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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
Mainline Protestant churches are dying
- Thread starter FireDragon76
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I mean language about God is always going to be culturally contingent, and reflective of the culture in which it is used.
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Interestingly, according to Ryan Burge (a social science professor who studies this stuff and posts at Graphs About Religion) the top reason why people de-church is because they moved and never bothered to find a new one.
Ryan Burge explains ‘casual dechurching’ – Baptist News Global
The majority of Americans leaving the church do so for rather humdrum reasons, sociologist of religion Ryan Burge said during a recent episode of the “CBF Podcast.”
baptistnews.com
Robert P Jones at PRRI does some similar kinds of work. I am an engineer so always want to see the data
2023 PRRI Census of American Religion: County-Level Data on Religious Identity and Diversity
The 2023 PRRI Census of American Religion provides an updated analysis on religious trends in America, including new, comprehensive county-level estimates on religious affiliation and diversity in the…
www.prri.org
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My family moved to a new church in 2019 because our younger daughter wanted to be involved in the youth program; covid blew that up and by the time we were going back she was off to college. After that I found that I was not attending for months on end - mostly because it is too far away - so have been looking at churches closer to my home and only mainline churches fit the bill for me at this point due to LGBTQ inclusion.
Some congregations are very depressing to visit, with almost nobody attending and as a 50-something I feel like the youngest person in the sanctuary; they have beautiful folks to talk to and who clearly love God and each other, but there is no long-term viability. But a few seem to be thriving which gives me hope. Recently I was at an Episcopal parish for one of their family Sundays, and there were about 20 little kids up front for the children's homily, and 15-20 teenagers eating pizza after service before they left for some fun activity that afternoon. Yes, lots of gray hair as well, but the (small-ish) sanctuary felt pretty full which was refreshing. My decision on what church to hook my wagon to for the (hopefully) next few decades will be heavily influenced by the apparent viability of the congregation.
I live in suburbia and every little town has a number of mainline churches, most of which seem non-viable long-term. Within a 20 minute drive of my house there perhaps 8 UCC and definitely 12 Episcopal parishes, most of which seem non-viable. Given the secularization of the country, we just have too many churches to possibly stay open. If they consolidated so that there were only 2 UCC and 4 Episcopal that close to me they may all be thriving right now, and when folks visit a thriving church they may be more likely to join. I know I am. Just a thought...
jason
Some congregations are very depressing to visit, with almost nobody attending and as a 50-something I feel like the youngest person in the sanctuary; they have beautiful folks to talk to and who clearly love God and each other, but there is no long-term viability. But a few seem to be thriving which gives me hope. Recently I was at an Episcopal parish for one of their family Sundays, and there were about 20 little kids up front for the children's homily, and 15-20 teenagers eating pizza after service before they left for some fun activity that afternoon. Yes, lots of gray hair as well, but the (small-ish) sanctuary felt pretty full which was refreshing. My decision on what church to hook my wagon to for the (hopefully) next few decades will be heavily influenced by the apparent viability of the congregation.
I live in suburbia and every little town has a number of mainline churches, most of which seem non-viable long-term. Within a 20 minute drive of my house there perhaps 8 UCC and definitely 12 Episcopal parishes, most of which seem non-viable. Given the secularization of the country, we just have too many churches to possibly stay open. If they consolidated so that there were only 2 UCC and 4 Episcopal that close to me they may all be thriving right now, and when folks visit a thriving church they may be more likely to join. I know I am. Just a thought...
jason
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Interesting story from a different part of the country. I live in the South (Orlando, Florida, specifically), and UCC churches are relatively rare, there's only about 2 within 12 miles. One is an historic Congregationalist church in an small town near Orlando (Winter Park), but my own congregation, which was built in an old suburban area in the 60's (now incorporated) is struggling. We have a fairly substantial endowment, but attendance is down from before the pandemic. Despite being LGBT inclusive, young people generally aren't interested.
Where I live, Episcopalians tend to be almost Fundamentalist, and aren't generally LGBT inclusive. They are very much like conservative Presbyterians with incense.
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Interesting. In New England my limited experience is that many Episcopal parishes are affirming, including that parish that I described. In June (and sometimes all year round) you will see rainbows on flags or signs outside of churches. The affirming parishes I have visited don't seem too hung up on the details of what you believe theologically, they have open communion tables, and almost seem to pride themselves on giving lots of space to foster curiosity about and God and faith. Of course not all are affirming; the tiny parish a couple of miles from my house does not appear to be.
Yes, young people are not interested in church much. And the new data coming out shows that in gen Z women are even less religious than the men, which is a new phenomenon. My elder daughter found the Episcopal church in college, and now that she has graduated has been getting involved in a parish. She says that there are plenty of young families with children and a bunch of older folks, but there are literally zero other people in her age group where she attends. She would probably have to move closer to a city to find a mainline church with a critical mass of people her own age. Part of me thinks that might be a good move for her, as most of the jobs in her field are in the city anyway.
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- Nov 28, 2005
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Where church-teaching and church-behavior glorifies the ethics of this world, there is very little to learn, and thus few bother to try.
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lismore
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Hello! One reason I often hear for people falling away from church is that they found walking into a new church too daunting, people seemed to be unfriendly, cliquey or it was hard to break in, socially. Regular churchgoers can regularly speak to people in their circle of friends at the church, form a clique and not be aware of new persons, especially if those churchgoers have been there for many years, it can become like an impenetrable barrier, invisible from the inside.
So when people move and try to find a new church, it may not be that they're not bothered, it may be the perception or the reality of not being made welcome, or walking into a church where everyone is in a pre-existing social clique and they feel excluded. A church needs to intentionally look out for and welcome strangers and newcomers.
God Bless
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If the leadership of a church delivers the motivation and the power of the Holy Spirit, that church thrives.
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The trend shown there is interesting (and consistent with other sources) because it seems that evangelicals are the largest decline. Until recently there were a lot more evangelicals than mainline. That's no longer true.Interestingly, according to Ryan Burge (a social science professor who studies this stuff and posts at Graphs About Religion) the top reason why people de-church is because they moved and never bothered to find a new one.
He is fascinating to listen to if you catch him on various podcasts. He was also a pastor at an American Baptist church that recently closed after having a tiny congregation that finally burned through their savings. He seems to think that perhaps in the 1960s and 1970s when civic religion was huge, it was just too socially costly to not be part of a church. So folks who did not really believe much may have been part of (for example) the local PCUSA church back then, but today people can just be a 'none' with no real consequences. Perhaps the decline in Christianity is simply revealing what has been there all along to some extent...Ryan Burge explains ‘casual dechurching’ – Baptist News Global
The majority of Americans leaving the church do so for rather humdrum reasons, sociologist of religion Ryan Burge said during a recent episode of the “CBF Podcast.”
Robert P Jones at PRRI does some similar kinds of work. I am an engineer so always want to see the data
I wish he broke out the data better, but among white Christians in the US, it looks like there are roughly equal numbers of evangelicals, Catholics, and non-evangelical protestants. They are all declining. Again, I wish he showed plots including all Christians...2023 PRRI Census of American Religion: County-Level Data on Religious Identity and Diversity
The 2023 PRRI Census of American Religion provides an updated analysis on religious trends in America, including new, comprehensive county-level estimates on religious affiliation and diversity in the…
There are some caveats though:
- Not everyone who is non-evangelical is mainline. I'd be curious to know more about that population
- This is how people identify in surveys. It doesn't translate into church attendance. At least in mainline churches, decline in attendance has been much sharper than these results indicate. I've seen surveys about church attendance. I don't believe any of them. Far fewer people actually attend than report that they did.
- This is the first time in years that the youngest cohort has (almost) as many Christians as the next oldeest cohort.
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d taylor
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I would guess any church that is dying, is not telling a lost people out in everyday life. How to receive God's free gift of Eternal Life salvation and become a permanent born again child of God. Then after the telling of how to receive Eternal Life, teaching them to become disciples, so they may go and do like wise.
These churches will cause their own demise, because most either do not believe in Jesus. Or if they do, they simply do not care about people outside of their group in regards to Eternal Life. Oh they may call themselves ministering to people feeding the poor, fighting for social causes they believe in, etc... but as for Eternal Life and the unbeliever. It is the last on the list of a churches ministry, if it is even on the list to began with.
Many of these churches may even hold to a universal salvation belief, so really there is no motivation to teach Eternal life to unbelievers.
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I've been visiting various churches in my local area, as I make a return to church-going. I really liked a local Wesleyan Church that is close to my residence and visited it often. When the children's church didn't want to take my 12 year old step-daughter and she was forced to sit in 'big Church' I had to go looking for something else. I visited an evangelical church in the same town and it was night and day between them. This evangelical church had grown so rapidly in the last few years that it was hard to find parking and even harder to find a seat to sit on in the service. It spilled out into the foyer, where people would sit on the lounge and watch the service on monitors in the foyer area. Some things are dying and some things are coming to life. That's been my personal experience. I'm sure God has a purpose for every church, whether it is in decline or bursting at the seams.
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In the Orthodox church we don’t have separate worship services for children and adults. Rather, Children are able to actively engage in the sights, smells, sounds and tastes of the Divine Liturgy, even tonsured as Psaltis or Readers, serving in the choir or the altar or at the chant stand.
I attribute this, and the fact we don’t have “cry rooms” or divide families during the sacred liturgy, as being a major reason for our growth (also the fact we still have children; one major problem with the liberal mainline churches is many of them have only elderly congregants, people too old to switch denominations, everyone else alienated).
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Yes, but the possibility always exist what is occurring is just part of cultural sorting more than actual long-term growth of evangelisation in the true sense: the person craving the radtrad aesthetics and already prone to wanting to have a traditional family structure gravitates to Orthodoxy, rather than being converted ex nihilo. Something not often discussed is how many people leave Orthodoxy every year as a practiced, living faith, not just enter it. And it's relatively easier for small religious movements in the US to have rapid growth compared to larger religious movements that tend to have more inertia.
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I've definitely seen some analysis suggesting that denominations like Orthodoxy are basically attracting the sexist/misogynist folks who are finding their attitudes are no longer welcome in other churches. That does seem in keeping with some of the comments I see from such folks online.
It's hard to tell how much that accounts for what's going on in real life, though, as opposed to what's just noise on the internet.
It's interesting; since I last posted in this thread, I've shifted parishes, dioceses, and to a different state (in Australia). My observation, based on comparing where I was, and where I am, is that leadership style is a very big deal. Over-controlling church leadership strangles the life out of a place.
It's hard to tell how much that accounts for what's going on in real life, though, as opposed to what's just noise on the internet.
It's interesting; since I last posted in this thread, I've shifted parishes, dioceses, and to a different state (in Australia). My observation, based on comparing where I was, and where I am, is that leadership style is a very big deal. Over-controlling church leadership strangles the life out of a place.
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I'm more wary of younger pastors. They rarely have depth of life experience, particularly in the western cultural context that tends to favor propositional knowledge over participation/formation or other forms of knowledge. What increasingly is happening: people with genuine existential or experience knowledge, wisdom, or insight, increasingly find church structures either irrelevant, or even hostile.
Recent research data in the US actually suggests that the "Nones" report having more spiritual or mystical experiences than one might expect, at surprisingly high rates. People may not be leaving churches because they are becoming "secular" in the old sense, but because churches aren't a container big enough for their experiences.
Are ‘nones’ spiritual instead of religious?
In our survey, 49% of “nones” say they think of themselves as spiritual or that spirituality is very important in their lives. And 54% say they sometimes
www.pewresearch.org
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Hmm. How young is "younger"?
I see a big difference between the clergy young enough to have been formed during or after the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and those formed before it. The younger ones are more alive to problems of power, more aware of boundaries, consent, coercion, and manipulation; more humble about their own potential to do harm, even if well meaning.
But I wasn't formed in a tradition that neglected practical or action-reflection models of learning, so maybe that's more an American thing?
I think there is some truth to this, yes.
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I don't have a hard and fast rule, it's just a trend I noticed. All that pastors/priests that gave off the "unsafe religious person" vibes, or actually did real harm, were all south of 40, and they were almost all male. I've encountered a few women that seemed perhaps not completely tethered, but never the kind of "this person could be dangerous in the wrong circumstances" (I don't mean physically dangerous, but spiritually malignant). Those were all younger men, with rare exceptions.
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Ahh. I've had enough problems with older clergy not to see that as a generational thing!
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