37 Comments

Gregory K. Laughlin
February 16th, 2011 | 10:26 am

I doubt most serious Missouri Synod Lutherans would consider themselves “evangelical” as that term is commonly used today, they they might remind you that they were the original evangelicals.

I would love to see a chart comparing the size and direction of denominational/communion growth and the fertility rates for the families that are members of those denominations/communions. The Catholic Church is undoubtedly growing because so many immigrants are Catholic (and not only do the immigrants add to their numbers, but first generation immigrants have higher than average fertility rates). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is undoubtedly growing because their members still have higher than average fertility rates (while their fertility rates are falling, they are still above the national average and Utah still has the highest fertility rates in America).

For nearly forty years, American-born women whose parents were both born in America have had below replacement rate fertility. Sooner or later that was going to impact church growth among many other measures.

The decline of denominations is no demographic accident. It is a result of accepting the wisdom of man (or a woman, namely Margaret Sanger) over the counsel of God.

[127:1] Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
[2] It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

[3] Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
[4] Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
[5] Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127 ESV)

[13] And this second thing you do. You cover the LORD’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. [14] But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. [15] Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. (Malachi 2:13-15 ESV)

[7] Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. (Galatians 6:7 ESV)

Rod Dreher
February 16th, 2011 | 10:32 am

According to research findings presented in the book “American Grace,” by Harvard’s Bob Putnam and Notre Dame’s David Campbell, if you remove Hispanic immigrants from the Catholic population, then Catholic membership in the US is declining at the same rate as mainline Protestantism. By far the fastest growing religious demographic in this country are the “Nones” — that is, people who claim to believe in God, but who decline to identify themselves with a particular church or confessional tradition. I’ll have to go back to the book to check the data, but I’d be interested to know the extent to which the growth among Pentecostals and Mormons has to do with immigrants to the US embracing those faiths. When I lived in Dallas, there were no small number of Hispanic immigrants who came to this country, left Catholicism, and joined Spanish-speaking Pentecostal congregations.

Steve Billingsley
February 16th, 2011 | 10:36 am

I spent several years in ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. In 1968 when the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren to form the United Methodist Church, the church had a little over 11 million members in the United States. Now, 42 years later their membership in the U.S. is under 7.8 million. That is a loss of 30% of their membership. That is staggering. And as one who grew up in and loves the UMC, it is incredibly sad to me.

I can diagnose the reasons pretty clearly (and I am not the only one, it isn’t that hard). Pedestrian leadership based upon an incredibly outmoded bureaucratic model that combines all the faults of a sclerotic bureaucracy with none of the benefits of a centralized hierarchy with clear lines of authority (like the Roman Catholic Church as an example). Insipid theology and a tone-deaf political agenda that is and has long been out of step with the majority of its members in the local churches. And half-hearted attempts at relevancy which focuses on style but ignores substance.

But it still makes me sad.

Sean
February 16th, 2011 | 10:53 am

I think the main difference here is between churches that use the “once a member, always a member” way of tallying their figures and those who don’t. From what I gather, the mainline churches are more scrupulous about tallying that information than low-church protestants, Catholics, eastern Orthodox, mormons (of which church I’m still officially a member) and muslims.

It wouldn’t surprise me if most -if not all- the growth the pentacostals claim to be seeing is just coming from believers switching churches all the time.

Dan Deeny
February 16th, 2011 | 11:26 am

Rod Dreher mentions a very important fact. I’d like to see First Things write about the decline in the Catholic Church if Hispanic immigrants are left out of the numbers. This article might include the interesting fact that the Catholic Church in the U.S. is, in many respects, strictly an immigrant church.

ianthis
February 16th, 2011 | 12:14 pm

I am not sure how the immigration status of Catholics enters into the equation. The article is about the changing demographics of Christianity in America, and by the numbers certain denominations are growing larger than others, which would imply more ultimate influence on society etc. There was no implication in the article that denominations only grow through conversion. That new members are often Hispanic or that the Catholic church grows “only” because of differing fertility rates sounds odd to my ears. We want an article about where white middle class Americans go to church? Why does this matter at all?

Brandon
February 16th, 2011 | 1:16 pm

Very much in agreement with ianthis here. Also, the Catholic Church in the U.S. has pretty much always been an immigrant church. The decline of the non-Hispanic Catholic population would, of itself, tell us nothing; we’d need to see how it connected with the dissipation of previously healthy non-Hispanic immigrant communities (Irish, Italian, etc.), or the deterioration of Catholic life within them.

Gregory Alms
February 16th, 2011 | 1:19 pm

I am wondering if anyone has good solid numbers for the various Orthodox churches in America.

Gregory K. Laughlin
February 16th, 2011 | 1:30 pm

“That new members are often Hispanic or that the Catholic church grows “only” because of differing fertility rates sounds odd to my ears. ”

It may sound “odd to [your] ears, but it has been argued based on pretty convincing evidence that the greater fertility rate of Christians was a primary reason that it gained so much influence in the Roman West during the first three centuries of the Christian era. The rejection of contraception, abortion and infanticide by the early Christians and an embrace of larger families has been a primary, if not the primary, means by which the number of faithful has grown through out most of the past two millennia. More importantly, this openness to new life (physical as well as spiritual) is in complete accord with the message of Scripture which again and again presents fruitfulness as the blessing of God and barrenness as a curse.

In our own time, we have reversed the Biblical paradigm, answering “yes” to John Chrysostom’s rhetorical questions, ” “What then? Do you contemn the gift of God [fertility and children], and fight with His laws? What is a curse [infertility and childlessness], do you seek as though it were a blessing?”

Failure to embrace and be open to new life is to embrace and surrender to death and so it is with those denominations and communions whose members have rejected openness to how ever many children God chooses to bless them with. These denominations and communions are shrinking in large part because their members, with their explicit or implicit approval, chose a path that leads to shrinkage.

Rod Dreher
February 16th, 2011 | 2:32 pm

I’ve never seen reliable stats for Orthodox churches in the US, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Orthodox numbers are in similar decline. According to that big Pew survey from a couple of years ago, only 0.6 of Americans are Orthodox Christians. We barely rate a blip. That same survey found that nearly one in three Americans who were raised Catholic have left the Catholic Church.

That’s why it’s important that Catholic numbers are being sustained by high Catholic immigration. It’s not that “white” Catholics are better to have than Hispanic Catholics. It’s that the Catholic Church is having a lot of trouble holding on to its people, particularly once they have been assimilated to American norms. It shouldn’t surprise us that immigrants from religiously observant countries and cultures would arrive in this country holding on to their faith. The real test comes with the second and third generations. If large numbers of Catholics who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants no longer practice the faith, what does that tell you about the condition of that church?

There is no one reason, or two reasons, why people have fallen away from these churches, but my sense is that the freedom to leave the practice of a particular faith, or faith at all, without suffering social stigma has a lot to do with it, as well as the dramatic loss of theological substance and evangelical zeal across churches (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) go far to account for this steady collapse.

DBP
February 16th, 2011 | 2:34 pm

If I may, I understood the point of “ianthis” to expresses puzzlement to qualifying statements about the “type” of growth in Roman Catholicism. Rather than a criticism of openness to life or immigration, I too note that factors like national origin or birthrate have been used to somehow downplay the growth, as though it “doesn’t really count” for some reason.

My guess is that we could find sufficient reasons to mitigate any church’s growth if we were committed to do so. Then again, if my aunt had testicles, she’d be my uncle.

Rod Dreher
February 16th, 2011 | 2:51 pm

DBP: My guess is that we could find sufficient reasons to mitigate any church’s growth if we were committed to do so.

Well, yeah, just as we could find sufficient reasons to mitigate the bad news about any particular church’s growth if we really want to, along the lines of, “I may not spend much time with my children, but the time I do spend is QUALITY time.”

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that nearly all American churches are in significant decline, even as levels of religiosity (defined as a non-specific belief in God) remains steady. I’m pleased that the Catholics numbers remain high thanks to immigration, but if you only look at the raw numbers, you’ll reach a falsely optimistic conclusion. It might be the case that those newly-arrived immigrants will reinvigorate the ranks of Catholics. But I bet in the near long term, the children and grandchildren of those immigrants will be captured by the Moralistic Therapeutic Deist culture of contemporary America.

Anyway, I really do think raw numbers are a misleading measure of the state of any church. I do not agree, of course, that a church can afford to be indifferent to growth. But we all know that some churches give disproportionate emphasis to growth, leaving discipleship formation in the dust. Getting people in the door of the church for the first time shouldn’t be the end, but rather the beginning.

Rod Dreher
February 16th, 2011 | 3:11 pm

I apologize for hogging the platform, folks, but I do want to point out to Gregory K. Laughlin an anecdote Bob Putnam tells in “American Grace,” about the LCMS, with reference to the clergy-laity divide. He said he was giving a group of LCMS theologians a presentation about religion in America, and mentioned that the overwhelming majority of American Christians (87 percent) believe that a good person who doesn’t profess faith in Jesus Christ can go to heaven. Someone in the audience said that surely LCMS believers don’t take such a casual attitude toward salvation. Putnam instantly located data from the 2006 Faith Matters survey finding that 86 percent of LCMSers believe that.

“Upon hearing this news, these theologians were stunned into silence,” Putnam and Campbell write. “One wanly said that as teachers of the Word, they had failed.”

There’s a lot of confirmation bias in the way we think about religion in our country.

Brandon
February 16th, 2011 | 3:29 pm

If large numbers of Catholics who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants no longer practice the faith, what does that tell you about the condition of that church?

It might not tell us anything whatsoever about it; other factors enter into the mix, including social pressures outside the local community, increased mobility or changes in economic factors leading to a disconnection between generations, and the state and condition of the community itself. I wouldn’t deny that it might be a reason to be pessimistic, but just as it is important not to be too optimistic, it’s important not to be too pessimistic: this is not actually an uncommon situation for the Catholic Church in the U.S., which has usually been on the ropes except for immigrants (sometimes, especially early on, because of anti-Catholic biases in laws, sometimes because of anti-Catholic biases in society at large, sometimes because of failures within Catholic communities themselves).

Irene
February 16th, 2011 | 3:39 pm

Rod,

I’m not sure what the meaning of these statistics is, but that question is one upon which serious, traditional, pious, theologically well-informed and thoughtful Christians disagree. Most of the Orthodox priests I’ve heard from, for instance, say that we really don’t know about who will be saved, since salvation is always through Christ (but not necessarily by intellectual assent), by the grace and mercy of God — but we mostly only know that it’s a very dangerous thing for *us* to lack faith in Jesus.

DBP
February 16th, 2011 | 3:50 pm

Rod Dreher wrote: “I’m pleased that the Catholics numbers remain high thanks to immigration, but if you only look at the raw numbers, you’ll reach a falsely optimistic conclusion. It might be the case that those newly-arrived immigrants will reinvigorate the ranks of Catholics. But I bet in the near long term…”

You could be right. Or you might be wrong. I find it noteworthy that you qualify a potential reinvigoration of Catholicism and “bet” on a falling away in the “near long term.” Yet without qualification you assert that the raw numbers lead to false optimism.

To that, again, I say “maybe.” As others have noted, the Roman Catholic Church in America has long been in decline but for immigrants. Again and again.

Perhaps those in this latest wave will be captured by the prevailing culture and not be replaced themselves by other future immigrants. Or maybe a new and different set of immigrants will come along and continue this trend.

I write this not to mitigate the need for better and stronger discipleship nor to diminish the real decline across nearly every Church Body. But a) there is something to be said that these immigrants consistently swell Roman Catholic ranks rather than Episcopalian or Methodist pews. Likewise, b) growth may not be everything, but it is something. And rather than adopt or even tacitly condone a dismissive attitude toward the demographic nature or future efficacy of said growth, why not concentrate on how one of the very, very few growing churches may disciple that growth most effectively and c) what we in the other non-growing Bodies may be able to learn from them?

GingerMan
February 16th, 2011 | 4:09 pm

Look, the point of Rod’s pushback is that the implication of the post (specifically in the headline) is that the denominations that are not declining are doing something better or more effectively to promote faithfulness than those that are declining.

I suppose if one classifies “being geographically close to Mexico” as something the American Catholic Church is doing “right” then it really is great news. The point Rod is making is that if one looks at the retention rate and faith formation of native born Catholics (as documented in American Grace, which I am also reading) the numbers are not so rosy.

It is true, as noted, that the current wave of immigrants may reinvigorate the church, but the concern that Rod is voicing is that they will adopt the mores and behaviors of their US born brethren after a generation (obviously unknowable) since that is the observed pattern of those who are presently in the care of the US Catholic Church.

Mike
February 16th, 2011 | 4:52 pm

Rod Dreher seems quite disturbed at these findings.

Perhaps a little more time trying to figure out why his brand of Christianity may be declining, and a little less time trying to explain away Catholic gains, would be time better spent.

Just a thought.

Rod Dreher
February 16th, 2011 | 4:57 pm

Thanks GingerMan — that is exactly my point. Besides, as someone who spent 13 years faithfully attending mass on Sundays and Holy Days in Catholic parishes, I rarely heard anything from the pulpit that would have been out of place in a mainline Protestant pulpit. I say that not as criticism, but only to indicate that once you take the Eucharist and liturgical specifics out of it, the ethos in contemporary Catholic parishes is more or less mainline Protestant … which is to say, typically American. This is the gist of the Moralistic Therapeutic Deism findings of Christian Smith and his team: that religious particularity in modern American life has been hollowed out and replaced by a bland, formless, contentless generic religiosity. This is something they found across nearly all American faiths — Mormons being a notable exception.

Irene, you misunderstand: I am not taking a position on whether or not anybody is going to Hell. My only point in context of this discussion thread is that dynamics in contemporary American religion defy easy categorization, and that it’s easy to succumb to confirmation bias –e.g., the idea, common among religious conservatives like me, that the decline in mainline membership is due to liberal religious standards, which implies that churches that espouse conservative religious principles are destined to succeed. I wish it were that simple.

Stephen M. Barr
February 16th, 2011 | 5:18 pm

One has to be careful. A study showed that 30% of people in the country who were raised Catholic have left the Catholic Church. Many people quote that as if it directly tells us what is going on *now*, as if all those people left recently. It doesn’t. It is an indicator of what has happened over the last seventy years. It says nothing about the rate at which people are now leaving or joining the Catholic Church. There was a huge efflux in the late 1960s and 1970s when the Church was in great turmoil. That is not to say that there are not also many leaving now.

There are several things going on simultaneously in the Catholic Church: Many leave, especially “cultural Catholics” who are Catholic by ancestry more than by conviction. But (a) there is a growing core of committed Catholics who tend to have large families. (The great majority of people who I meet who have large families, >3 children, are Catholic. And I personally know or have met many, many such people.) (b) There is an influx of converts who are quite theologically knowledgeable, orthodox, and zealous. And (c) there are immigrants. My experience is that the vibrant core of committed Catholics is actually growing due to these three factors. There are more young Catholics who know their faith than there were, say, 30 years ago. Morale — at least in the most committed sector of the Catholic Church in this country — is growing, I sense, despite the scandals of 2002 et seq. Younger clergy and seminarians are more orthodox and on fire. There is more zeal and activism among the laity. On many levels, from catechesis, to liturgy, to apologetics, to Catholic organizations and movements, to seminaries, there are signs of recovering health. I have no doubt that the total number of native-born Catholics in the US may still be declining at this moment. But, to use a mathematics term, one can only tell so much from “the first derivative”. Time will tell how the numbers will go. But there are many healthy trends and green shoots right now in the Catholic Church in this country.

Moreover, consider this: The most liberal of the mainline Protestant denominations are declining at the amazing rate of 2 to 3 % per year, according to the new stats we are discussing. The Catholic Church is growing at about 0.6%. For present immigration to explain the difference, it would have to account for 2.6% to 3.6% percent of 68 million, i.e. about 2 million people/year. But the number of Hispanic Catholics entering the US per year is far, far lower than that. It is not the per-annum inflow of new immigrants itself that could explain the increase in Catholic numbers. It is more likely the greater fertility of those who immigrated over the last 30 years or so. But then, I would have to echo the person who asked “so what?” If those people are having children and baptizing them as Catholics, that is a strength for the Church. Those baptized babies are native-born Catholics as much as my mother was, whose parents came as immigrants here from Ireland.

Any Catholic who lived through the chaos and confusion of the 60′s and 70′s must be struck by how much brighter the future looks now. I was recently talking to an extremely bright young senior at an Ivy League school (a physics major). He was telling me some of the exciting Catholic things going on at his campus.
He said, “It’s an exciting time to be a young Catholic.”

Stephen M. Barr
February 16th, 2011 | 5:33 pm

Another comment. Rod, you are young. You don’t have any first-hand experience of conditions in the Catholic Church in this country over decades. You are right that for a long time liberalism was eating away at the Church in this country. But my own experience is that one hears far fewer heterodox sermons now; finds far less liturgical idiocy; finds many more parishes and campus ministries where the fullness of the faith is preached; far more places where Catholics can learn about their faith — the Catechism, apologetics books, internet sites, Catholic TV and radio. In less than 2 weeks the last of the liberal catholic archbishops in the US will retire — replaced by a bishop who is a member of Opus Dei. A sign of the times. I am more hopeful now about the future of the Catholic Church in this country than I have been in my entire adult life.

Everhopeful
February 16th, 2011 | 6:17 pm

There is an unstated assumption underlying every comment here; that is, fewer people in the pews = decline. But is that necessarily the case? If the membership of, say, the Catholic church went down because nominal Catholics decided to leave as a group, would the church then be in “decline”? I realize that I’m bringing up a different and hypothetical scenario here than the one discussed above, but I’m just questioning the assumption.

Gregory K. Laughlin
February 16th, 2011 | 6:44 pm

@Everhopeful,

Well, if the reason there are fewer people in the pews is because Christians have rejected God’s word that children are a blessing from him and ignore his prophets word that God’s desire for marriage is Godly offspring, then, yes, that represents a decline because it reflects a decline in living out one’s faith.

@DBP,

Growth from new births is real growth, as is growth from immigration. That’s not my point. My point is that Christians stopped having large families and then are shocked to discover that there are fewer people in the pews a few years later. Conversion is wonderful and God is to be praised for it, but the fact is that throughout Christian history, much of the growth in numbers has come from Christians giving life to the next generation of Christians. And that appears to be part of God’s plan as revealed in Scripture.

Gregory K. Laughlin
February 16th, 2011 | 6:46 pm

@ Rod Dreher
February 16th, 2011 | 3:11 pm

Very good. Thanks for sharing that. (By the way, I’m neither Catholic nor Lutheran.)

David WL
February 16th, 2011 | 6:49 pm

I’m responding to Rod Dreher’s comment at 3:11 pm about the 86 % of LCMSers who believe that a person can get to heaven by being good.

I teach world religion at a private college. I was trying to compare the Buddhist teaching of “be lamps to yourselves” to Christianity. I asked: how do Christians believe a person can “saved”–hoping for an answer along the lines of “believe/trust/have faith in Jesus.”

The universal answer: “Keeping the Ten Commandments.”

GingerMan
February 16th, 2011 | 7:36 pm

@ Stephen M. Barr

I think this is exactly correct. One can only tell so much from extrapolation of the current trend. After all, trends change, but one can’t be assured which direction of course.

More pessimistic reading for those so inclined:

http://www.siena.org/December-2010/living-in-the-land-of-qnoneq.html

GingerMan
February 16th, 2011 | 8:23 pm

Also:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/americas-religious-marketplace-real-catholic-problem-new-sales

Excerpt:

“People are often a little befuddled when I present the full range of evidence, which puts a different light on things. From headlines, they may have the impression that the Catholic church is just bleeding members, but that’s out of context. You have to compare it to retention rates of other religious groups, and see it in terms of retention plus recruitment. It’s the net relationship between those two factors that’s so crucial.

Everybody’s losing members in this country, some even more than Catholics. In percentage terms, Catholic losses are not out of line with other groups. It’s on the recruitment side that Catholics are not doing as well. Protestants are losing lots of members too, but for every four Americans who are no longer Protestant, there are three who are Protestant today who were not raised that way. Protestantism is declining as a whole, but the recruitment rate is pretty good. Catholics are not replenishing their ranks through conversion in the same way.

There are two other key variables. One is immigration, and the other is higher-than-average fertility rates among Hispanic Catholics. If the only factor driving a religious group’s share of the population were conversion, the Catholic church would be declining.”

Chuck
February 16th, 2011 | 10:22 pm

I just ran across this forum while on the internet and I have only this to say. Perhaps our time would be better spent keeping our eyes on Jesus Christ rather than worrying about who gains and who loses.

Brandon
February 17th, 2011 | 12:24 am

I know you mean well, Chuck, but implying that everyone who expresses an opinion on the matter is unChristian is really not the way to go.

On the other comments, it’s not news — at least, it shouldn’t be news to anyone who’s not completely oblivious — that Catholics aren’t as assertive in proselytizing as Protestants are. But, again, this is not a particularly unusual problem for Catholics to deal with; and it should just as equally not be news that this is far, very far, from the worst conditions Catholics have known in the U.S. If Catholics have a crisis, it will be through some stupidity of our own, not through a general demographic trend.

I should say, too, that denominational affiliation is not as clearly useful a measure as one might think. It’s a crude summary, but it’s really not too far off to say that all of the mainline Protestant denominations at one time consisted of two groups, in some denominations called evangelicals and unitarians, and the mainlines rose to be mainlines in part because they were able to hold both groups in their midst through most of the nineteenth century and some of the twentieth. What Rod and others call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism has always been a major part of U.S. culture, and there is plenty of historical evidence that it has always been there; what has been changing (for quite some time now) is the ability of churches to guarantee that its adherents will be in the pews anyway, as church in general has become less necessary and convenient for social life. The real question here, and the question none of these numbers show us, and that perhaps none of them can, is how much the change is really just a change of label and shuffling of affiliations for a demographic phenomenon that isn’t really new.

jb
February 17th, 2011 | 1:39 am

Brandon

You came down on Chuck for no discernable reason. He did not imply anyone was un-Christian, he spoke as would any Pastor . . .

The numbers are never an issue. Jesus will separate the wheat from the tares . . . none of that is our business any more than are our miserable guesses as to the last days and the end of the world. We are out of our league completely, before we begin.

There is the Gospel, the Blessed Sacraments, the well-being of those in the faith in worship and the Mysteries, and the testimony of the faithful. Call it theosis, sanctification, holiness . . . very loaded terms, each . . .

But those are the matters of the faith.

Dreading crossing Joe twice in one night, I think (open to anyone’s criticism) that this whole thread is majoring in the minors.

One could say that, since Jesus said the “flock” at the end would be small and inconsequential, we might be better occupied making sure we are among the flock, rather than speculating inconsequentials and imagining they matter.

Dan Deeny
February 17th, 2011 | 10:21 am

Wow! What a fascinating debate!

Rod Dreher
February 17th, 2011 | 1:22 pm

Mike, you can be as snippily picayune as you like, but the fact of the matter is, membership in the Catholic Church, like almost all Christian churches (including, I believe, my own), is in real decline. One of my closest friends is a New York archdiocese priest, and he says many people have no real idea how serious the problem is. Here in Philly, where I now live, the problem is such that a friend of mine, a practicing Catholic deeply involved in his parish, openly worries about what’s going to be left for his children. You should be pleased by the Hispanic influx keeping Catholic numbers high, but don’t take false comfort from them. There are reasons why so many are leaving the Catholic Church (and the rate of conversion is nowhere near making up for the bleeding out), and why so many young Americans are declining to affiliate with any church, even as they claim to be believers. You and I should want to figure this out, because as those Hispanic immigrants become assimilated, they are probably going to go the way those who have been here for longer are going, unless something changes. I don’t think we who want to see authentic Christian faith thrive in this country have the luxury of believing our own PR. If you don’t want to hear this coming from a former Catholic, then go over to Sherry Weddell’s Siena Institute blog.

I have written at length on my old blog about Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, and how pervasive it is in American Christianity of all kinds, and how utterly debilitating it is to authentic Christianity. Brandon is right that there has always been a civic religion component to American Christianity, but I am convinced that we are in a quite different, and new, situation. For one, people no longer feel compelled to stick with the church they were born into, because there is no real social stigma to leaving it. Forty percent of living Americans have changed churches or religions, a number that’s only going to rise as older folks die off. For another, most people today believe that they have the (moral) right to pick and choose what to believe, that truth claims put forward by particular churches or faiths don’t have a strong claim on them. It’s a consumerist approach to religion. I am grateful for the freedom we have to change churches, or to leave religion altogether – I have certainly exercised that right – but when people cease to believe that truth can be proclaimed and taught authoritatively by a church, and when they believe that they themselves are the final arbiter of religious truth, we are in a very different situation than in the past. So, when I read something like:

Perhaps our time would be better spent keeping our eyes on Jesus Christ rather than worrying about who wins and who loses.

…I just slap my forehead over the deployment of pious cliche to short-circuit honest thought and discussion about a serious crisis. If the churches don’t attract people in this day and age, we should want to figure out why. Are some doing it better than others? Why? Can the rest of us learn anything from them? Is it the case that this or that church simply has to learn to live with fewer members to be true to its teachings — or is it possible for that church to preserve the teachings but present it to people in a way that makes it come alive for them? How do we guarantee the integrity of our tradition’s teaching under corrosive postmodern conditions? Etc.

It just won’t do for us conservative Christians to look at the liberal mainliners and think, “Thank God we’re not like that lot.” Why do you suppose it is that overwhelming numbers of American under the age of 30 – including many in our own churches — support same-sex marriage, even though conservative churches teach against it? Why do you suppose that liberal churches who embrace same-sex marriage are not benefiting from the alienation of younger Christians from the conservative churches on this issue? I think all of us are tempted to take what we see in our own little circles and generalize about religious conditions in our own churches, and in this country, from them. I urge you all to read “American Grace,” which, as I’ve indicated, is a book-length analysis of the findings of the comprehensive Faith Matters sociological surveys of religion in American life. There is something in there to challenge all of us, and our preconceptions. Conservative Christians think that the church would grow if only it would get more conservative. Liberal Christians think the church would grow if only it would get more liberal. Neither is exactly right. The challenges are enormously complex, and we cannot afford the comforts of confirmation bias — not if the church (whatever your church) is going to thrive in an increasingly hostile, or rather increasingly indifferent, culture.

DBP
February 17th, 2011 | 1:49 pm

Gregory K. Laughlin,

You wrote to me, “My point is that Christians stopped having large families and then are shocked to discover that there are fewer people in the pews a few years later. Conversion is wonderful and God is to be praised for it, but the fact is that throughout Christian history, much of the growth in numbers has come from Christians giving life to the next generation of Christians. And that appears to be part of God’s plan as revealed in Scripture.”

And I accept your premise fully. There was and is no argument here between us. My issue with your initial response was that I believed you had misread a particular concern and thereby answered a question that hadn’t really been asked. It was certainly answered well, again, I don’t think either I or the original poster to which you responded would necessarily argue in fact with what you have said. As a matter of fact, please know that as an Episcopal priest and father of four (soon to be five), I both preach and practice your Scriptural admonition.

And it doubles as a handy, albeit ad hoc evangelistic plan: Outnumber the Wicked.

Mike
February 17th, 2011 | 5:34 pm

[b]Mike, you can be as snippily picayune as you like[/b]

Please, Rod, no need to take any of this in a personal manner. I replied in short-fashion simply because I am not interested in long-winded debate. That is done by those more capable. But because some of us do not leave doctoral-length rebuttals does not automatically imply our replies are of little value.

As a Catholic, I may have a concern about the American Catholic Church; but it is not a crucial concern, because what is most important is that the Roman Catholic Church is still a strong institution on the worldwide scale. Growth here, strength there…and so it goes for this almost-two-thousand-year-old institution. Relative decline in America is really not that big of an issue. Let Her have two billion believers, or two, it does not matter: the Church is the Church.

To Stephen Barr, I share your confidence in the future of the Roman Catholic Church. Your examples are excellent. And may I add the proliferation of wonderful media outlets such as EWTN, which are doing yeoman’s work in teaching and instructing the faithful.

The Roman Catholic Church may want to paraphrase that old curmudgeon Mark Twain, and pronounce (not infallibly, of course) that the rumors of her demise are greatly exaggerated.

Rod Dreher
February 18th, 2011 | 8:39 am

Mike: As a Catholic, I may have a concern about the American Catholic Church; but it is not a crucial concern, because what is most important is that the Roman Catholic Church is still a strong institution on the worldwide scale. Growth here, strength there…and so it goes for this almost-two-thousand-year-old institution. Relative decline in America is really not that big of an issue. Let Her have two billion believers, or two, it does not matter: the Church is the Church.

That’s the sort of triumphalist quietism (if that’s not a contradiction in terms) that I believe we can’t afford. My Catholic friends don’t live in Africa; they live in Philadelphia, and the growth of the Catholic Church in Africa avails them little here. My orthodox Anglican friends may take comfort in the robust growth of Anglican Christianity in Africa — I know I do — but that doesn’t do them much good as Anglicans trying to build up the faith for their children in this place. Three cheers for Orthodoxy’s rebirth in the formerly communist lands — but I don’t live in Russia, and I’m trying to raise Orthodox children in a culture with its own particular set of challenges. If traditional Christianity of whatever iteration is declining in the United States, then that affects me and those I love, even if I’m not a communicant of that particular church. I am no longer a Catholic, for example, but I am convinced that the moral strength and health of my culture depends on a vibrant and faithful Catholic Church. I don’t see how anyone who has actually looked at the data can be as complacent as you are. It’s as if I said, “There are hungry bears out on the front lawn. What are we going to do about it?” and you replied, “So what if they devour us? There are new babies being born all the time at the hospital in town.” It’s true, of course, but unhelpful to the cause of dealing with the bears that threaten our lives.

Mike
February 18th, 2011 | 3:43 pm

Rod, now that you’ve taken this to the theater of the absurd with your strawmen, I’ll kindly bow out.

But I still look forward to reading your work. As a conservative, I’ve been a fan for some time.

No Blog is an Island – 2.18.11 « Nate Navigates the Bible
February 18th, 2011 | 4:54 pm

[...] Joe Carter highlights the decline in Protestant attendance (evangelical and mainline) in contrast to the growth in Catholic attendance. [...]