Let’s fly up to high altitude for a moment, before reading two interesting think pieces about those Gallup Poll numbers — “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time” — that launched a kazillion headlines.
If you’ve been paying attention to the state of Christianity in America for the past 50 years or so, you’re aware of several broad trends.
* In terms of demographics, the world of oldline Protestantism — the “Seven Sisters” churches — is in freefall, with these aging denominations losing around 50% of their members after peaking in the 1960s.
* Catholic churches have grown, kind of, in part due to rising numbers of Latinos in the pews. Worship numbers are down. New vocations for priests and nuns are way down (but it’s fascinating to note the cases in which numbers are steady, or rising). Mass attendance and birth-rate trends are crucial.
* Evangelical Protestants surged, especially in the Sunbelt, filling much of the public-square void created by mainline decline. Growth was especially strong with charismatics and Pentecostals — Black and White. In the past decade or two, the rapid growth of nondenominational or even post-denominational churches and networks has hurt mainstream evangelicalism, especially the Southern Baptist Convention. Most evangelical numbers have stalled or gone into a slower decline.
Summary: Churches are growing or holding steady if members are (a) having children, (b) raising children in the faith, (c) retaining the loyalty of those children into the next generation and (d) winning converts (that final point has more to do with doctrine than politics).
Notice that the words “Donald Trump” are missing. Like I said, this is a view from the heavens.
With all that in mind, let’s look at two essays: “Why American Church Membership Is Plummeting,” by historian Thomas Kidd, care of The Gospel Coalition website, and “Why the Church Is Losing the Next Generation,” in the latest newsletter by the Rev. Russell Moore of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
First, here are two crucial chunks of the Kidd essay, which opens — logically enough — with a discussion of the weaknesses of polling data.
… (A)s I have suggested before, we should take religion polls with a grain of salt. … They usually tell us about some trends on the religious landscape, to be sure, but they are almost always open to widely varying interpretation. Polls are at their best when there is little wiggle room for interpretation in the data.
