Number of Americans who don't identify as Christian but claim 'personal committment to Jesus' nears record high: survey

Personal faith typically has lagged behind church participation in the process of secularisation. This has been the case in Europe and Australia, and it's no different in the US. But in time, even personal faith is declining.

FireDragon76 said:

Personal faith typically has lagged behind church participation in the process of secularisation. This has been the case in Europe and Australia, and it's no different in the US. But in time, even personal faith is declining.

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Personal faith needs community, koinonia to be healthy. But if one cannot fund a faith community to share in, trust in and worship with the real earthly connection with others is lacking and we wither. I have issues with my own but I consider it like family and will never leave it.

Main reasons are hypocrisy in the church, the false prosperity gospel, and Christians using the rest of the Bible to marginalize the teachings of Christ.

And AI may have something to do with it. I tried to place into scrutiny the whole Bible. The AI made an exception to the teachings of Jesus and found faults everywhere else.

The rest of the Bible just reflected the corrupt/flawed human nature, promoted unsustainable lifestyles that contributes to the widening social inequality, destruction of the natural environment, and also for being used to justify unlawful wars according to AI.

False?

But these are the very things strongly impacting the younger generations today and the very things Jesus stood against. This is unsurprising and the trend is probably going to see even higher numbers in the future.

They probably see a disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and what they perceive a Christian is. Christians get all lumped together by the media and not in a flattering way. While the teachings of Jesus, ring true and appeal to many people.

jacks said:

They probably see a disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and what they perceive a Christian is. Christians get all lumped together by the media and not in a flattering way. While the teachings of Jesus, ring true and appeal to many people.

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And we all tend to pick and choose our "favorite" teaching while ignoring others.

jacks said:

They probably see a disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and what they perceive a Christian is. Christians get all lumped together by the media and not in a flattering way. While the teachings of Jesus, ring true and appeal to many people.

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In a society of spectacle, you can't expect much more.

Then it is a False Christ they are identifying with.

To many of them I am sure a personal commitment to Jesus is 'do unto others' & that's the extent.

The Gospel is he is sending us out to reach them.

Typically when things like this show up, posts think people dislike churches for various reasonsn. Conservatives think people are rejecting churches becaue they're too liberal. Liberals think they are rejectinng churches because they're too conservative.

My own experience with folks like this is that it's no specific problem with churches. They just don't see any reason to get up on Sunday to go to church. They see following Jesus as a matter of how they live.

hedrick said:

Typically when things like this show up, posts think people dislike churches for various reasonsn. Conservatives think people are rejecting churches becaue they're too liberal. Liberals think they are rejectinng churches because they're too conservative.

My own experience with folks like this is that it's no specific problem with churches. They just don't see any reason to get up on Sunday to go to church. They see following Jesus as a matter of how they live.

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Usually when this is the case, it is a Jesus of their own creation. The kind of Jesus that is like them. Very few know the Jesus of the Bible anymore.

hedrick said:

Typically when things like this show up, posts think people dislike churches for various reasonsn. Conservatives think people are rejecting churches becaue they're too liberal. Liberals think they are rejectinng churches because they're too conservative.

My own experience with folks like this is that it's no specific problem with churches. They just don't see any reason to get up on Sunday to go to church. They see following Jesus as a matter of how they live.

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I agree.

I think it fits with broader disintegration of institutions in US culture, not necessarily conservative vs. liberal politics. Also, Mainline decline seems to fit changing social patterns, towards more individualism and less belonging in general. Bowling Alone noted general decline in civic participation in general in the 1990's, for instance. It's not just about churches, it's about the US moving to a low trust society where people no longer value any kind of real community. Also, the US was deeply shaped by a kind of Protestantism that prioritized propositional knowledge and doctrine as the basis of real religion- many people have vague beliefs about God ( therapeutic moralistic deism of Christian Smith), but they don't connect that with the idea of participating in a religious community, because they live in a cultural mindset where they haven't been taught or shown how that's got any relevance.

Christian Smith notes in the last couple of years a move beyond Therapeutic Moralistic Deism, into a kind of eclectic "New Age" spirituality being a bigger phenomenon. Many young people have eclectic beliefs in things like magic mushrooms, shamanism, crystals, tarot, horoscopes, magic, power of intentionality and positive thinking (New Thought), and UFO's providing some sense of enchantment. In addition, New Thought style churches (Marianne Williamson), which emphasizes personal empowerment and a sense of the divine and human not being so rigidly separated, is also appealing to some people in this space and some of these churches are growing and supplanting Mainline Protestantism in some areas (I see this at the local MCC, some of the people also sometimes attend the local Unity church).

Nathan Jacobs, an Eastern Orthodox artist, theologian, and philosopher, who has done field research on the topic of spirituality and the nones, has noted that an enchanted worldview semes to be on the rise among younger people, compared to past generations: a vague belief in an impersonal ultimate reality, that everything "works out" as a kind of impersonal justice (karma without the specific Hindu associations), and that there is a sense that our lives are interconected in a web of meaning. But there's generally a question mark about ultimate meaning and significance, especially notions of life after death, etc., and there's a great deal of mistrust in the perceived Christian narrative of the world among younger generations.

So it does seem like there's a change in the cultural mood towards a greater sense of mystery and enchantment, but it's not necessarily true that churches can easily take advantage of that, for all sorts of reasons.

hedrick said:

Typically when things like this show up, posts think people dislike churches for various reasonsn. Conservatives think people are rejecting churches becaue they're too liberal. Liberals think they are rejectinng churches because they're too conservative.

My own experience with folks like this is that it's no specific problem with churches. They just don't see any reason to get up on Sunday to go to church. They see following Jesus as a matter of how they live.

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It's a symptom of radical individualist culture. While some are quick to criticize these folks, and some of it is warranted, the reality is that Americans just don't value community the way we once did, the only thing that matters is the individual. There's no recognition of the fact that we need other Christians to hold us accountable, that we need other Christians to refine our understanding of Jesus, that we need other Christians to make use of our spiritual gifts. The sense of church as a community is largely gone, and that sense compounds the extreme individualism that pervades American culture.

Fervent said:

It's a symptom of radical individualist culture. While some are quick to criticize these folks, and some of it is warranted, the reality is that Americans just don't value community the way we once did, the only thing that matters is the individual. There's no recognition of the fact that we need other Christians to hold us accountable, that we need other Christians to refine our understanding of Jesus, that we need other Christians to make use of our spiritual gifts. The sense of church as a community is largely gone, and that sense compounds the extreme individualism that pervades American culture.

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With younger generations, the individual is starting to be deconstructed as well. Sometimes this results in nihilism, depression, and existential dread (climate change is a big factor here), but other times young people are turning to various unconventional or self-styled spiritualities, political and social activism, etc. It may not be the immediate revival of churches per se, but it's very likely the beginnings of an inflection point in the cultural mood. Some Christian denominations may be experiencing growth (particularly Eastern Orthodoxy, or a few historic Mainline churches: I have noticed more young people at the local Episcopalian cathedral downtown when I have visited), but it's hard to tell if this will be a lasting trend. As Boomers die off, I suspect the societal inertia will dramatically loosen, since they were the first big generation heavily shaped by neoliberalism.

FireDragon76 said:

With younger generations, the individual is starting to be deconstructed as well. Sometimes this results in nihilism, depression, and existential dread (climate change is a big factor here), but other times young people are turning to various unconventional or self-styled spiritualities, political and social activism, etc. It may not be the immediate revival of churches per se, but it's very likely the beginnings of an inflection point in the cultural mood. Some Christian denominations may be experiencing growth (particularly Eastern Orthodoxy, or a few historic Mainline churches: I have noticed more young people at the local Episcopalian cathedral downtown when I have visited), but it's hard to tell if this will be a lasting trend. As Boomers die off, I suspect the societal inertia will dramatically loosen, since they were the first big generation heavily shaped by neoliberalism.

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Yes, and while it has been a slow burn it's entirely to be expected when the underlying philosophical commitments that have driven culture since Descartes and other early modern thinkers with the heavy adoption of nominalism and atomistic/mechanistic conceptions of underlying reality. It's inevitable that such positions result in rendering fundamental aspects of humanity as vapors which is bound to send folks sprialing into nihilism or towards more holistic pictures of what it means to be human.

FireDragon76 said:

With younger generations, the individual is starting to be deconstructed as well. Sometimes this results in nihilism, depression, and existential dread (climate change is a big factor here), but other times young people are turning to various unconventional or self-styled spiritualities, political and social activism, etc. It may not be the immediate revival of churches per se, but it's very likely the beginnings of an inflection point in the cultural mood. Some Christian denominations may be experiencing growth (particularly Eastern Orthodoxy, or a few historic Mainline churches: I have noticed more young people at the local Episcopalian cathedral downtown when I have visited), but it's hard to tell if this will be a lasting trend. As Boomers die off, I suspect the societal inertia will dramatically loosen, since they were the first big generation heavily shaped by neoliberalism.

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Around where I live, boomers are the only ones left in a lot of churches. I’ve heard (and seen to a small extent) that kids high school age are starting to come to church, often without parents, invited by other teens. It is the generations between boomers and these teens that is missing.

Personally I believe that people need a reason to live, something that drives them and gives meaning life, and the ever-changing political landscape, the protest-for-hire doesn’t cut it for most people and church is filling the void that those in-between generations have had but don’t understand in a world where every want is easily satisfied.

Fervent said:

Yes, and while it has been a slow burn it's entirely to be expected when the underlying philosophical commitments that have driven culture since Descartes and other early modern thinkers with the heavy adoption of nominalism and atomistic/mechanistic conceptions of underlying reality. It's inevitable that such positions result in rendering fundamental aspects of humanity as vapors which is bound to send folks sprialing into nihilism or towards more holistic pictures of what it means to be human.

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A few respond with nihilism, but others respond with irony. In fact that's a mood of our time among some in the culture. Deconstruction has, for some, caused them to become more aware of how their minds have been colonized by forces outside of themselves, in looping and pointless patterns.

Maybe that's one reason aesthetics like vaporwave have became popular, or the new genre of horror are endless brightly lit, dingy yellow hallways. Loops of repetition define the new aesthetics, what Mark Fisher called hauntology, often treated with ironic amusement. And that's the new mood of our time, often tinged with a sense of horror. Whether it's the Backrooms or Barbie, there's a sense that life isn't quite real anymore, that it's all colonized by ideology, buzzwords, marketing and cultural fragments, in endless repitition. At best, in films like Barbie, this is played up for laughs and a kind of performative sincerity, not a sense of genuine encounter. It's still operating within modernity's hollow landscape, just now with an ironic distance that wants to whistle past the graveyard of despair, with attempts at transcendence, (a mono no aware here, a lacrimae rerum there) that are more aesthetically ungrounded than genuine.

The problem with irony is that it can't sustain life forever. Eventually, the laughter stops and what you are left with is more akin to horror and despair.

From a Christian standpoint, I don't think a return to a thin ontology, as in Evangelicalism, will work, the looping matrix of symbols and signifiers can't be unseen. Many people seek actual depth, and even the hauntology has its own uncanny grandeur. But for depth to be sustainable, it also has to be grounded. Think of Franciscan, Anglican, or Orthodox spirituality with grounded rythms of living, honoring the created world and the body as sacred (not merely amusing as in postmodernism, or horrifying, as in some forms of Protestant or Catholic thought).

here's a link to a description of mono no aware, the Japanese concepts of pathos of things: Mono no aware - Wikipedia similar to the Latin phrase, lacrimae rerum ("tears of things" ) Lacrimae rerum - Wikipedia

Fervent said:

It's a symptom of radical individualist culture. While some are quick to criticize these folks, and some of it is warranted, the reality is that Americans just don't value community the way we once did, the only thing that matters is the individual. There's no recognition of the fact that we need other Christians to hold us accountable, that we need other Christians to refine our understanding of Jesus, that we need other Christians to make use of our spiritual gifts. The sense of church as a community is largely gone, and that sense compounds the extreme individualism that pervades American culture.

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Perhaps. But you'd need to look at all community involvement, not just church. There's a lot more communities available to people, not to mention online interaction. I'd want to look at all participation, not just chuches, before saying that younger people don't value community.

hedrick said:

Perhaps. But you'd need to look at all community involvement, not just church. There's a lot more communities available to people, not to mention online interaction. I'd want to look at all participation, not just chuches, before saying that younger people don't value community.

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I don't think it's specifically a younger people issue, but a long seated individualism that is at the heart of Western values. Online avenues exacerbate the issue as well, since they foster a disconnect while providing ersatz relationships. Even in ordinary community activities, there is still a distinct sense of individualism rather than being genuine unions as the community is treated as a means to satisfy individual desires rather than seeing the individual as a component of a broader community.

hedrick said:

Perhaps. But you'd need to look at all community involvement, not just church. There's a lot more communities available to people, not to mention online interaction. I'd want to look at all participation, not just chuches, before saying that younger people don't value community.

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Community participation is lower in general among younger people, but it's not a new trend, even though it's been worsening. It's been going on for decades. Young people use cellphones to participate in virtual communities, or to organize protests or discuss ideas, if they are civicly engaged at all (many aren't)

Some of this isn't a moral issue so much as a systemic issue. Younger people are often busier and have less free time to dedicate to joining or participating in civic institutions. More gig work and irregular work schedules means there's less regular free time to schedule routine meetings or gatherings, like church or traditional civic groups.