generations addressed dramatic changes in their own times. As historian, he is aware that the church has always confronted change and transition in its cultural contexts. Indeed, ecclesia semper reformanda, the church is always re-forming, responding implicitly and explicitly to the times.

Through it all Nash finds his way to hope, and the promise that the Church survives, that it remains for time and eternity the Body of Christ, full of wheat and tares, the good, the bad, and the indifferent, always in need of grace. Nash's work pushes us beyond our traditional structures, and calls us to explore options for understanding faith as we enter another century. For the present, and the future, however, we must come to terms with our times, drawing on the past, but responding to the future with daring, audacity, and courage. In this new age, as in others, we continue to confess our faith with those who went before us,

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

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