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There is a struggle going on within American Protestantism over the soul of Christianity.

It is being waged between mainline Protestant churches and evangelicals.

And to be honest, for a long time evangelicals have had the upper hand.

They have the biggest churches and got their man elected president at a time when mainline churches have gotten smaller and been pushed further to the fringes of American life.

What is more, they have enjoyed success in getting state legislatures to enact laws aimed at moving the country from a democracy to a theocracy more to evangelical liking.

These successes and their alignment with the Republican Party have made  evangelicalism the primary public face of Christianity for the last several years.

Meanwhile, we mainliners have spent a lot of time wringing our hands over their success and our seeming failures.

At the same time, though, quietly and without fanfare some of our congregations began to recognize the damage a preoccupation with institutional maintenance was doing to their faithfulness to the gospel.

Gradually but persistently they have been refocusing their life and ministry on doing justice, showing kindness, and being faithful rather than trying to grow bigger numbers.

These mainline churches now understand that the charge that they are being “political” for addressing social and economic issues facing our nation is exactly right because the gospel has to be political if it has anything to say about real life.

But they also understand the difference between being political and being partisan, a distinction evangelicals failed to make when they sold their soul to the Republican Party in the 1970s.

That is why mainliners can speak truth to power no matter who is in power.

One way more and more of them are, including several in my own denomination (Disciples of Christ), is by declaring themselves “sanctuary” churches as they come to the aid of immigrant families being torn apart by the government’s unjust enforcement of immigration laws regardless of circumstaces.

In addition, mainline ministers, several of whom I am proud to say are former students of mine, are working hard at balancing being a good pastor with the demands of prophetic preaching.

And let’s not forget that the Rev. William Barber who has emerged as the nation’s most notable prophetic voice for justice in our country is part of the mainline church tradition.

Yes, only a few years ago mainline churches were said to be fading away because they were letting liberalism turn churches into centers of “political correctness.”

Undeterred, they have continued to speak and act on behalf of the marginalized, the forgotten, the sick, those who experience discrimination because of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, and all who need someone to show they care.

Yet, in spite of what we were doing, when Trump won the election, it seemed as if evangelicals had finally won the day, except that what seemed like their greatest victory has turned into their worst nightmare.

Donad Trump is proving to be the man his critics said he was before the election, and continued evangelical support of him in spite of everything is beginning to wear thin.

Trump is now the most disliked president at this early stage than any president in history, and he earned it fair and square, mainly because he has told so many lies that no one believes anything he says anymore.

Continued evangelical support at this point seems more and more like a political decision rather than a moral one, rightly exposing them to the charge of abject hypocrisy.

People may have accepted and even supported the right of evangelicals to vote for Trump, but given what has happened since January, they simply don’t understand how they can still support him and be Christian.

To be blunt, they can’t, and that is why we mainliners are winning the battle for the soul of Christianity.

Just by being ourselves, doing better at being what we should be than was once the case, we are winning the minds and hearts of people who see that reaching out a helping hand to others is what loving others is about rather than drawing lines in the sand.

What is even more heartening is that something Martin Luther King, Jr. once said suggests we are also on the right side of history.

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” he said, “but it bends towards justice.”

Mainline Christians are the ones who believe what Dr. King said is true, and that is why we not only must win the battle for the soul of Christianity, we will.