Over the last two decades writers have churned out millions of words, maybe billions of words, mapping the sobering decline of the church in America. I’m certainly responsible for tens of thousands of those words, first as editor of GROUP Magazine for more than 30 years, and now as blogger-in-chief at Vibrant Faith. Like Britain before us, a culture defined by churchgoing is quickly losing its mojo, as more and more people have found an exit ramp out of Christian communities. But following the release of the Pew Research Center’s latest Religious Landscape Survey (RLS), researchers are reporting a flattening curve in the decline.
“The share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off, at least temporarily,” says the report. That number is slightly below two-thirds (62%), according to Pew’s massive survey of almost 37,000 U.S. adults. This is the third RLS survey since 2007, and the percentage of Christian-identifying adults has dropped from 78% in 2007, to 71% in 20014, to 62% today. But in the last four years the momentum in that drop has slowed to an almost-imperceptible crawl.
According to the report, two things are happening simultaneously inside American religious identities:
- Over the long term (since 2007), there is a downward trend in several measures of religiousness, including affiliation with Christianity.
- In the short term (the last four or five years), these changes have slowed or perhaps even plateaued.
Researchers suggest the most influential driver of the downturn is something they call “generational replacement”—it means that older, very Christian, very religious generations are being replaced by younger, much less religious, and much less Christian generations. As each generation hands the baton to the next, these markers for religious involvement and Christian identity slip another few percentage points. This means that the pause in the long decline of the church in America is likely just that—a pause:
Younger Americans remain far less religious than older adults. For example, the youngest adults in the survey (ages 18 to 24) are less likely than today’s oldest adults (ages 74 and older) to:
- Identify as Christian (46% vs. 80%)
- Pray daily (27% vs. 58%)
- Say they attend religious services at least monthly (25% vs. 49%)
- And the youngest adults are more likely than the oldest Americans to be religiously unaffiliated (43% vs. 13%).
- Also, younger Americans are less likely than older adults to say they were raised in religious households. And, compared with older adults, fewer young people who were raised in religious households have remained religious after reaching adulthood.
The good news hiding under the bad news in this new report is important and strategic for ministry leaders. In America spiritual beliefs are still widespread, and openness to God’s presence and guidance in life is still strong. The survey shows that large majorities of Americans maintain a spiritual bent in life:
- 86% believe people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body,
- 83% believe in God or a universal spirit,
- 79% believe there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it,
- 70% believe in an afterlife (heaven, hell or both),
- 44% pray daily, and
- 33% say they attend church at least once a month.
Yes, we now have a very large minority of the “religiously unaffiliated” or “nones” (29%), but the size of that population has plateaued in recent years after a long period of sustained growth. Consider this: the prevalent shoots of “cultural Christianity,” spreading like overgrown branches on the American Religious Oak, have had a two-decade pruning. Of course the loss of this growth makes the tree look more bare, but it is also more healthy. The purpose of pruning is to cut away living shoots to prepare the tree for long-term thriving.
Those who remain after the pruning have many reasons for hanging on, but many of them are simply all-in followers of Jesus. Like Peter before them, when Jesus asks, “Are you going to leave, too?” (John 6), we respond: “Where else would we go? Only you have the words of life and truth.” As ministry leaders facing the challenges brought on by this pruning, we can choose to focus on what we’ve lost, or have a clear-eyed hope in what we have gained. Grieve what has been pruned, yes, but set your jaw and plant your feet as you move into the future—join the “remnant” and help fuel the health of the church.
Just for You!
My new book Editing Jesus is out. Just click on this link and you can download a pdf of a long excerpt from the book.
Help Is Here!
As we lean into a new year, with new ministry possibilities, check out our innovative, practical resources for help infusing your ministry environment with “rich soil” for transformation. Lent is just around the corner, so check out our simple, relational, resource Lenten TalkCards. And our newest resource is The Sacred Stories Project. This multi-media resource offers your people a simple, safe, and “normal” way to share aspects of their story in natural, genuine ways. And you get a more connected, honest, and “known” congregation. It’s four guided sessions with accompanying video segments from Adam Young, trauma counselor and host of the podcast The Place We Find Ourselves.
And check out our new resource Listening to Jesus Together. It’s a set of six carefully crafted “listening encounters” designed for three people to experience together—online or in-person. The goal is to give people in your congregation a weekly “reminder habit” to help them listen to Jesus in the context of a short-term small-community experience.
Next, Following Jesus is a curriculum resource you can use with both adults and teenagers in your church this fall—help them explore what an ABIDING/REMAINING relationship with Jesus is like. It’s an experiential, highly interactive, co-discovery way to invite people into deeper intimacy with Jesus.
And The Life of Jesus TalkCards is a simple, devotional way to invite small groups into the heart of Jesus.
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including his new release Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church, The Suicide Solution, The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.
