The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century reform movement within the church. The Reformers believed that the Bible taught that salvation was based on faith, not good works, and that  the Bible was the ultimate authority, not the Pope. In 1517, a German monk named Martin Luther wrote a list of arguments called the Ninety-five Theses and nailed them to a church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Luther argued that people cannot buy God’s forgiveness; He believed God’s grace was a free gift appropriated by personal faith in Christ and His finished work on the cross. Thanks to the invention of the printing press, Luther’s ideas quickly spread across Europe, as did other Reformers such as John Calvin, Menno Simons (an Anabaptist) and Thomas Cranmer in England.

What is the state of Protestantism in 2026?  It can be argued that the movements and denominations that resulted from the Reformation are in a serious period of disruption and decay.  A Christianity that abandons belief in the divinity of Jesus, man’s need for salvation and biblical sexual morals, only to conform to the latest cultural trend, has nothing to offer people concerned for their souls. Consider these three examples:

First is the church of England (aka the Anglican Church).  Henry VIII wrote a major defense of the Catholic faith when challenged by Maritn Luther.  For that defense, the pope gave him the title “Defender of the Faith.”  When Henry led his nation out of the Catholic Church in 1534 with the Act of Supremacy, he made himself head of the state church but retained the title Defender of the Faith.

Carl Trueman recently reported on a profound change in the meaning of the title, Defender of the Faith: “Buckingham Palace has updated the official description of the monarch’s role vis-à-vis the Church of England. No longer is the king the ‘Defender of the Faith;’ rather, ‘His Majesty is Supreme Governor of the Church of England and protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation’ . . .  This shift in language is not a minor drafting choice. It points to a deeper problem at the heart of English culture. Not only does the new formula repudiate the idea that any form of robust Christianity played a positive role in English history; it also reveals that English culture now lacks the tools to negotiate the country’s current religious spectrum except through relativistic pieties of multiculturalism—pieties that the other religions of significance, most notably Islam, reject.”

Trueman further observes that “There are at least two problems for the king that should elicit our sympathy. First is the parlous state of the Church of England. When it comes to defining the faith, he is supposed to defend, the Church offers little help. Progressive Anglicanism is a subset of the wider culture’s moral chaos; apparently queer and proud, it panders to the weird fringe with no positive vision beyond an inclusivity that excludes orthodox Christians . . . The second problem is that, while Britain may now be a ‘multi-faith’ nation, it no longer has any understanding of what religion is and why it is important. Therefore, it lacks the vocabulary to discuss its role in public life. Again, the Church of England must take some responsibility for this. Multiculturalism in the U.K. has in practice meant the denigration of England’s history and culture, and that has inevitably meant that the role of Christianity, at least in its churchly form, has been denigrated too. The Church of England could have resisted, acknowledging its sins but pointing to the historic faith as the source of forgiveness. Instead, it responded by participating in the problem, its public theology often being little more than a rote quotation of the latest left-wing pieties . . . Public Christianity in England has long since been evacuated of any doctrinal content or counter-cultural pungency. The fact that the Church of England remains established and yet only a fraction of the country bothers to attend even once a year means that it is in a permanent state of having to justify its own existence on grounds other than the strictly doctrinal and liturgical. And multiculturalism has proved a merciless master, demanding cultural relevance wedded to a dogmatic anti-dogmatism.”

Second is the state of the United Methodist Church, once the largest Protestant denomination in America. Jack Panyard in Christianity Today writes that “The United Methodist Church (UMC) has removed Asbury Theological Seminary from its list of schools approved for ordination candidates, a decision the school attributes to differences over the denomination’s position on traditional marriage.”  The Methodist Church initially approved Asbury in 1946, and again as the UMC approved it in 1981. But, apparently, sound doctrine is not the key parameter for the UMC anymore.  Instead, cultural and ideological pronouncements associated with the LGBTQIA+ movement are. [United Methodists adopted their most recent social principles guidelines in 2024, removing a phrase stating that homosexuality is “incompatible with Christian teaching” that had been added in 1972.]

A UMC spokesperson said in a statement that the church removed Asbury after assessing the school’s program quality, governance, institutional integrity, and “church relatedness.” She said Asbury’s ethos statement, which includes traditional marriage, is incompatible with the church’s social principles. Additionally, the school does not have a full-time UMC faculty member consistently teaching the church’s history, doctrine, and polity.

Asbury is still approved with the Global Methodist Church (GMC), a theologically conservative counterpart to the UMC that formed in 2022 after a denominational split, as well as other denominations. David Watson, Asbury’s president, said the cut “signals a broader divide between the conservative and progressive Methodist denominations than just differences on sexuality and marriage.” Many issues are still unresolved within the Wesleyan movement, such as the authority of scripture and debates within theological anthropology—what it means to be human in God’s world. “I don’t want the real theological issues to get lost in all of this conversation about human sexuality,” Watson said. “There’s a lot more at stake here than simply a disagreement about how we deal with gay and lesbian people in the church.” In other words, the UMC needs to have a meaningful discussion about what actually is involved in  identifying and adhering to the “sound doctrine “ of Scripture.

Finally, Alex Hibbs reports on “Operation Reconquista,” a cohort of conservative Generation Z Christians working to steer America’s Protestant mainline churches back to theological orthodoxy. They do not form a single organization but are unified by ideals shared across many denominations.

Hibbs observes that “The mainline is a collection of long-established Protestant denominations: the Episcopalians, United Methodists, Presbyterians and so on. These days the mainline is generally viewed as a bastion of progressive ‘social justice’ theology. It is also dying. Since the mid-20th century, these churches have seen attendance dwindle. The United Church of Christ has gone from roughly 8,000 churches and 2.25 million members in 1960 to 4,485 churches and 683,936 members—a 70% membership decline. Not every denomination is hemorrhaging, but they’re all bleeding. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has lost more than 60% of its membership since 1984, the United Methodists 55% since 1967. These declines happened while the churches were making doctrinal changes that carried them ever deeper into social activism and away from theological dogma. The connection is certain, and the pairing of congregational decline with theological fading seems to have opened the door to a new youth-driven demand for orthodoxy.”

The leader of Operation Reconquista is Presbyterian seminarian Richard Ackerman, 23, known online as Redeemed Zoomer or RZ. “He’s gained some 700,000 followers since he began posting on his YouTube channel in 2022. He wants to begin ‘reclaiming’ mainline institutions and congregations. The idea is simple: Rapidly emptying pews and increasingly vacant pulpits (ordinations in the United Church of Christ have dropped 55% since 2013) leave congregations desperate and offer opportunities for young conservatives interested in leadership. Many congregants seem to diverge ideologically from their social-activist leadership. There isn’t precise data on theological orientation, but roughly 61% of clergy in the Presbyterian Church (USA) identify as ideologically liberal while only about 23% of churchgoers do. There are similarly drastic gaps in other denominations.”

Given that the bulk of mainline members and leaders are elderly, a grassroots insurgency makes sense. All conservative Protestants need to do to regain control is join moderate mainline congregations, put their young people through seminary to fill pastoral vacancies, and wait out the aging progressives. The math, RZ argues, is “foolproof.”

Are theologically conservatives in support of RZ and Operation Reconquista?

• Not every conservative Protestant is on board. Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and longtime champion of mainline renewal, writes: “Reviving the denominations institutionally, barring supernatural intervention, is nearly impossible. The progressives who control them, who cannot plant new churches, or win new members, depend on these bureaucracies, funded by endowments, for their livelihoods.”
• Others point out that the movement is more moderate than conservative, considering that its proponents endorse women’s ordination, a sticking point for many traditional Protestants.

Nevertheless, the Reconquista’s proponents have one thing right: Progressive Christianity cannot keep people in the pews. As I wrote above, a Christianity that abandons belief in the divinity of Jesus, man’s need for salvation and biblical sexual morals, only to conform to the latest cultural trend has nothing to offer people concerned for their souls.

See Carl R. Trueman, “No Faith Worth Defending”  in First Things (2 July 2026); Jack Panyard in Christianity Today (26 June 2026); and Alex Hibbs in the Wall Street Journal (26 June 2026).