Protestants: The Worldly Parish

Judging from the way they have been talking, it seems that a lot of Protestant ministers consider the local church as obsolete as the village well. Now, however, there is new vitality in many parishes. Its source: the idea of the servant church. At some cost to formal worship, usually quite candidly acknowledged, hundreds of churches are turning more and more to work in the world.

Many of these parishes have come alive only after having faced up to the specter of death. The Episcopal Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in...