Concerns about church upkeep and minister’s salaries are hardly “distorted”, particularly given shrinking memberships. I have not been active in a church for almost 40 years, but my mother is very active in hers, and I hear quite a bit about her church’s issues, as well as a bit (both from her and local papers) about other churches around town. What I have heard suggests that difficulties finding ministers and affording their salary is often problematic (not infrequently leading to parishes having to pool resources and share a minister, rely on a roster of volunteers, or amalgamate), as is affording to keep aging churches up to code. A number of parishes have had to mothball their churches and move into their church hall because of this.
You are missing my point. Everybody agrees that the big, mainline denominations are aging-out and struggling financially. From the perspective of some of us: who cares? Evangelical churches, often in small buildings or renting space, are young and growing and often cloning new small churches. If the reduction in self-identifying Christians is a result of a reduction of familial or societal pressure to claim Christianity, and a reduction of the stigma of claiming unbelief, we absolutely welcome it as a good thing, a very good thing, for Christianity.
I’m not sure I’d be all that smug about it if I were an atheist. First of all there is the fact that quite naturally the Christians who remain, especially if you don’t count those persisting but dying out in the mainline denominations, are young, zealous (and have lots of babies). Secondly, at least the last time I examined the data, they are not moving lock-stock and barrel to “rational scientific atheism” ( I kind of wish they were) but often, from the perspective of scientific atheism, to another form of unscientific woo, which is bad for us all.
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I think you are missing the point. The survey is saying that ALL denominations are aging out and struggling financially. But you are saying that there is a grass root ground swelling of a younger and growing movement of small Evangelical churches renting space. Do you have any data on this? I do see this in my area. But these are really small groups and are short lived. Usually some self-appointed “pastor” tries to start a new church. He rents a small space and gives it a go. Perhaps a dozen or so join and get together and gives it a try. But it usually goes bust in less than a year. Rent is high and the pastor (and his family) needs to eat so pastor has to keep his day job and the new church is a just a club that gets together once in a while. If this is the plan to revive Christianity in America to its once dominance, I wouldn’t be so optimistic on a bright future.
How callously sectarian. It’s often hard to see that Evangelicals even see other denominations as Christian at all.
Evangelical churches, often in small buildings or renting space, are young and growing and often cloning new small churches.
Except what we too often see is megachurches, with celebrity preachers, living in multi-million dollar mansions, and swanning around in private jets, whilst inequality grows in the US, many live below the poverty line, and even those above live in fear that a bad break in their health might force them into medical bankruptcy.
I seem to remember a line that says “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
But regardless, the statistics clearly state than Evangelicalism is shrinking, and casting shade on Mainline denominations for shrinking faster only makes Evangelicalism look self-centred and small.
I’m not sure I’d be all that smug about it if I were an atheist.
We wouldn’t even attempt to match the smugness of your first paragraph.
First of all there is the fact that quite naturally the Christians who remain, especially if you don’t count those persisting but dying out in the mainline denominations, are young, zealous …
But are they? What I have read is that younger Evangelicals tend to be more tolerant, and less interested in Culture Wars, than their parents. Do you have any hard statistics to back up this claim?
… and have lots of babies
Where did you think the next generation of atheists were going to come from?
Secondly, at least the last time I examined the data, they are not moving lock-stock and barrel to “rational scientific atheism” …
Unlike many Evangelicals, I’m quite happy with religious pluralism. What a boring world it would be if we all thought alike.
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From a liberal source, the Washington Post:
Liberal churches are dying, but conservative churches are thriving.
I find your claim:
Usually some self-appointed “pastor” tries to start a new church. He rents a small space and gives it a go. Perhaps a dozen or so join and get together and gives it a try.
to be rank stereotyping.
If this is the plan to revive Christianity in America to its once dominance, I wouldn’t be so optimistic on a bright future.
There is no plan, that I know of, to revive Christianity to its dominance, other than to preach the gospel and worship God. We do not need large church buildings and political influence.
There is another undercurrent to this trend of small, vibrant, young, theologically conservative evangelical churches. I think I detect (I have only anecdotal data) a long awaited (for me) reduction in the strong correlation (which I never understood) with conservative politics. I am seeing many more young political moderates, liberals, or political agnostics in the churches than ever before, with the notable (proper, in my view) exception that abortion remains strongly opposed.
This is really a very good time for evangelical Christians. In my opinion Christianity in America is the healthiest it has ever been, at least in my lifetime.
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Great, enjoy. But please leave the rest of us alone. And keep your evangelism out of government, public schools, women’s healthcare, human sexuality and expression. And start paying taxes!
This article was about a study focused on the size and growth of individual churches. Due to issues such as longevity of these churches, and the extent to which they’re bringing in new believers versus cannibalising existing church membership, it is impossible to draw macroscopic conclusions from this.
Certainly the rise of the megachurch (a phenomenon more associated with more conservative theologies) would suggest that conservative Christianity may be moving to fewer but larger churches on average.
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What do you mean “leave you alone?” You live in a society, and as such you are expected to deal with the occasional intrusion. I was just approached and asked, unsolicited, to sign a petition to get Beto O’Rourke on the Virginia ballot. That was no less of an intrusion than if someone were to ask me, unbidden, if I have ever heard of Jesus Christ. We don’t get to live in a complete cocoon. As for government and public schools and even human sexuality, I agree with you. As for paying taxes, there is really only one unfair tax advantage, the living allowance for pastors. I agree we should get rid of it. If you think donations to churches should not be tax deductible, I would agree in the sense that I don’t any charitable donations should be deductible, since we are just asking one another to subsidize each other’s charity. In effect, the tax deduction for one is just a tax increase for another. You should not have to subsidize my church, and I should not have to subsidize Planned Parenthood. In fact, the only disagreement I have with your list is women’s healthcare. While there are arguments to be made for exceptions due to special circumstances, abortion on demand any time for any reason will always, to me, be legalized murder.
You really think you know who Christians are, but everything you present suggests you have nothing but a cheap caricature in mind.
I wish they made atheists like they used to.
EDIT: typos
Spin it like you want to make yourself happy. The bottom line is that conservative evangelical Christianity is young, strong, and growing. Mainline liberal Christianity is old and dying.
We are in agreement on taxes. But abortion is not murder. It is a woman’s human right to chose her reproductive plan. Planned Parenthood is an outstanding organization that provides healthcare to poor woman. I do hope you sign the petition to get Christian Beto O’Rourke on the Virginia ballot. He may not get your vote but he deserves to be on the ballot so that Virginians have a broad choice of candidates to chose from.
Christians come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them are sufficiently bizarre that any attempt at caricature would be futile:
McDonald asked his guest, Ricci Wilson of World For Jesus Ministries, if she had heard anything about Schiff supposedly being involved in pedophilia and human trafficking, to which Wilson replied that “there are some deep, dark secrets in his closet.” – Chris McDonald: Rep. Adam Schiff Is 'a High-Ranking Satanist' Who Practices Human Sacrifice | Right Wing Watch
Klingenschmitt recently appeared on the “Vocal Point” radio program, where he declared that Christians must run for office so that the church can “take over the government” and implement the will of God here on earth. Gordon Klingenschmitt: Christians Must Run For Office So The Church Can 'Take Over The Government' | Right Wing Watch
“I believe Muslims can and should be excluded from Congress,” Fischer added, “for the same reason that Communists can and should be and legally are, because they believe in a totalitarian system, a totalitarian ideology.” Bryan Fischer: 'I Believe Muslims Can And Should Be Excluded From Congress' | Right Wing Watch
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Growing? I already covered this:
The data shows that both Protestants who describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians and Protestants who are not born-again or evangelical have declined as a share of the overall U.S. adult population, reflecting the country’s broader shift away from Christianity as a whole. In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace | Pew Research Center
(Bold emphasis mine.)
How is this “spin”?
As to “young” & “strong”, again I ask, do you have any hard (macro-scale) statistics to back up this claim? (Given that the study on which the WP article was based only covered “22 mainline congregations in the province of Ontario”, it hardly counts as macro-scale, nor does it appear to have delved into how “young” or “zealous”/“strong” the congregations in question were.)
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The Pew data consistently show (when they break it down to that level) that the only growth in Protestantism is in non-denominational Protestant churches, and there it is substantial. These churches (not all churches) tend to be (overwhelmingly so) evangelical and younger (I’ll try to find age data). But as a small subset when compared to the dying large denominations, the growth is largely under the radar. Resulting in exactly what I claimed: fewer self-identifying Christians, but a higher percentage that are conservative. This is hardly surprising.
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@david.heddle
So we’re now ditching 80% of Evangelicals (who are themselves only 25% of the population) and now concentrating on only non-denominational Evangelicals now? That’s really dialing up the sectarian blinkers.
Of course nondenominational Evangelicalism is growing faster than other denominations, it is a small (4.9% of US, as of 2014) and relatively recent slither of Christianity. Such rapid growth is not uncommon in that situation. By comparison the number of Muslims (another small and relatively recent US religious minority) more than doubled between 2007 and 2014.
Addendum: I would also point out that nondenominational Mainline churches are also growing, albeit slower, and from a smaller base, than nondenominational Evangelical.
I would further point out that nondenominational Evangelicalism is more closely associated with large (and costly) megachurches, than the small bootstrapped churches you have been extolling.
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You are using 2015 Pew data. The whole point of the 2019 Pew Survey was to highlight the rapid change taking place now.
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@Patrick
Yes it’s old data (actually 2014 data, it’s only the article that’s 2015), but it does overlap considerably with the more recent data (2007-2014 versus 2009-2018/19) in time period. They are however based on very different Pew datasets. The 2014 dataset offers very finely graduated statistics on denominational breakdown, and David is using that to focus on a small and recent subset of Evangelicalism, non-denominational Evangelicals, that was (and most probably still is) growing fairly rapidly.
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But the 2019 data, unless I missed it, does not dive as deep as the 2015 data. We all agree that Christianity is shrinking across the board on a coarse scale.
Oh, and according to Pew, the average age of Evangelicals has increased by 2 years between 2007 and 2014, as has the average age of nondenominational Evangelicals. ( https://www.pewforum.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2015/05/Appendix-D-Detailed-Tables.pdf )
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Given that nondenominationals have been prominent in this thread, the following might also be relevant:
Nondenominational Protestants, by contrast, gain more adherents through religious switching than they lose. Just 2% of Americans say they were raised as nondenominational Protestants, and half of them (1.1% of all adults) no longer identify with nondenominational Protestantism. But 5.3% of adults now identify as nondenominational Protestants after having been raised in another religion or in no religion, meaning that nondenominational Protestantism gains roughly five adherents through religious switching for every adherent it loses. Religious Switching: Change in America's Religion Landscape | Pew Research Center
Whilst this may be good news for them in the short term, their low (slightly less than 50%) inter-generational retention rate may limit the group’s growth in the longer term.
Addendum:
This table appears to show that ‘Unaffiliated’ is the only (listed) group whose retention rate is increasing with each new generation:
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