No, the average (median, actually) age for nondenominational evangelicals rose by one year, not two, which is roughly the same rate of growth in the median age of the population. And among Protestants in general, the nondenominational evangelicals had the lowest median age. A screen shot from your link is provided.
P126 â âAge by Protestant Familyâ, âNondenominational in the evangelical traditionâ rose from 42 to 44 years. This is the same grouping as the"4.9% of US, as of 2014" I referred to earlier. The smaller grouping you are referring to amounts to merely 2% of the population and excludes a wide number of closely-related and/or slightly-differently-labeled churches. Do you have a particular reason you wish to exclude ânondenominational fundamentalistâ, ânondenominational Christian in the evangelic traditionâ and a bunch of others?
I suppose it is a question of how extremely narrowly sectarian you want to go.
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@david.heddle At what size does your church become a sect, a religious cult, or just a faith community?
I donât have a secret-agenda reason. I didnât understand what they meant by family so I went for what I understood, denomination. There is nothing sectarian about this, I stated that nondenominational evangelical churches are young, so it is not sectarian (you seem to use pejorative âsectarianâ as a blunt instrument insult) for me to look at nondenominational evangelicals. And they certainly are significantly younger, by the data you provided and even by the table that you think is more more favorable to your argument (it isnât), and which I included below.
Of course all denominations or âfamiliesâ have an aging component because the the population is agingâthis is a common background, even for atheists.
I am assuming you understand that it takes a significant influx of younger people to lower the average age of a group from 50 (more or less the median Protestant age) to 43 (or 44), more or less the median nondenominational age. A quick calculation shows that it would take close to 400 25-year-olds (or over 500 30-year-olds) to lower the average age of 1000 50-year-olds to about 43. (To lower the median, which is what is reported, could take even more.)
Also, the nondenominational churches are in some sense even younger than indicated here, because they are having babies. Yet the data, I suspect, are counting adults or on-the-rolls members, for which most evangelical Protestant traditions excludes children (no infant baptism.) The last three evangelical churches I have been a member ofâtheir (overwhelmingly) biggest need? (HINT: Not money for upkeep or pastor salary.) No the biggest need is certified nursery worker volunteers because there are so many kids. The old mainline Protestant churches-- not many kids in those buildings. Of course its very sectarian of me to point that out.
I seriously have no idea what this question is asking. Is it s joke? Letâs make something clear. I have a rather large circle of orthodoxy. To me, if you affirm one of the historic creeds, I will consider you a Christian. Most Protestant and Catholic denominations affirm the Apostlesâ and Nicene creeds, so I consider their statements of faith to be within the pale of orthodoxy even if I disagree on many non-cardinal doctrines. I never once stated that huge mainline churches are dying because they are apostate, I suggested they are dying because they were built on the attendance and donations of large numbers of cultural Christians who self-identified only because of familial and societal pressures.
Please try to get in the game.
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All babies are atheists. 
These atheist babies have to wait until they are indoctrinated in a religion (usually their parentsâ) usually beginning around age 5. Or do you believe that babies are born into the faith of their parents?
So shouldnât we count all children under 5 as atheists, nothing-in-particular, or agnostics? Note that Ken Ham at Ark Encounter doesnât count children under 5 as Christians, he considers them as baggage.
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It is not a joke but a play on words. As Christianity declines in America (and around the world), the notion of a Universal Apostolic Church becomes more of a stretch. As the âChurchâ splinters into more and more smaller units, the notion of denomination goes away. All that is left is smaller groups that are better described as sects, cults, or faith communities.
I donât mean you should count babies as Christians, I meant that the atmosphere inside a non-denominational evangelical church is even more different than the median age gap suggests, because it will include many more children.
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Oh no, the horror of watching all those beautiful atheists babies getting psychologically harmed is too much for me to stomach. I care about these atheists babies, all of them. I want them to grow up in a world where they will have the very best education, healthcare, nutrition, housing and well being so that they all can have good and meaningful lives full of purpose and meaning.
@david.heddle
I would call focusing down on smaller and smaller subsets of Christianity, as the apparent only Christians worthy of interest (âwho caresâ about the rest) to be entirely sectarian, as is your constant denigration of Mainline Christianity.
Sectarian adj Pertaining to a sect or sects; confined to a particular sect; bigotedly attached to a particular sect. â OED
As to ages, I would point out that nondenominational mainlines are even younger (and stable). Black-tradition nondenominationals are younger still. It seems likely that the boundaries between denominational and nondenominational within traditions are fairly permiable, with many (especially the younger) flowing to nondenominational, but also with flows in the other direction (hence the low retention rates). I would prefer to wait for things to stabilise more to some form of equilibrium before I would be willing to opine on the long-term within-tradition dynamics. It is possible that nondenominationals will overtake denominationals as the dominant branch (âFamilyâ in Pewâs jargon) of each tradition. But it is also possible that they reach an equilibrium at a far lower ceiling. And it is even less clear that, even if they do become their traditionâs dominant branch, whether they can arrest their traditionâs decline in numbers.
No the biggest need is certified nursery worker volunteers because there are so many kids.
And from the trends in retention that I showed in the table above (and the even lower nondenominational retention level), it is entirely likely that well over half of them wonât be nondenominational evangelicals when they grow up.
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Where did he denigrate mainline Christianity? There is a well established distinction between mainline and evangelical Christians.
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That is quite simply a bald-faced lie. I have said a) that the main line denominations are within the pale of orthodoxy (is that your definition of denigration?) and b) that many people were leaving because the were professing Christianity as a result of cultural pressures and bigotry against non-believers. And I said this is a win-win, which I would argue is manifestly true. Where is the denigration?
You are confused. Being happy about the departure of the subset of people who were in the pews only because they felt the pressure to be in the pews is not denigration, except perhaps in the snowflake culture. Rather it is common sense.
Everybody agrees that the big, mainline denominations are aging-out and struggling financially. From the perspective of some of us: who cares?
Mainline liberal Christianity is old and dying.
The old mainline Protestant churches-- not many kids in those buildings.
I would suggest that Don may be attempting to hide from the fact that Evangelicalism is getting both smaller and older, by concentrating on the fact that Mainline has it worse.
@david.heddle
I would call your âwho caresâ crack fairly blatant denigration. Given that you followed it up by repeated further disparagement of Mainlineâs age and shrinkage, I donât think my comment was too far out of line.
⌠that many people were leaving because the were professing Christianity as a result of cultural pressures and bigotry against non-believers.
You are leaving out the not inconsiderable number of seminary graduates and preachers who are leaving the church. You have heard of the Clergy Project? There is also some indications that many younger members are leaving due to disgust at the churchâs (and particularly its conservative wingâs) misogny, hopmophobia, authoritarianism and entanglement with politics.
Iâm sure your narrative is more comforting to those they leave behind, but again I ask where is the hard statistical data to back it up?
Well, none of that reads as denigration to me.
It remains a fact that mainline and evangelical are distinct groups, and evangelicals are not showing the same trends. You are reading too much into the noise of the survey. A 1 year difference in median age is not statistically significant.
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(My emphasis)
Yes they are âshowing the same trends.â
- Evangelicalism has shrunk 10% in the last decade. (Cited above)
- Evangelicalism age increased two years (cited above, the 1 year figure only applied to a tiny splinter that is 2% of the population or less than one twelfth of Evangelicals).
I do not know if this is a statistically significant change, but I do know that it is contrary evidence to the claim that Evangelicalism is âyoung and growingâ.
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The graphs Iâve seen show stability, not growth or decline, in the US, but then growth in several places outside the US.
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Only in a universe where âyoungâ must imply âyoung and getting youngerâ. The data are completely consistent with the view that non-denominational evangelical churches are young but (of course) getting older.
Here a relevant scholarly university study that concludes that the American decline in religion is quite different from the European decline. The latter was across the board (possibly because of state churches?) while the former is mostly confined to the big, moderate mainline denominations.
Voas and Chaves (2016) showed that average religiousness is declining in the United
States, similar to the secularization occurring in other countries, and concluded,
therefore, that religion in America is not exceptional, not âdeclining in a distinctive
way,â (p. 1524), and ânot any sort of outlierâ (p. 1550). We have demonstrated,
however, that only moderate religion has declined and that the intensity of American religion is persistent and exceptional. (Emphasis added.)
This is consistent, I would argue, with what I claimed and inconsistent with the idea that conservative Christianity is also dying, and actually quite consistent with those atheists who, as I said earlier, have recognized what they dub the âTalibanizingâ of Christianity in the US.
28% â 25% â a 10.7% drop. This is from an article that was the basis of a previous thread, and that I explicitly cited above â to correct your previous erroneous statement.
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Is that a statistically significant drop?