In yesterdays,
“Friday Church News Notes”
(
link), David Cloud brought
to the attention of his readers some alarming news:
The
following research is confirmed by the many Southern Baptist and fundamental
Baptist churches that are populated predominately by elderly people. The young
people are gone. This is excerpted from ‘Young People Who Leave Church,’ Christian
Post, Oct. 23, 2019: “While pastors have long banked on social science
showing that young people who leave church generally return when they're older,
a recent analysis of that trend suggests it might be over. In his analysis of
data from the General Social Survey of five-year windows in which individuals
were born spanning from 1965 to 1984 and published by the Barna Group,
Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois
University and pastor of First Baptist Church of Mt. Vernon, Illinois, shows
that younger generations raised in the church aren’t typically returning to
church when compared with members of the ‘Baby boomer’ generation born
between 1945 and 1964. In Burge’s analysis of the boomer generation, four
different five-year cohorts reflected the ‘trademark hump’ supported by
traditional social science ‘when each birth cohort moves into the 36–45 age
range. That’s exactly what the life cycle effect would predict: People settle
down, they have kids, and they return to church.’ When he examined data for the
younger cohorts 1965-1969, 1975-1979 and 1980-1984, the data show a fading
of the life cycle effect. While the hump is still there in the cohort
measured from 1965-1969, a shift in the life cycle effect begins to emerge by
around 1970. ‘That trend line is completely flat—those people didn’t return to
church when they moved into their 30s. You can see the beginnings of a hump
among those born between 1975 and 1979, but in the next birth cohort the hump
is actually inverted. That trademark return to church—which pastors and
church leaders have relied on for decades—might be fading,’ Burge said. For
anyone concerned with church growth, Burge says ‘this should sound an alarm.’”
Some
subsequent online research lead me to the Pew Research Center website, and
their article “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace”
(
link),
wherein the following is revealed:
In
Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of
American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their
religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the
religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who
describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in
particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
Both
Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share.
Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in
2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009.
Disturbing
statistics for sure, statistics which brought back to mind a quote from the
Puritan theologian Thomas Manton that I published a little over a year ago:
Divisions in the church breed
atheism in the world. [
LINK]
I
cannot help but wonder if the continuing multiplication of divisions—and lack
of tangible unity—amongst those professing to be Christian is a major factor in
the decline of Christianity in America…
Grace and peace,
David