If liberal Christianity is ultimately going to thrive, however, it’s hard to imagine it doing so without reviving the local churches that have been shrinking over the decades. Conservative congregations ask for serious commitment; they expect their people to show up, and they ask them to adhere to a narrower set of beliefs and behaviors. There’s a cost associated with membership. The political economist Laurence Iannaccone observed in the early 1990s that churches that ask more from their followers tend to be stronger. As an evangelical sociologist once told me, people are drawn to beliefs that make “demands of the flesh.”

Many progressive churches, by contrast, barely demand a pinky toe. Most of those I’ve attended regularly have been happy when I merely show up, in part because their populations tend to be small and elderly. They don’t pressure me when I skip; the sermons rarely suggest it matters whether I believe the creeds we recite on Sunday mornings. (The demands that small or struggling churches do make on members tend to be organizational and financial labor, so you get the draining obligations without the spiritual investment.) By contrast, when I visit conservative churches with family or friends, they feel alive: People are there because they think it matters, for their everyday lives and for their eternal souls. The 2013 Public Religion report found that only 11 percent of religious progressives say religion was the most important thing in their lives, compared with 54 percent of religious conservatives. The Christian left would benefit from Christian right’s urgency not just with politics but with religion itself.

And someone else says “No”