I didn't watch the debate last night...

...between Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan. Wha-a-t? (I think my son wanted to call my wife and say, "Quick! I don't think Dad's feeling well; take his temperature!")

No, I went to Elmhurst College, above, instead with a couple of friends and listened to Ross Douthat speak on the decline of the mainline Protestant churches. (But don't worry; the night wasn't completely out of character -- we ate at Mack's Golden Pheasant beforehand. Good spot.)

From what I can gather, the debate went about as I expected: a tie, with each party's supporters saying that their candidate won. Sounds like there were no major gaffes and, if anything, it may have stopped the bleeding for President Obama.

I'm guessing that the last two debates between Obama and Governor Romney will follow suit and the election will be a narrow victory for the president in both the popular (50-51%) and electoral (275-300) votes. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if political scientists write about this campaign some day as having been decided before the first debate even took place.

As for Mr. Douthat, he's one of two (that I can count) resident conservative columnists for the New York Times. He's out traveling around the country promoting his new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. The gist of his hour-long speech (as far as I could tell) was that in watering down their Christianity after World War II, the mainline Protestant churches also lost their raison d'etre. As a result, they've been losing members ever since the mid-1960s and are in serious danger of becoming extinct. While the other more conservative denominations, such as Mr. Douthat's own adopted Catholicism (I'd like to hear more about that) and the Evangelical churches, are also losing members, it's at a much slower rate. (One of the few truly healthy religions in America, he said, is Mormonism. More on that in a minute.)

Now, while Mr. Douthat's argument that liberal religions are losing members due to their accommodations to what he called "modernity" is persuasive, I'm not sure exactly what he would propose to do about it.

(By the way, now is as good a time as any to say that I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce this man's name. Everyone present last night seemed to say it just a little bit differently. I've heard Charlie Rose pronounce it as "Doubt It," which I think is appropriate.)

But as for Mr. What's-his-name's argument, the question that I was too chicken to ask during the Q & A was, "It sounds like growth and numbers are more important to you than the honest pursuit of truth. Is that right?"

In other words, sure the Mormon Church is healthy and growing, but it also requires that you believe in the revelations of a teenage boy back in 1820s upstate New York. (And never mind the golden plates, magic underwear or that business about the Garden of Eden being located in Missouri.) As I once read, one way to think of the Mormon Church is "Scientology plus 150 years." If that's what it takes to be a prosperous religion in America today, then count me out.

But back to the mainline Protestant churches and their declining membership. I have a friend who was an Episcopal priest for about fifteen or twenty years. Over time, he came to doubt Christianity's tenets more and more until he was simply an agnostic. (Now, I believe, he describes himself as "Post-Christian.") What's more, many (if not most) of his fellow priests were of like mind. While some (probably about half) decided that they were too invested in the church to leave, he and many others simply left for non-clerical (and more secular) lives.

And so here's another question for Mr. Douthat: Should my friend have denied his doubts and secular leanings? Would staying in the Episcopal Church have been preferable? Should we not, after all, pursue truth? Isn't that what this is all about, anyway?

Which leads me to my main conclusion (and response) vis-a-vis Mr. Douthat's speech and the whole topic: perhaps the modern world (in this case America) is on an inexorable arc toward reason and secularism. And maybe the mainline Protestant churches are just in the vanguard of this movement. Maybe the more conservative religions, such as Catholicism and the Evangelical denominations, are just a few generations behind. (After all, it makes sense that the mainline churches would go first: in the post-war period, their membership was the richest, best educated and most secure. Ask yourself: When will Mormons feel secure enough to question their own faith? Not for a while, I'd guess.)

So maybe Mr. Douthat's story is really about the gradual secularization of America, not the decline per se of the mainline churches.