Some people noticed that the corporate model was taking over all of American life. Anthropologists compared what was going on in the churches, the universities and the offices of corporations with orangutan society. The head orangutan is the one that has the most females. The importance of a clergyman was based on how many women were fluttering around him ready to do his bidding. It was a wonderful life for some clergy.
Some people are willing to realize that the fifties simply produced a blip in the statistics.
There were never so many people going to church before that. Church attendance had not been a priority until that strange period after World War II, but the nostalgia is so great that few are trying to rethink what we should be and how we should be restructured. Instead we have this painful downsizing, as job by job is eliminated. Part of what is going on, in addition to the nostalgia, is jealousy. Not all the churches were losing members.