Editing Confessing Movement (section)

==Confessing Movement in the churches==
A large group of laity and a somewhat smaller group of clergy within the mainline churches hold that their denominations have been "hijacked" by those who, in their view, have "forsaken Christianity" for [[moral relativism]] to accommodate democratic pluralist society in America. They reject church leaders such as [[United Methodist Church|United Methodist]] Bishop Joseph Sprague of [[Chicago]] and [[Episcopal Church in the United States of America|Episcopal]] Bishop [[John Shelby Spong]] as being [[apostate]].

Although tension between theological modernizers and traditionalists in American Protestantism has existed for generations, the formation of the Confessing Movement was triggered by [[Christianity and sexual orientation|changing positions on sexual orientation]] and especially the [[ordination]] of "practicing homosexuals" as [[clergy]]. Other issues influencing some groups were the [[ordination of women]], and the decline in attendance of many of the mainline denominations from the 1960s to the 1980s in the US, with leaders of the Confessing Movement arguing that the shrinking of mainline church membership resulted from conservative members leaving for growing evangelical churches rather than liberal members disengaging.