Odd, very odd, such a condition should seem, and does. If ours is, in fact, the world's most church-going nation, you'd kind of expect long-established churches to work hard at weaving the religious fabric tighter, not plucking large threads from it. In fact, the churches of the Protestant mainline -- including the Episcopal Church, which can swing Protestant or Catholic depending on local outlook -- started, during the 1960s, modeling the garments of the rebellious, anti-establishment secular culture. Feminism first, then gay rights, became established articles of faith in big churches -- Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, and so on -- that became smaller and smaller and smaller churches as conservatives seceded, then regrouped in new bodies. These new bodies professed to see propagation of the Christian faith as the Christian duty that made all the others essential, not to say possible. Mormons today outnumber the Episcopalians and Presbyterians put together.
Church "progressives," as they like to style themselves, seem untroubled by the exodus of the conservatives. For one thing, the flight of one's opponents means you get things the way you want them. For a while at least -- until, looking about, you wonder what's the difference between a social justice church and the Peace Corps, which operates on federal funds and doesn't require Sunday morning attendance or suggest the reading of old books about dead people in the Middle East.
The Episcopal Church looks less and less like a church, more and more like a convocation of nice, well-meaning folks, who, having helped elect Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress, await the descent of Peace and Goodness from -- well, somewhere. Washington, D.C., maybe, with a little assist from churches that, back when they spoke of themselves as such, truly meant it.