Chapters 3 and 4 describe the two ways in which mainstream Christianity responded to finding itself in decline.
The first was to attempt to accommodate culture. In the view of these Christians, the reason Christianity was losing it's appeal was that it was too dogmatic and judgmental, and that by becoming more accepting of people as they were and letting the standards become more lax.
This ended up being a very slippery slope, as some accommodationalists continued to push away from the dogmas of traditional Christianity to the point of denying that Jesus ever claimed to be God.
Interestingly, the net result of becoming accommodating was not to win the culture, but rather to continue to shed membership. The author implies that for most people, if Christianity didn't hold on to at least most of its orthodox standards than there wasn't much point in being a part of the club.
The resistance movement was led mainly by the Evangelical Church and traditional Catholicism. This shared cause actually led the two to work together to emphasis similarities and fight back against the accommodation movements. It was effective in the sense that the Evangelicals became the largest segment of Christianity.
Recent events that have weakened the resistance movement were the Catholic Priest sexual abuse scandal and the Bush administration, which was widely supported by Evangelicals despite its faults.
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