The Church is Losing Members. Read On to Find Out Why.
Are People Abandoning Churches?
There can be no question today that organized religion has a credibility problem. The Catholic church has been beset by ongoing allegations of sexual molestation by priests of young boys and is mired in a series of lawsuits and legal judgments that threaten to bankrupt the Vatican. Meanwhile, the Protestant denominations are doing no better with some sexual scandals of its own such as the recent admission on TV that a certain well-known evangelist was unfaithful to his wife, as well as the molestation scandal of the so-called “bishop” Eddie Long right here in Atlanta that made national headlines last year. To make matters worse, the TV channels are flooded with preachers who spend most of their time begging for money. Many of them are living in million-dollar mansions and are driving around in cars with six-figure price tags, yet there is a complete absence of accountability with these people. Nobody knows anything about how much in donations these “nonprofits” are accumulating, but the two biggest Christian TV networks, Trinity Broadcasting and Christian Broadcasting, are known to be sitting on tens of millions in cash – each!
I know of two additional statistics regarding the church, one concerning the divorce rate and the other concerning the state of its youth. First, the divorce rate for people who regularly attend church is about the same as those who do not – roughly 50%. Second, two out of three high school kids coming from Evangelical homes who go off to college are agnostic or atheistic by the time they graduate. Organized religion is losing its youth in droves. In light of all this, I see the need to ask some relevant questions, such as why the modern church is hung up on things like abortion and same-sex marriage when it should be preaching and teaching about the extreme immorality of war. Why is it sinful for a woman to have an abortion in this country while the US simultaneously has killed 100,000 Iraqi civilians during the American occupation of 2003-2011. Why is it sinful for two people of the same gender to fall in love, but hating them is OK for moral reasons? These are hard questions and they pose some deep thoughts about the state of organized religion today.
Chances are that if you are in your 20s or 30s, you are not hanging around a church. Polling is now a highly sophisticated industry, and religious organizations are being fed some irrefutable numbers about what is happening among their constituents. In a single generation, the Christian church dropout rate has increased fivefold. The Barna Group, a leading research organization focusing on the intersection of faith and culture, says 80 percent of the young people raised in a church will be “disengaged” before they are 30.
In the past 20 years, the number of American people who say they have no religion has doubled and has now reached 15 percent. Those numbers are concentrated in the under-30 population. The polling data continues to show that a dramatic exit is taking place from American Christian churches. Beyond those numbers, denominations across the board are acknowledging loss of membership, but it is worse than they are reporting. Many churches report numbers based on baptized constituents, yet actual Sunday morning attendance doesn’t come close to those numbers. Once baptized, always a reportable Christian! Simply put, denominations are no longer a reliable source of membership information. As a result, they are losing their credibility. Is it any wonder? The mega-church movement also has flattened, with people leaving as fast as they are recruited. The only real growth among Christians appears to be in the home church movement in which small groups of independent believers gather in a house to worship.
While the polling numbers are in, the debate about the reasons is only just beginning. When a pollster asks if a person has left the Christian Faith and a church, the answer is answered “yes” or “no.” However, when the pollster asks “why?,” the answers become mushy and the numbers lose their significance. Why are people leaving churches so fast? I am not a pollster, but rather an observer of the religious scene operating outside the boundaries of traditional denominations. As such I teach and preach the gospel as it truly is, quoting the Bible verbatim while intentionally omitting any hint of denominational prejudice and belief. By the same token, my impressions are anecdotal and in no way scientific. All I do is receive personal responses to my columns, and I carry on conversations with a steady flow of people by e-mail or when I meet them at book signings. But I am also a missionary. Not in some distant country, but right here at home in the inner city of Atlanta. While it's always good to reach the multitudes with the Gospel of Christ, I find I do best working one-on-one with people. I step aside within myself and yield power and authority to Jesus. In so doing I let others see Jesus by letting them see Him through me. Not by eloquent words or poetic sermons, but by example through kindness and tender-heartedness toward the poor, the disabled, widows and orphans, the homeless, the mentally ill, as well as ex-convicts and other vulnerable individuals, some of which don't even realize how vulnerable they actually are.
I am convinced that we church people and clergy need to look at ourselves for at least some of the reasons for the decline in membership. I offer three observations:
[1] Churches are no longer intellectually challenging. More and more of our young people are college-educated and in the future even more must and will accept the challenge of post-high school education. They are thinking people who are expanding the limits of their curiosity and knowledge.
Speaking of expanding our horizons, what will happen to organized religion when life is discovered beyond earth, which will definitely happen in another ten years or so? Will religious entities be able to cope with the change in our view of ourselves in relation to the rest of God's universe when that inevitable day arrives? Nobody currently knows the answer to these questions, but it is for these reasons that these young people often conclude that they know more than the person in the pulpit and are not willing to accept the church’s rigid catechism, an educational method that teaches the religious questions and the correct answers. As an educational tool catechism is outdated and provides no challenge to students eager to question and discuss. Ministers must re-establish themselves among the leaders of the intellectual community. They can no longer rely on the outdated method of teaching unquestioning obedience as a method of control of their congregations and of whole denominations.
[2] Churches are no longer leaders in moral and ethical discussions. Young people have grown weary of churches that cannot get past issues such as homosexuality and abortion.
What they hunger for is a church that rails against the accumulation of wealth and the hoarding of material goods. Today's youth pines for a church that teaches gentleness, kindness, patience, empathy and compassion while rejecting material goods and the financial trappings of capitalism. Our new crop of church drop-outs is still very interested in alternatives to a selfish, hedonistic society. Justice is high on their agenda, and they are looking for opportunities for public service. Our young people want to be involved in solving environmental problems and in peacemaking. By contrast, pizza parties and rock concerts – techniques that have been used to make churches appear more relevant to the young – are not high on the agenda of young people concerned about society’s deep-seated problems. In other words, too many churches are concerned about same-sex marriage when the preacher should be talking about the unacceptability of war.
[3] Churches are no longer visionary. They have remained focused on saving souls for the next life and offering rituals tied to perpetuating theologies that no longer seem relevant to many young people. Churches are no longer significant players in shaping the life of our communities. If ministers and churches will not lay out what the kingdom of God on earth might actually look like, young people will continue to look elsewhere for other models. In that sense, I am less concerned about the young adults who are leaving the churches than the churches they are leaving behind.
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PDJane
(10,103 posts)The real problem is that religion is a myth, and those who deny science are the ones that are going to have us burning by mid-century.
Facts are nasty things, you see.
GreenPartyVoter
(73,021 posts)larger than ourselves, (the universe, nature, whatever) but who don't want all the tired old dogma and superstitions of religion?
I agree with the piece. A lot of people are hungry for justice and the chance to do something, and I am guessing many of them want something to hold it all together. The "More."
(Just adding that I agree about facts. They get in the way of me believing the faith I was raised in, but I still crave _some_ sort of mystical experience, you know? I know we're all stardust, and I love being outdoors and feel truly humbled by the beauty there, so for me I feel churchier outside than in a church really.)
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Can't being in awe of nature and the vastness of the universe, and having reverence for living beings (on Earth or elsewhere) be enough? Not trying to be snarky, but I'm just wondering why you need "more" when it's right there in front of you.
GreenPartyVoter
(73,021 posts)interconnectedness of everyone.
Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)I don't know if you've ever checked them out.
GreenPartyVoter
(73,021 posts)
Delphinus
(12,125 posts)what you are saying. I am going to look into UU soon.
GreenPartyVoter
(73,021 posts)
bluedave
(366 posts)if you aren't agnostic there are loose screws in your head.
movonne
(9,623 posts)article...and if people call themselves Christians then they really should act like it...you know love, compassion, feeding the needs of the poor...but a great many who call themselves Christians act like just the opposite...I hope you keep writing on here....thanks..
shcrane71
(1,721 posts)You may enjoy To The Best of Our Knowledge's show this week:
http://ttbook.org/book/atheists-believers-secular
Ishoutandscream2
(6,734 posts)was the last straw for me. I was a somewhat regular at services, even though I was very apathetic. However, the Dubya Decade helped me to decide that the nonsense was not for me. I am firmly in the agnostic corner (LOL)!
fredamae
(4,458 posts)corporate religious group, never have been. Something smelled funny when I was a kid and I just never could "buy it". God knows I tried-I searched and searched for "my people" as I was lucky enough to be able to attend every and any church/religious org I wanted.
The only thing I learned to be absolute was the differences in How the Bible was/is interpreted and what horrible consequences a kind and loving God could yield upon me if I dared to step out of line. Whatever that meant to any given priest and minister on any given Sunday, that is.
It seems over the years Genuine Christianity has slowly faded into an abyss. Many religious leaders have been and are being exposed as criminals, both legally and morally; mere shysters, bilking the faithful out of tons of money. Additionally, they are deeply and wrongfully embedded in our Democracy. Hypocrites.
I sincerely appreciate your post. It is well thought out and basically speaks to my experiences from many decades ago.
grilled onions
(1,957 posts)Now it's a constant lecture. They have turned the Sunday hour into a political ad. It's no longer the good vs evil,The Ten Commandments etc. Instead you need to vote for this guy, you need to vote out that guy.
Others are so busy begging for $$$ they have little else to talk about.
Another group seems to have stepped back in time. It's a complete turn off to the younger generation. None of them seem to think their flock has enough common sense to make decent choices. Yet how many of these "lecturers" do not make decent choices themselves.
What ever happened to guiding the flock to help those in need,hungry,lonely? How many get volunteers together to help clean river banks,highway litter or helping out at food pantries?
I don't hear even anything similar from the mouths of those running for various office positions who claim to be deeply religious.
If they want the flocks to rejoin they better start relating to the people,their wants,their needs and start thinking of today and the future instead of trying to get laws ans attitudes back into the past.
HockeyMom
(14,337 posts)while still in catholic school. My issues with them even back then, especially as an ONLY CHILD by choice, was over BC, abortion, and divorce. Besides finding all these "pro-life" issues INSULTING as a young woman in a family of 3, my divorced and re-married Aunt was not an "adultress" and my cousin was not a bastard.
As the years went by, my alientation only got worse. When I got married, I did want to be "open" to as many children as "god" wanted. The final straw for me was my ectopic pregnancy. A dead embryo was more than my life, and the right of my 3 year old to have a mother, to them. They almost killed me because of the blind faith.
Yes, I had many, many reasons to leave, and actually hate, them.
karened1
(1 post)Narrow is the way and few will find it. That is what Jesus said. I have already figured out that I am a minority here. The church of Jesus Christ was not created to serve an earthly agendawill always habe someone stand ip for Hom. My husband and I serve God and his people. We don't have a big house, fancy cars and certainly no money. We do what we do because we love God and His people. Are we perfect? ONLY through Christ and His shed blood. So please don't throw the baby out with the bath water. The water is dirty....but the baby is worth keeping.
Liberal Insights
(109 posts)Response to paulbern77 (Original post)
felix_numinous This message was self-deleted by its author.
Blaze Diem
(3,384 posts)Yes, enough to buy political lobbists.
They need to be Taxed
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Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)It was one thing to keep people believing in the antique stories of a primitive time when most people lived in isolated rural areas and church was the only game in town. It's another to keep "faith" (which, as Mark Twain pointed out, is believing what you know ain't so) in a world full of vast reserves of information that is a keystroke away.
Europe caught on a lot sooner than the USA did, but I think this country will eventually largely reject religion. Of course, the Republicans are hard at work attempting to make sure this doesn't happen by trying to destroy our educational system and keep people swallowing fairytales from the past.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)its credibility. I have often said that the rw religions are the greatest threat to religion and I still believe that.
ThoughtCriminal
(14,271 posts)One thing I noticed many years ago at any service at a conservative, fundamentalist protestant church is that while Jesus is frequently mentioned, he is hardly ever quoted. Entire sermons about "Jesus" and "Salvation" without even one "Red Letter" read or mentioned. Mostly, it's a bit of Old Testament and lots and lots of Paul. (This is my own experience, not a study).
Paul was not one the Disciples, and never met Jesus. How did he get to define what Christianity would become and stand for? He was a genius at marketing I suppose, but it seems to me that he seriously undermined the teachings of Jesus. I sometimes wonder if that was his actual intent (Can't beat them, join them and subvert the message).
Where does the Sermon on the Mount fit in with Religious Right theology? Supply Side Jesus? Prospertity Gospel? Smart-Bomb your enemy? Worship Walmart? Pray in public so nobody suspects you're cheating on your spouse? Worry about witches? Elect leaders that you beleive will help make Armageddon happen so we can all go to a super vacation resort for eternity while everybody else burns in an eternal concentration camp?
If Satan existed and wanted to create a church to undermine the teachings of Christ and really make humanity suffer, I don't think it could do any better than what the religious right has become.
LynneSin
(95,337 posts)A man never prophesized in the old testament who was one of hundreds who spread Christianity throughtout the kingdom. But his message was more suitable to the people who wrote the bible in 300 AD
Liberal Insights
(109 posts)The only reasons that the "Christian Coalition" or "Religious Right" call themselves "Christians" is that Jesus is a lot more attractive to the world at large than is "Saint Paul" and it makes them feel better thinking of themselves as followers of "the Son of God", than of the guy from Tarsus.
But just watch and listen to them for a while and you'll find that they hardly ever quote Jesus, because he was such a Liberal. It's PAUL that they quote and follow because he provides them with so much conservative ammunition to use whom they want to despise : minorities, Jews, women, the unemployed, the non-believers, etc., as I show in his own words at http://liberalslikechrist.org/Paulvsall.html
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)Many people finally realize that god ain't nothing but dog spelled backwards!
LynneSin
(95,337 posts)There are amazing churches out there with progressive ideologies.
Those will thrive without a doubt!
lunasun
(21,646 posts)like Hindu Or Jewish or are they too much of a minority to track or dont comment?
Are Muslims losing the under 30 crowd too in US??
just wondering
since the total atheist count has increased
not trying to say anything at all
best news in OP IMO > Our new crop of church drop-outs is still very interested in alternatives to a selfish, hedonistic society. Justice is high on their agenda, and they are looking for opportunities for public service.
Warpy
(113,130 posts)They called us older Boomers "godless," after all, since we preferred sex and drugs and rock and roll to sitting in the pews of some stiff suburban church. However, among my own friends, some dropped back into going to church when they hit their late 30s and early 40s when their kids got old enough to beg to be taken. Even fellow atheists who still don't believe a word of it have continued to go after their kids have left home because of the community they found there.
ChuckGG
(1 post)I very much enjoyed reading your posting and I believe you have hit the nail on the head.
I have been an atheist since I was a small child. I am too pragmatic and, in my opinion, realistic to believe in the (pardon) "hocus pocus" part of religion.
That said, the teachings in the church are reasonable just as we learned from ancient Greek and Roman mythology and from fables and other "life teaching" stories.
But, we have today. And, what I see as a turn-off to young people is the hypocrisy and money-grubbing we see in the churches. Some churches want to see your financial statement before you can become a member so as to ensure you are tithing enough! That is just rude. All the social hangups with abortion and even secular gay marriage makes little sense to young people.
Like many fraternal organizations such as the Masons and the Eastern Star, the need for this type of "social inter-connection" has been replaced by other means of socialization. The church just does not seem to fit with the times and does not seem to provide any benefit for young people. It all seems very clear to me and the explanations quite reasonable, good or bad.
Is there any solution for the churches? Should they just continue because they always have been around? I do not know. As people become more and more educated, this supernatural bent the churches always push seems pretty unrealistic. If the churches spoke of the events and the bible in a more metaphorical way, perhaps people could relate better. Also, the preachers just don't seem to carry the "respect and fear" that they used to. Given some of the hypocritical actions of some, is it any wonder? When, in this day and age, you hear some preacher rant on about how the world will collapse into the Abyss of Hell (already a marginal belief) because two men want to get legally married (having nothing to do with a church), you not only wonder about the preacher's teachings but merely about the man's sanity and connection to the "real world."
More than one of us has listened to politicians such as Santorum, Bachmann, and Perry, and wondered with their statements, laced with religious dogma, if they were actually connected to the real world. Bachmann famously looked like a deer in the headlights when a little girl asked her why she hated her two mommies. In a nutshell, these people and many of the preachers seem like an anachronism - people out of touch with the times and reality, or living in their own reality to the exclusion of others. On the outside looking in, it simply is bizarre. But, all of these people are older and eventually will die off. The young people will take over and they are a product of a global community and the Hubble Space Telescope and the CERN Collider. The "hocus pocus" still taught by the churches seems as out of date as Hercules holding up the heavens. Great mythology and a great story about the burdens of life, but not realistic.
If the churches could find some mission that fits in today's society, they stand a chance. If they continue to promote ignorance and isolationism from facts, they are doomed to the dustbin of history.
topcat007
(43 posts)Institutions are destroying individuality.
topcat007
(43 posts)Everything else will take care of itself.
Anonymousecoview
(225 posts)Many Christians fear loosing tradition, yet even the healthiest horses shed hair. What am I getting at? The Church is a horse? Perhaps one of the most significant losses in Christian thinking has been our ability to understand humanity consisting of living beings, even before our humanity. Imagine the 2 Billion Christians bent on restoring respect for those in poverty because of their courage in maintaining Indigenous sustainable lifestyles in the face of materialist exploitation of the environment. Our philosophy as Christians remains politically motivated, perhaps attempting to please the Overlord, while forgetting the Lord of Creation.