What's killing 'the Church'?

When I say 'the Church', I mean the visible church institution(s).  The National Centre for Social Research published findings of the 26th British Social Attitudes survey conducted approximately one year ago (link).

'There has been a sharp decline in religious faith in Britain', so sayeth the opening line of the section 'Religion in Britain and the United States'.  However a report on survey findings from the Office of National Statistics from Times Online (30 January 2009) indicates a decline in numbers of people who self-identify as Christian, while the Muslim population grew 10 times faster than the rest of society from 2004-2008.  So the 'religious faith' mentioned may not be speaking of Islam, and possibly other religions as well (i.e., Hinduism, Buddhism).

So what's the deal with Christianity?  Some would blame fundamentalism - taken to extremes, this is not attractive in any section of society; others would blame liberal theology and doctrinal pluralism that embraces a smorgasbord of beliefs.  Dr Rod Rosenbladt of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod believes that too many people have been hurt and damaged by the church.

A recent piece by Donald Miller puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of good, old-fashioned infighting.  Yes.  'We' Christians just can't get along.  'We' just don't like other groups of Christians who do things differently; who have different theological positions; who like to worship to bells and smells, or drums and electric guitars; whose clergy wear bright vestments, or no vestments but prefer a suit, or (shock, horror) t-shirt and jeans; some even have no clergy, and so on, and so forth.  Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

'We' just don't like other Christians because they don't see things the way 'we' do, and if 'we' can't indoctrinate them to 'our' way of thinking, then they're obviously not as Christian as 'we' are.  And the squabbles continue with the rest of the world watching on.  Could it be that our collective bickering is, to some degree, diminishing our witness in the world and putting people off?  It probably isn't the whole story, but it wouldn't hurt to put down the deeply-cherished opinions from time to time, and learn to disagree without being disagreeable.

Update: Dr. Michael Horton, professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California, puts a different slant on the discussion here.