Surveys & polls

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

'Culture wars' are about demographics: Thus, fertility is now a hot-button topic in news

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
'Culture wars' are about demographics: Thus, fertility is now a hot-button topic in news

It was one of those happy social-media pictures, only this time the pregnant mother was celebrating with her nine children.

Los Angeles comedian and actor Kai Choyce was not amused and tweeted the photo with this comment: "this is environmental terrorism. … In the year 2020 literally no one should have ten kids."

The result was a long chain of sweet or snarky comments, as well as photos of large families. One tweet quoted a Swedish study claiming that having "one fewer child per family" can save an average of 58.6 tons of "CO2-equivalent emissions per year."

Debates about fertility often veer into fights about religion and other ultimate questions, such as the fate of the planet.

Parents with two-plus children are often making a statement about the role of religious faith in their lives. People on the other side of this debate have frequently rejected traditional forms of religion.

"What we call 'culture wars' are wars about demographics, but we have trouble discussing that," said historian Philip Jenkins, who is best known for decades of research into global religious trends, while teaching at Pennsylvania State and Baylor University. His latest book is "Fertility and Faith: The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions."

In the 1970s, researchers thought the link between secularization and falling birth rates was a "Protestant thing" in Europe, but then this trend spread into Catholic cultures in Europe and in Latin America, he said. Fertility rates are now collapsing in Iran and some Islamic cultures. Meanwhile, Orthodox Jews and traditional Catholics continue to have larger families than liberal believers in those ancient faiths.

America's 2019 birth rate fell to 1.71, its lowest level in three decades, and well under the replacement rate of 2.1. This took place before the coronavirus pandemic and the Brookings Institute recently predicted a "COVID baby bust" next year, resulting in up to half a million fewer births.

Researchers frequently argue about which comes first -- secularization or declining fertility.

"I'm not sure that really matters because these two trends are so clearly related that they just march along together," said Jenkins.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , ,

Surviving 2020: How many churches will die because of COVID-19 and 'worship shifting'?

, , , , , , , , , , ,
Surviving 2020: How many churches will die because of COVID-19 and 'worship shifting'?

Television professionals who survived the past decade have made their peace with terms like "binging" and "time-shifting."

But how, pray tell, can clergy embrace "worship-shifting"?

The coronavirus crisis has plunged pastors into digital technology while trying to replace analog community life with online worship, classes and fellowship forums. These changes have frustrated many, especially believers in ancient traditions built on rites requiring face-to-face contact. But many worshippers have welcomed online worship.

These changes have altered the "fundamental relationship that many young adults have with their churches," said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, which does research with a variety of religious groups. "We're hearing about worship-shifting, as people use all the tech in their homes to fit services into their own schedules, just like everything else they watch on all those screens.

"This is another way people are using social media to renegotiate the role the church plays in the lives of their families."

The question religious leaders are asking, of course, is how many people will return to their pews when "normal" life returns. But it may be several years before high-risk older believers decide it's safe to return, even after vaccines become available. Younger members may keep watching their own local services, switch to high-profile digital flocks elsewhere or do both.

In talks with clients, Kinnaman said he is hearing denominational leaders and clergy say they believe that, in the next year or so, some churches will simply close their doors. Early in the pandemic the percentage of insiders telling Barna researchers they were "highly confident" their churches would survive was "in the high 70s," he said.

“Now it's in the 50s. … Most churches are doing OK, for now. But there's a segment that's really struggling and taking a hit, week after week."

After reviewing several kinds of research -- including patterns in finances and attendance -- Kinnaman sent a shockwave through social-media channels with his recent prediction that one in five churches will close in the next 18 months.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

New podcast: Yes, it will be big news if COVID-19 closes 20% of America's churches

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
New podcast: Yes, it will be big news if COVID-19 closes 20% of America's churches

This week’s “Crossroads” podcast — click here to tune that in — starts with a rather obvious question linked to the coronavirus crisis.

The question: Would it be a major news story if 20% or more of America’s religious congregations were forced to shut down during the next 12-18 months?

Clearly that would be a huge development in American life — not just on the religion-news beat. On top of that, it would be a story that would almost certainly unfold in every zip code in America. There would be newsworthy hooks at the local, regional and national levels.

What kinds of stories?

Hold that thought.

The hook for this week’s discussion was my latest “On Religion” column for the Universal syndicate, which grew out of recent comments by David Kinnaman, the leader of the Barna Group — which does polling and research with a variety of churches and denominations.

Here is a key passage:

The question religious leaders are asking, of course, is how many people will return to their pews when "normal" life returns. But it may be several years before high-risk older believers decide it's safe to return, even after vaccines become available. Younger members may keep watching their own local services, switch to high-profile digital flocks elsewhere or do both.

In talks with clients, Kinnaman said he is hearing denominational leaders and clergy say they believe that, in the next year or so, some churches will simply close their doors. Early in the pandemic the percentage of insiders telling Barna researchers they were "highly confident" their churches would survive was "in the high 70s," he said.

"Now it's in the 50s. … Most churches are doing OK, for now. But there's a segment that's really struggling and taking a hit, week after week."

After reviewing several kinds of research -- including patterns in finances and attendance -- Kinnaman sent a shockwave through social-media channels with his recent prediction that one in five churches will close in the next 18 months. In "mainline" churches, he is convinced this number will be one in three, in part because these rapidly aging Protestant denominations have lost millions of members -- some up to 50% -- since the 1960s.

These mainline churches are the “Seven Sisters” of progressive Protestantism. In descending order, by size, that would be the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Episcopal Church, the American Baptist Churches USA, the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , ,

Rust Belt religion: Do political reporters get that Catholics are the key voters in 2020?

, , , , , , , , , ,

“White evangelical Protestants,” “white evangelical Protestants,” “white evangelical Protestants.”

“Catholic voters,” “Catholic voters,” “Catholic voters.”

World without end, amen.

The closer we get to Election Day 2020, the more we are going to see these terms in the news.

The assumption is that the “Catholic vote” is especially crucial to Democrat Joe Biden, since he is a life-long Catholic who is seeking to become America’s second Catholic in the White House. Meanwhile, journalists continue to be obsessed with President Donald Trump’s popularity among white evangelical Protestants, who played such a crucial role in his rise during the GOP primaries in 2015.

However, if you look at the swing states that put Trump in office, it was clear that Rust Belt Catholics — blue-collar Catholics in particular — were crucial voters four years ago.

During the past couple of years, our own Richard Ostling has been stressing that political-beat reporters really need to get over the whole “white evangelicals” thing and accept that, as is so often the case, Catholic voters will be the key swing voters this time around.

If readers and scribes need more input on that point, please consider this recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette think piece by Mark J. Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. The blunt headline: “Catholics, not evangelicals, will make or break Trump.” Here is a crucial chunk of that essay:

In 2016, Mr. Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — states with heavy concentrations of Catholic voters — by merely 107,000 votes combined. Although since the 1980s the U.S. national vote and the Catholic vote component have tracked very closely to each other in each election cycle, 2016 was an exception: Hillary Clinton handily won the national popular vote and Mr. Trump won the majority of Catholic voters. Exit polls had Mr. Trump holding a 52%-to-45% edge among Catholics.

Two critical things happened that helped Mr. Trump: his populist economic appeals to white working class voters in those key states, and the widely predicted “Latino surge” never materialized.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Thinking with Ryan Burge: What REALLY happens after people get 'born again'?

, , , , , , , , ,

I didn’t know it at the time, but it was one of those moments when America changed.

Well, that isn’t true. America didn’t change on this particular night early in Jimmy Carter’s campaign for the Democratic Party nomination to seek the presidency. It was a moment when American journalism changed, when lots of reporters in East and West Coast media centers were forced to wrestle with the term “born-again Christian” for the first time.

The number of born-again Christians in American didn’t change, just because a major political figure applied the term to his own status as a believer. But this term — rooted in church history and doctrine — moved into a political context, which meant that it became a real thing for many journalists.

I’ve told this story before, but it’s relevant once again — because of a fascinating new think piece by political scientist Ryan Burge, a GetReligion contributor, about what happens (and what rarely happens) after a person claims to have been born again.

Hold that thought, while we head back to 1975.

… I'll never forget the night when an anchor at ABC News — faced with Democrat Jimmy Carter talking about his born-again Christian faith — solemnly looked into the camera and told viewers that ABC News was investigating this phenomenon (born-again Christians) and would have a report in a future newscast.

What percentage of the American population uses the term "born again" to describe their faith? Somewhere between 40 and 60 percent back then? I mean, Carter wasn't telling America that he was part of an obscure sect, even though many journalists were freaked out by this words — due to simple ignorance (or perhaps bias).

Actually, the percentage was almost certainly 40% in that era and I was wrong to assume that it had ever been higher.

Nevertheless, 40% is not a small chunk of the population and many of those believers are found among the 20% of Americans who consistently practice their religious faith in daily life. We know that because, for decades, the Gallup organization has been asking “born-again” and “evangelical” questions in its polling research.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Newsweek: Core doctrine of Christianity is something 'evangelists' may or may not believe

, , , , , , , , ,

In recent years, your GetReligionistas have had quite a few discussions of the following question: Should today’s Newsweek continue to be treated as the important newsmagazine that it once was?

Hear me out. I know that Newsweek contains some interesting and provocative commentary pieces and, every now and then, the magazine publishes an interesting essay on a news topic that appears to have been written by someone in the newsroom.

The day-by-day norm, however, appears to consist of quick-hit pieces based on the work of others, often showing signs of work by inexperienced interns. Some of these online pieces can be considered “aggregation” pointing readers to other sources of news and information.

Please don’t read that as an automatic put-down. GetReligion publishes its share of “think pieces” that introduce readers to articles we have seen linked to religion news. The goal is to write a worthy intro and then show readers bites of the article — clearly identifying the source — that lets them see key insights or information. At the end, we encourage folks to “read it all,” with a URL to the source.

The problem, to be blunt, is when there is evidence that the journalists doing this work have little or no understanding of the material they are “writing about.” Consider this overture in a Newsweek piece with this headline: “52 Percent of Americans Say Jesus Isn't God but Was a Great Teacher, Survey Says.”

A slight majority of American adults say Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more during his lifetime, which several Christian leaders say is evidence today's faithful are "drifting away" from traditional evangelist teachings.

As earlier reported by The Christian Post, the 2020 survey conducted by Ligonier Ministries, a Florida-based Reform Church nonprofit, found 52 percent of U.S. adults say they believe Jesus Christ is not God — a belief that contradicts traditional teachings of the Bible through the Christian church, which state Jesus was both man and God.

Nearly one-third of evangelicals in the survey agreed that Jesus isn't God, compared to 65 percent who said "Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God."

Where to begin?


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

It's more 'Dog Bites Man' as religion-haunted 2020 campaign lurches into the fall

, , , , , , , , ,
It's more 'Dog Bites Man' as religion-haunted 2020 campaign lurches into the fall

GetReligion regulars will know that “Man Bites Dog” is news and “Dog Bites Man” is not.

This hoary journalism incantation came to mind at the close of the Democratic National Convention when 353 clergy and lay believers announced that they “choose hope over fear” and will mobilize religious voters so the Biden-Harris ticket can “lead us in restoring our nation’s values.”

Reporters will assess this for themselves, but to The Guy the Trump-biting endorsers of “Faith2020” (contact 657–333– 5391) look pretty much as predictable as the religious lineup boosting Trump-Pence. Faith2020 draws hallelujahs from former presidential nominee Al Gore, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Signers include workers for past Democratic candidates, abortion choice, LGBTQ concerns and various liberal causes.

In other words, it’s a familiar Religious Left all-star team.

Signer Jack Moline co-chaired Rabbis for Obama and is president of the Interfaith Alliance, founded in 1994 to counter the “Religious Right.” Despite continual hopes, building a politically potent Religious Left has proven elusive in an era when the big news (calling scholar John C. Green) is the emergence of non-religious Americans as a massive chunk of the Democrats’ constituency.

One sort-of surprise endorser is John Phelan, former president of the Evangelical Covenant Church’s North Park Theological Seminary. He joins alongside Faith2020 Executive Director Adam Phillips, whose former Portland, Oregon, church was forced out of that denomination in 2015 over LGBTQ inclusion in church leadership.

Other Faith2020 names of note: Frederick Davie (Faith2020 chair and executive vice president of New York’s Union Theological Seminary), David Beckman (former president of Bread for the World), Amos Brown (Kamala Harris’s San Francisco Baptist pastor), Amy Butler (removed last year as pastor of New York’s prominent Riverside Church), Joshua DuBois (who ran President Barack Obama’s “Faith-Based” partnerships office), Wesley Granberg-Michaelson (retired general secretary of the Reformed Church in America), Gene Robinson (whose elevation as a partnered gay bishop further split the global Anglican Communion), Brian McLaren (godfather of the “emerging church” movement), Talib Shareef (D.C. imam who leads what’s called “The Nation’s Mosque”), Ron Sider (Evangelicals for Social Action chair and Hillary Clinton endorser) and Simran Jeet Singh (Sikh chaplain at New York University).


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Words or deeds? Catholics will be discussing Joe Biden's actions during fall campaign

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Words or deeds? Catholics will be discussing Joe Biden's actions during fall campaign

In the summer of 2016, two White House staffers -- Brian Mosteller and Joe Mahshie -- tied the knot in a rite led by one of America's most prominent Catholics.

The officiant was Vice President Joe Biden, who later proclaimed on Twitter: "Proud to marry Brian and Joe at my house. Couldn't be happier … two great guys."

Leaders of familiar Catholic armies then debated whether Biden's actions attacked this Catholic Catechism teaching: "The marriage covenant, by which a man and a woman form with each other an intimate communion of life and love, has been founded and endowed with its own special laws by the Creator. … Christ the Lord raised marriage between the baptized to the dignity of a sacrament."

Conflicts between bishops, clergy and laity will loom in the background as Biden seeks to become America's second Catholic president. Combatants will be returning to territory explored in a famous 1984 address by the late Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, entitled "Religious Belief and Public Morality."

Speaking at the University of Notre Dame, he said: "As a Catholic, I have accepted certain answers as the right ones for myself and my family, and because I have, they have influenced me in special ways, as Matilda's husband, as a father of five children, as a son who stood next to his own father's death bed trying to decide if the tubes and needles no longer served a purpose.

"As a governor, however, I am involved in defining policies that determine other people's rights in these same areas of life and death. Abortion is one of these issues, and while it is one issue among many, it is one of the most controversial and affects me in a special way as a Catholic public official."

It would be wrong to make abortion policies the "exclusive litmus test of Catholic loyalty," he said. After all, the "Catholic church has come of age in America" and it's time for bishops to recognize that Catholic politicians have to be realistic negotiators in a pluralistic land.

Cuomo also noted polls indicating that American Catholics "support the right to abortion in equal proportion to the rest of the population. … We Catholics apparently believe -- and perhaps act -- little differently from those who don't share our commitment. Are we asking government to make criminal what we believe to be sinful because we ourselves can't stop committing the sin?"


Please respect our Commenting Policy