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There has been, for about 60 years, a constant and unidirectional falling into apostasy among Christian religious leaders - they become more and more 'liberal Christians' until they are either indistinguishable (to the outside world) from mainstream secular Leftists - or they abandon Christianity even in name.
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Why?
Because Christian leaders want to join the Boss Class, and the Bosses are secular Leftists.
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Of course, there is a plausible deniability here, because the Bosses in the West are located in the Mass Media - and are not (or not usually) running large corporations.
(Large corporations are run according to rules that are set and enforced by the Mass Media - any Chief Executive can easily be got rid of by the Mass Media in a matter of days; and whole corporations disposed of or reduced to insignificance in a few months.)
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For the modern secular Left, what used to be called 'selling-out' is merely a more advanced point on the standard career path. A successful Christian in the mainstream churches sells-out to secular Leftism as a matter of course - it is both a sign-of, and necessary for, their success.
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To sell-out is to be tolerated at least (rather than shunned, demonized, attacked) - but is most likely to be praised; the sell-out will be invited to the right social events, to be rewarded with fame (positive media coverage), honours, prizes, medals, government and academic jobs (thus money), and with power.
In a nutshell, the reward for selling out is high status - not least, an enhanced moral status, as defined and disseminated in the Mass Media.
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There is no deep or interesting theological debate about why mainstream Christian leaders in the big churches nearly always become 'liberals' - and why ambitious (attention seeking, wealth seeking, power seeking) young intellectuals in the churches abandon tradition, orthodoxy and core Christianity - and move towards secular Leftism.
It is just plain old corruption - dull, obvious, as old as the hills.
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But corruption used to be obvious for what it was.
The special achievement of the political New Left, since the mid 1960s, has been successfully to disguise the expedient decline into corruption as moral enlightenment.
Nowadays, careerism passes itself off as social idealism; doing what is expedient is praised as an act of principle.
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