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I'm curious, did you have actual churches around you in mind when you wrote this? Have you been through this process, or been to churches that have been through it, or is this occurring within your mind?
I have not personally been through it, my church baptized me and it exists today, and has in fact grown as it has absorbed some outlying parishes. But this kind of thing is very common over time in my area of Pennsylvania countryside, and if you look this dynamic really does exist. I'd suggest if you want to develop the concept further, and I think there's some meat on that bone, you could endeavor to find examples of this and even to speak to people who have been through it. The Northeast is riddled with historic protestant churches that have changed denominations over time.
And I think you ignore one of the most common scenarios that you see:
Church Five A traditional mainline Lutheran church, with a beautiful building built by loyal families in a long tradition, gets a charismatic preacher, who reads and thinks extensively about theological and philosophical questions, and the beloved charismatic young preacher convinces the congregation to change to a new doctrine, and the beautiful old Lutheran church becomes the Unitarian/Moravian/Mennonite/UCC/etc. church, and it has the same people in the same building following the same preacher until the same congregation, until a new preacher comes in to the new doctrine to the same congregation in unbroken succession.
Sometimes, a breakaway remnant that actually cared about doctrine founds a new Lutheran church across the other side of the valley, and that church inevitably in my experience, from Maryland to Maine, will make the same joke: We Kept the Faith, They Kept the Furniture.
Over time, both churches thrive as the region grows. The Unitarian church in the beautiful old building remains the church for the old families around town, who have become Unitarian over time, and those interested in joining those circles or becoming Unitarian join that old church. As additional migrants come to the town, the Lutheran church thrives off of Lutherans who drift in, and as a general sort of church, but few of the original old family members are prominent.
Which is Church Five?
I do like your post, and I think this is one of the most underanalyzed aspects of politics. Not be too Freudian about, but I think it can be summarized simply as:
Do you think that you make your (Founding) Father(s) proud of you?
I think the split between small-c conservatives of either tribe and radicals/reactionaries of either tribe. The conservative believes that the founding fathers love him and that they would be proud of what America has become. The reactionary believes that the founding fathers would weep to see America today, and that we must RETVRN to values that they would be proud of. The radical believes that the founding fathers would hate America, and that's a good thing actually and we should move even further from that. This is almost universally projectable from the personal to the political, as to the man as to the polis, the conservative is a person who has a good relationship with his father and thinks his father is proud of him.
There is a long running strain of American leftism, from Frederick Douglass to Lincoln to Teddy to FDR to JFK to Barack Obama, that operated under the assumption that the Founding Fathers would be proud of the continued progression of America to the left. This is embodied in the classic musical 1776, and it's overhyped successor in Hamilton. In most ways, I can buy into this. Some, anyway, of the Founding Fathers would be proud of what America has become. But more than anything, this is embodied in the genre of Boomer Re-litigating the 60s Movies. Forrest Gump, American Graffiti, but most importantly for the father-relationship: Field of Dreams.
People miss that Field of Dreams is about the 60s, because that aspect gets squeezed into a monologue introduction, but the break in the boomer-child and traditional-father relationship is when Kevin Costner goes to college and "majors in the 60s" and washes up in Iowa , along with his favorite author J.D. Salinger (explicitly in the book, implicitly in the film). Certainly MLB doesn't bring up the idea of uniting the ideals of the counterculture with the basic chthonic Americana joy of Baseball when they play their annual Field of Dreams game in the middle of a cornfield! But that is the subtext of the film, both Kevin Costner coming to terms with his father, and Kevin Costner coming to understand that his father loved him and is proud of what he became.
I have a close relationship with my own father, and I think he's proud of me. We talk a freakish amount for adult family, and while I have different hobbies and interests than he had, we respect each other's thoughts. I can explain my interests to him, and understand his. And in my imagination, that relationship translates. I watched 1776 so many times with my mother growing up that if you threw me into a production of the play tonight, I wouldn't get every line in every song right off-book, but I'd be able to hack through every scene and every tune well enough to put on community theater. When I imagine sitting down to lunch in Philly with John Adams and Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, I imagine those portrayals, and I imagine explaining my own America to them, and I think they'd be proud of it. I'm not sure they'd be proud of every part of America, but I think they'll be proud of Wawa.
And I think that's a different way to look at the whole question. The Church is still the Church as long as the founders would be proud of what it has become.
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