Posts tagged Decline of religion
Would Evangelicals Prefer A United States With No Mainline Protestants?

(ANALYSIS) I’ve been a party to a lot of conversations about being mainline over the last 20 years. And sometimes I get the distinct impression that evangelicals really, really don’t like mainline Protestants. But do prefer nonbelievers to mainline Christians?

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I’ll Say It Again: Christians, Get Thee To Church … Now!

(OPINION) As I’ve argued for years, being spiritual on your own isn’t enough. I located a column I wrote in 2015 — speaking of repeating myself — that outlined a half-dozen arguments for why believers need to join a congregation of like-minded pilgrims. Here’s a lightly edited version of that.

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Affordable Housing In God’s Backyard: Congregations Find New Use For Their Space

Faced with declining membership, aging buildings and large, underutilized properties, many U.S. houses of worship have closed their doors in recent years. Presbyterian minister Eileen Linder has argued that 100,000 churches may close in the next few decades. But some congregations are using their land in new ways that reflect their faith

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We Asked Nones A Bunch Of Questions About Leaving Religion

(ANALYSIS) The first question battery was focused on the family circumstances of those who were currently nonreligious. I wanted to break this down by age to see if younger nones were more likely to be raised in a nonreligious household compared to older nones.

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Why As Few As 5% Of Americans Attend Church Each Week

(OPINION) If just 5% — or 6%, or 7% — of Americans feel committed enough to darken the doors of their churches for even an hour a week, then we no longer need to worry about becoming a post-religion culture. We’re there. Secularization has won.

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How Religion Data From The Year 2022 Compares To 2020

(ANALYSIS) I had a great chance to learn from some new data released by the team who runs the Cooperative Election Study. They surveyed 61,000 folks in the Fall of 2020. Then, they recontacted 11,000 of them in the fall of 2022. Guess what that means? I can tell you how much religion changed at the individual level using a really big dataset. That’s awesome. Let’s get to it.

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In Quitting Church, Americans Gave Up More Than They’d Bargained For

(OPINION) I’ve long argued it’s difficult — really, next to impossible — to practice Christianity effectively without becoming (and staying) an active member of a local church congregation.  Not only Christianity but the other major faiths are, by intention and maybe by definition, communal pursuits rather than solitary ones.

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Catholicism By Generation A Rapid Collapse Or Steady As She Goes?

Sometimes, an important high-level finding warrants some additional reflection. I have several of these rolling around in my head at any given point. The one I wanted to zero in on is from a post that ran over a year ago. Simply put, Catholic Mass attendance is way down. About half of all self-identified Catholics said that they attended Mass nearly every week in 1972. In the most recent data, it’s about half that rate.

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Religious ‘Nones’ Have Soared In Recent Years, But Why Not The Number Of Atheists?

(ANALYSIS) The number of individuals in the U.S. who do not identify as being part of any religion has grown and “the nones” are now larger than any single religious group. According to the General Social Survey, religiously unaffiliated people represented only about 5% of the U.S. population in the 1970s. This percentage began to increase in the 1990s and is now around 30%.

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Nebraska Conference Touts Hope For Revival Amid Political Polarization

Ministers and church leaders traveled to a Nebraska farming town to pray, fellowship and brainstorm ideas for revival at a time of declining numbers, post-pandemic challenges and political polarization.

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How ‘Nones’ Find Meaning And Spirituality In Psychedelic Churches

(ANALYSIS) Particularly in the West, people tend to think about religion in terms of belief in a higher power, such as God. For many nones, however, spirituality does not need a god or the supernatural to address questions of purpose, meaning, belonging and well-being. While abandoning mainstream religious affiliation, many turn to alternative expressions, including secular, atheist and psychedelic churches.

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The Rise of Singleness And How Religion Is Impacted

(ANALYSIS) I wanted to explore that gender gap on marriage a bit. But also I wanted to see how all of that related back to religion. I think it goes without saying that lots of people have found their current spouse at a house of worship. But is being single driving women further away from religion than unmarried men? These are questions worth some analysis and reflection.

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Mainline Protestantism — Once Central In American Culture — Keeps Collapsing

(ANALYSIS) Until the 1960s, more than half of Americans identified with the “mainline” Protestant churches that “have played an outsized role in America’s history,” says a Sept. 13 report from the Public Religion Research Institute. No longer, as is well known among clergy and parishioners who pay attention, scholars and religion journalists.

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Is the Church No Longer a Refuge for Struggling People?

(OPINION) If you, like me, think faith in God and religious affiliation are generally good things for people, then you, like me, ought to feel unsettled by the findings of political scientist Ryan Burge. He argues that religious participation in the United States is now largely the domain of the educated and comfortable, rather than a buttress for those on the margins of society, who historically were the core audience for Christianity.

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How Many People Leave Their Childhood Religion?

(ANALYSIS) Religious switching is a fascinating topic. It’s happening every single day, thousands of times. Without any fanfare or big declarations, people leave religion behind or chose a different faith when taking a survey. And yet we only have a very basic understanding of the mechanisms that make all that happen.

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July 4, 2023: Thoughts About Our Divided United States And Potential For A ‘Civil War’

(OPINION) What ails the United States of America? Why have some serious thinkers even talked about a second civil war? Both journalists and religious leaders should be pondering that on July 4. Consider some recent media coverage.

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New Ipsos Survey Includes Newsworthy Updates On Religious Attitudes Worldwide

(OPINION) There’s obvious news potential in a poll about religious attitudes that covers 26 nations and with fresh data (collected between Jan. 20 and Feb. 3). Media chart-makers could have fun with the many numbers in the 40-page “Global Religion 2023: Religious Beliefs Across the World,” issued May 11 by Ipsos, the noted international market research and polling firm.

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New Survey Of Religion In America Shows Churches In Decline

(OPINION) An extensive new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute finds that only 16% of Americans say religion is the most important thing in their lives. But what could 50 million gracious, merciful disciples do for this country today, if they really got focused on loving their neighbors and making peace and preaching good news instead of gloom and despair?

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