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I think there is some truth in what you're saying, but I think you are also engaging in some wishful thinking. Progressive Christianity (for some value of "progressive") has always been around.
Most mainstream Protestant denominations in the US have gone pretty progressive over the last couple of decades, and they are still going strong. The joke about Methodists is that they are Unitarian Universalists pretending to be Christians. And the UUs still exist, and often fit the bill for super-progressive folk who want the community and trappings of a church without all that icky religion.
You're right that there are absolutely people who want the old-school religion with Absolute Truth and Faith Not Works and a God who smites unbelievers, and they will find your wishy-washy Episcopalian and Methodist congregations unsatisfying. But those folks would probably fall into the orbit of a Wahhabist Mosque as easily as a fundamentalist Christian church, if there were as many of the former around.
Wut?
Surprisingly, more recent data shows the opposite trend, at least among whites:
https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/PRRI_Jul_2021_Religion_2-1024x878.png
Mainline Christianity declining only very slightly, Evangelical Christianity and Catholicism declining rapidly.
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This is an unsupported statement, the decline of Christianity is almost exclusively composed of these Churches with conservative churches consistently posting growth numbers.
It is to the point where several of them near me post congregations in the single digits and share a pastor over a month.
Conservative churches are not consistently posting growing numbers. A typical conservative church is anywhere between manageable decline and reasonable growth. There’s a small number of more-or-less-fundamentalist groups that consistently post large growth(like the IRL tradcaths), but it’s pretty far from the typical experience.
Conservative churches are on average much younger than liberal churches(which are ancient), but that’s both a low bar to clear and also not the same thing as posting growth.
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Ah, hell. You beat me to it.
Those folks might also be quite disappointed in revivalist churches with “spiritual traditions” dating back to 1900, like the Pentecostals. Or maybe not; it takes all sorts, and the OP is a bit narrow in assuming traditionalism supersedes all.
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This is true but I think... uncharitable-adjacent?
If one believes that Christ actually is who he says he is, and that he instituted a Church for our benefit, it's enough to want what that is without resorting to vengeful deities. "Faith Not Works" also isn't a particularly central member of this category for several reasons.
Generally, we can note that Christianity has had certain historical understandings and that these have been under constant pressure from outside perspectives to 'modernize'.
It's enough to be cognizant of these forces and broadly against them.
"Faith not works" is one of the distinguishing tenets of fundamentalist Christianity (it's the entire basis of exclusive salvation through Jesus Christ - everyone is a sinner and unfit to enter heaven, therefore your "good works" are irrelevant).
The "vengeful deity" isn't so much of a core principle, just something that tends to appeal to the same people who believe everyone but them is going to burn in hell.
"Faith not works" was one of the key theological arguments of Martin Luther. Unless you are claiming that all Protestant sects which are derived from Martin Luther's theology are fundamentalist (a claim that requires far more evidence), this is incorrect.
Edit: I should also add "everyone is a sinner" is more or less just original sin which goes back to Saint Augustine in the 3rd century which is hardly a novel creation of modern fundamentalist Christianity.
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It's a tenet of some varieties of Protestantism, not a universal principle of every Christian denomination, and the same is true of the vengeful deity view. Without delving hugely deeply into the differences between (at a very high level) Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, the concept that no human is without sin is not inexorably tied to "faith not works" as the basis of salvation across those denominations (see, for example, the extremely different treatment that the "faith without works is dead" bit gets).
That's why I said "fundamentalist Christianity" (though I realize that definition is also kind of nebulous).
Fair enough. I suppose my point was that if you broaden to "traditional Christianity" instead of "fundamentalist Protestant," there are quite a number of denominations available that would appeal to the group of people that would like a relatively stable foundation for beliefs and doctrine that doesn't have to involve the specific ones you mention.
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It's just weird because from where I'm sitting Protestantism is already hopelessly-progressive Christianity.
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