Doctrine or destruction
This is still a very nebulous concept – as opposed to a fully formulated thought that I’m so indignant about that I have to blog 
But hopefully it will become more concrete as I type, or as people respond to it.
It seems to me that a great deal of the church insistence on correct doctrine (which – in conservative denominations – pushes against such things as the acceptance of gay clergy and the ordination of women) is caused by needing to feel that they can define who is a member, or is entitled to be one, and who isn’t. The benefit of this, for them, is that drawing such a hard line makes it easy to enforce the rules: you break them, you’re out. Or at least you get punished till you realise how bad you are. And the difficulty for denominations who don’t draw such a strong line, but allow their members freedom of conscience (no, the Catholic Church doesn’t really, whatever individual priests or bishops might tell you), is that they risk the edges of their organisation becoming so blurred that they cease to be a definite organisation.
And while I think that flexibility in religious belief and doctrine is desirable, I see that the end result might well be to cause that denomination to fall into the dust. This would then leave the conservative denominations self-righteously triumphant, claiming that “things that are not of god will fail” (Acts 5:38-39). So what is the answer to the fact that liberalism – by definition – doesn’t aggressively compel membership, yet is crucial to providing a balance to conservatism?