Liberal Protestant Christianity is just about played out in America.  It began in the late 19^th century when the leadership of mainline protestant denominations (meaning the old northern Baptists, Episcopalians, the United Churches of Christ, many Lutherans and Presbyterians and, more recently and very sadly, the historically magnificent Methodist churches) began, as a response to the challenge of modernity, to discard the supernatural elements of the faith.  They tried to argue that the "narrative" of Christianity was important as a symbol to encourage mankind's attempts at finding significance and purpose, but that the Bible was not in any way to be taken a literal truth. 

But once you've taken the supernatural out of Christianity, you're left with, well, nothing.  Christianity is meaningless without the supernatural, and the Bible becomes almost unintelligible.  Little wonder why people have been leaving the mainline denominations in droves; there is nothing left in those churches to feed the soul.

This phenomenon has been observed countless times over the last several decades (best of all by J. Gresham Machen in Christianity and Liberalism, published back in 1923).  But it was noted most recently by someone who, on the surface, looks like an unusual source. 

Christopher Hitchens, outspoken atheist and author of the book God Is Not Great, was recently interviewed by Marilyn Sewell, a Unitarian minister in Portland, Oregon, and he points out what has become painfully obvious about liberal Christianity in America, and why it is facing its demise.  Sewell asked a question of Hitchens which she thought would draw from him a compliment of her, but instead drew something else entirely.

Sewell: "The religion you cite in your book [God Is Not Great] is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I'm a liberal Christian, and I don't take the stories from the scripture literally. I don't believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?"

Hitchens: "I would say that if you don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you're really not in any meaningful sense a Christian."

To which J.D. Shaw replies with a full-throated, "Amen, Mr. Hitchens!" 

Sewell's response to Mr. Hitchens?  "Let's go someplace else..."  Yep, that about sums it up.