Conservatives Seek to Reconquer Mainline Churches » The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

For decades, conservative responses to ecclesiastical progressivism have largely resembled conservative responses elsewhere: We’ve left. A group of young conservatives within mainline American Christianity wants to flip this paradigm on its head with what they’ve dubbed Operation Reconquista. The idea is for conservatives to retake historic mainline churches. These conservatives believe that if the Left could take over these institutions, conservatives can retake them with the same tactics.

Mainline Protestantism refers to the historic cornerstones of American religion, the first Lutheran, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, Baptist, Episcopal, and Methodist churches founded in the United States. These denominations have historically comprised the core of American religious expression, although classical Protestantism today accounts for a smaller share of the population than evangelical churches or Catholicism.

These mainline churches founded historic universities, including Columbia University, which was founded by Episcopalians, and Brown University, which was founded by Baptists, and counted among their members Founding Fathers and future presidents. Yet they have become beset by liberalism in the past decades, epitomized in the recent decision by the Episcopal Church to refuse to aid white Afrikaner refugees. 

Operation Reconquista urges conservatives to join or rejoin seven historic American Protestant denominations to buttress a conservative wing. The central tenet of the Reconquistador argument is that the decision by conservatives to leave established mainline denominations as they veered into liberalism did nothing more than surrender those denominations to liberalism, in turn surrendering society more broadly.

The Operation Reconquista website accuses conservatives who left to form their own denominations of leaving “behind most of the historic buildings, liturgical traditions, cultural connections” of American Protestant heritage. The website makes clear the group’s social values, as it declares that they “utterly reject the sexual revolution” and affirm that “abortion is murder.” 

The strategic focus is not for conservatives to rejoin liberal churches en masse, however, but instead for them to join conservative holdout churches within liberal denominations. Observing that conservative congregations almost always outlast their liberal counterparts, Operation Reconquista argues that, with time, these strengthened conservative wings “are going to be the only ones left” and can win back institutional control. Thus, a centerpiece of the Reconquista effort is a map that catalogues hundreds of conservative and moderate mainline churches across the country. The map has been viewed over two million times.

The movement struck its first major volley on Oct. 31, 2023. To commemorate Martin Luther’s publication of his 95 Theses, the spark of the Protestant Reformation, Reconquistadors left their own 95 theses on the doors of hundreds of churches across all seven mainline Protestant denominations. The theses demanded these churches affirm historic Christian doctrine on the authority of the Bible and the resurrection of Christ; in short, the fundamentals of their faith. By the end of the day, Christianity Today reported that “they’d mailed, emailed, or physically posted their 95 theses to every mainline church in the United States.”

The largest effort so far has targeted the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA). The PCUSA has hosted ministers as far away from its historic orthodoxy as the Rev. Mark Sandlin, who opposes the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus and argues “the Biblical case for abortion,” and even one self-described atheist pastor. Operation Reconquista affiliate Presbyterians for the Kingdom spearheads an effort to restore historic Christianity to the PCUSA and claims the successful reconquista of many once-ailing PCUSA parishes. 

David Yancey, a cradle congregant on his way to seminary, leads Presbyterians for the Kingdom. Yancey spoke to The American Spectator about his views. He credits conservative groups that have broken off from mainline churches, such as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), with doing “a lot of good.” However, he argues that leaving over social issues is “not how the church has functioned in history ever.” He cited Paul’s decision to not tell people to leave flawed churches in places such as Corinth as evidence that this is the traditional path.

Yancey emphasizes that these new conservative denominations simply lack the institutional power of historic ones. He points out, for example, that they all “can’t raise enough money” to build the prominent downtown churches, seminaries, and colleges that the PCUSA has.

For instance, the PCUSA has founded many colleges. These include historically significant institutions with Presbyterian heritage that no longer maintain affiliation, such as Princeton University, but also the dozens that remain. The PCA, its largest competitor, has a single college to its name. The top 100 American universities include mainline-affiliated institutions such as Duke, but not one evangelical institution. As Yancey puts it, “These resources from when Christendom was at its peak in America, the PCUSA still has.”

For the Reconquistadors, the answer is for all conservatives, whether secular or religious, to have a mindset shift. Yancey argues that this “starts with getting rid of this mantra of ‘we’ve gotta retreat.’” In his view, conservatives are “casting stones in a glass house when we accuse liberals of having these safe spaces” because “we have a safe space university in every state,” referring to institutions built to cater to conservative students. In his mind, cultural victory is “not going to happen overnight” and can happen only when conservatives “get out of our safe spaces.” After all, he said, “it’s not like the liberals said ‘it didn’t work the first time’ when they were trying to take over Princeton.” 

Individual mainline churches are not uniformly liberal. Presbyterians for the Kingdom alone can claim over one hundred supportive members among clergy, and the PCUSA’s membership still votes Republican on the whole. However, even in denominations with largely conservative laity, progressives have a greater tendency to join bureaucracies and assert their power over an institution.

‘Reatreatism’ and the Churches

This point is often emphasized by Richard Ackerman, a PCUSA seminarian who has joined with his wife to revive a PCUSA parish. The pair succeeded in almost tripling the church’s attendance in a matter of months. Ackerman is often credited with founding the Reconquista movement through a YouTube channel that has garnered tens of millions of views.

Whereas David Yancey prefers to refer to the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and similar conservative offshoot groups as “evangelical,” the more fiery Ackerman prefers the term “retreatist.” Ackerman told The American Spectator that he sees conservative retreatism “not just in churches, but in every area of culture.” Further, he argued that conservatives of all stripes should care about this effort, as “any conservative, secular or religious … is going to know that the churches are a very influential institution in the West.” 

Ackerman notes that conservative retreatism has been a persistent mindset, from those who left Hollywood to start independent film studios to those who abandoned major universities to start ideological offshoots. 

Ackerman views the past century’s recurring theme as being “whenever an institution went liberal, the conservative response was to split off from it … and let the liberals take the original institution.” The approach befuddles him, as “conservatism was originally about conserving institutions.” 

The solution of rejoining and retaking isn’t tethered to mainline Protestantism specifically, said Ackerman. “[W]e have to reverse this whole thing … There has to be a general mindset to retake all the institutions.” In contrast to historic institutions, conservative schisms “don’t build hospitals, they don’t build major universities, they don’t build these great lasting institutions.” 

Ackerman has pointed to X as an example of conservatism focusing on institutions and winning. Attempts at building alternatives oriented toward right-wing users such as Parler and Truth Social did not deplete Twitter’s user base. Generally, conservatives remained at the original social media platform when they were in the minority, a decision that eventually allowed them to retake the institution and claim victory. 

Ackerman cites Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci’s work planning a Marxist takeover of institutions, plots that have largely succeeded throughout America and across the West. Meanwhile, he says, “the conservative response has not been to take them back, but to run away.” 

Ackerman believes conservatives should ask ourselves “WWMD — ‘What would Marxists do?’” Would Marxists give up on taking over our institutions? Would they retreat when defeated, or would they come back for another round? Conservatives have to be willing to follow the same tactic.

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