A Christian Decline?

    Recently the Pew Research Center, one of the leading polling organizations in the nation, released data on a survey they have been conducting about religious identity and religious "switching", dating all the way back to 1972. At the same time, they attempted to extrapolate these data so as to predict what the religious landscape would look like in the year 2070. Admittedly a difficult task, if not an interesting one. 

    I won't summarize the entire project starting in 1972, but their most recent meta-survey conducted in 2019 surveying 15,000 adults shows that in a nutshell, they found that people are giving up on Christianity. An even newer study using different language, predicts that by 2070 Christians will make up only half the population (currently, 64% of people identify as Christian). It would seem not only are people giving up on Christianity, but they will continue to do so. So, the question is not whether Christianity will decline; but how quickly and how deeply.

    Peter, why are you writing about this? Well, Sancho, I've got a little juice in this. As many of my readers know, I grew up the son, grandson, and nephew of Protestant ministers. And while their theological interpretations didn't always align, they agreed on most of the big issues and these are the types of believers, along with many old friends and relatives, the Pew Research survey was targeting. Call it a sense of familial concern.  On the other hand, there's a part of me that thinks maybe this isn't the dire situation that Christian leaders are making it out to be. Uh oh...

    The survey tells us that nearly a third of the people who say they are Christian eventually switch to "none" or "nothing in particular". And if you were raised in a non-religious home, only 20 percent of those people actually become Christians. So in a vacuum, those numbers do not bode well for the future of normative Christianity. But...and there's always a but.

    I think there is something different going on. Many of these people who are leaving their home church/denomination are in the 21-40 age group. They are liberal, and conservative, and while they are leaving for mostly theological reasons as well as for reasons having to do with social issue(s), they are still clinging to the label "Spiritual." While this can be interpreted many ways, I would argue it's further proof that we are becoming a gnostic nation. By that I mean (and understand that I'm making generalizations here), everyone has their own Jesus. It's the Jesus that walks and talks with one as they are out and about in their daily lives. It's a Jesus who is a passerby and a watcher of people. And this Jesus is not only antithetical to the Jesus one finds in Matthew, Luke, and John, but it's a Jesus that is uniquely American. And these people are doing what the ancient Gnostics taught us to do; to try and find the light of knowledge that is deep within the rock of the self. The light that connects us to that higher being somewhere out there in the cosmos. And even if one is unable to completely find that light of knowledge, the journey itself can impart wisdom along the way.

    A Gnostic sermon, Peter? Sorry Sancho, I got a little carried away there! Maybe next time. Anyway, it seems that people identifying themselves as "NONES" have increased by leaps and bounds over the last decade. And the main reason for this switching is that these younger, educated people have decided they aren't Christians anymore, as that term is properly understood. They are not NONES in the atheistic sense, they are NONES in the "The modern church isn't speaking to me" sense. 

    Now, everyone has a reason for this: churches are more liberal, churches are more conservative, preachers yapping about politics from behind the pulpit instead of "preaching the Word." They have decided to turn their back on the idea that we are all fallen and born with original sin. Subsequently, they resent being guilted into believing. Or maybe they have taken Ian McKellen's line from The DaVinci Code to heart; "As long as there has been one God, there has been killing in his name." If you were to ask me, I'm sure there are many young people who are tired of the literal interpretation of the Bible by their preachers, and who would have liked to hear the word "metaphor" more often. To this day, I'm convinced that many evangelical colleges and seminaries have never used the word, 'METAPHOR.' But I digress... Some have argued that as society advances, secularization is inevitable. Globalization, war, technology, etc., make it harder to believe. I'm not sure about that.  

    The bottom line is, churches are losing people. If the Pew Research poll is even remotely accurate, the percentage of atheists or non-believers has stayed steady for decades. So we are talking about a large group of people who yearn for something to believe in, even something that still connects them in a certain way to their Protestant/Catholic/Evangelical, or even Jewish, upbringing, yet they are not finding it in the normative churches where people have worshipped for centuries. To be blunt, it would seem normative Christianity is a "dead man walking." And while those church leaders may find that conclusion "ungodly," I disagree. I will leave it up to you, faithful reader, to decide whether or not this is a good or bad thing. But I will say this. We get our religions from our poetry. The ancient Greeks got their religion from the tales of Homer. A small tribe of Semites turned the early stories of Creation, to Noah and the flood, on to Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and Moses into a religion of The Book that was later co-opted and became a juggernaut of belief called Christianity. And Muslims took the writings of Muhammad and introduced the world to Islam. Are there other works of prose or poetry to build, maybe not a religion, but a life around? I know it's crazy, but I hold out for William Shakespeare or Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson. Because in the end, the only difference between sacred literature and secular literature is a political decision. 

    But is a specifically Christian revival possible? I don't know. Is there a new Billy Graham waiting in the wings to help restore a new Jerusalem? Or is there another prophet with his feet firmly in the non-normative liturgy to help steer a secular revival? And is a new Jerusalem, Gnostic or normative, even desirable? Are there events such as war, famine, economic depression that could bring about a new revival and a new Jerusalem? I am not a seer. But I hold out hope for something. Something that can coexist with Caesar's authority here on earth. Something that can allow us to live our lives day to day, while also helping us to strive for the 'better angels of our nature.' 

write to Peter at: magtour@icloud.com