Posted on 07/27/2010 10:44:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Things aren't as bad in American Christianity as many say it is, according to one sociologist.
Christianity isn't on the brink of extinction, divorce rates of Christians aren't equal to that of non-Christians and churches are not losing young people – at least not to the extent that some fear.
That isn't to say there aren't any problems in the church. But Bradley R. E. Wright wants all the facts to be laid out before any judgment calls are made.
In his newly released book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites ... and Other Lies You've Been Told, Wright reveals that many of the commonly cited statistics regarding the state of U.S. Christianity or the behaviors of Christians are incomplete and inaccurate.
A lot of the data – especially the kind that get media coverage – are negatively slanted and paint a bleak picture of Christians and the church. Wright is concerned that the onslaught of inaccurate bad news could distract from what really is bad news and could demotivate Christians from being active Christ followers and from inviting others to join.
Wright, 47, is associate professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. He formerly studied crime and homelessness but switched his focus to American Christianity after receiving tenure.
"I wanted to work more merging my faith and my profession," he said in an interview with The Christian Post.
Raised in the Catholic Church, he became a born-again Christian in high school and is now part of an evangelical community.
His journey of discovering the real state of U.S. Christianity began when he had doubts about the popularly cited divorce statistic.
"We're all familiar with the idea that Christians have divorce rates as high, if not higher, than non-Christians," he explained in the interview. "I heard that for years but as I thought about it, it just didn't make sense."
He and his wife had received so much support from pastors, small group members, and the church as a whole that he could not understand how that couldn't make a difference on marriages.
After analyzing five different sets of data, he found that Christians actually have lower divorce rates. His analysis can be found on his blog, brewright.com.
"[People] found that gratifying to sort of bust that myth as it were," he commented.
In his book, he presents data from the General Social Survey, which he describes as "the Cadillac of national studies" that has collected data since 1972. The divorce rate among the religiously unaffiliated is 50 percent while that of mainline Protestants, evangelicals and Catholics is 41 percent, 46 percent and 35 percent, respectively.
The statistics are more positive when it comes to active churchgoers. Only 38 percent of evangelicals who attend church weekly have been divorced, compared to 60 percent of evangelicals who never attend.
Extinction?
Perhaps the most unhelpful perception Christians have about Christianity is that it's on the brink of extinction or that in a decade or two "we'll all be huddled in basements or something," Wright said.
"That's a problem because basically if we’re in the Titanic and we've already hit an iceberg, why would we want to invite anyone to join us? Why would we want to devote ourselves to it?" he posed. "Basically, if you have a sinking ship, you don’t invite people to it, you jump off and get away. And so I would say it’s perhaps the most harmful myth that Christians believe about ourselves."
Mainline Protestantism has indeed decreased dramatically from over 30 percent of the population in 1970 to less than 15 percent and the number of Americans not affiliated with a religion has doubled within that same time frame. But the percentage of evangelical Christians has grown to 25 percent and Catholics and black Protestants have remained stable in their representation.
The United States "is still very much a country of Christians" with three out of four Americans affiliating themselves with Christianity, Wright wrote.
Even among the unaffiliated, it turns out many of them are religious.
Thought they rarely attend religious services, more than half (56 percent) of them believe in God and another 22 percent believe in a higher power. Fifty-five percent believe that the Bible is either the literal or inspired Word of God and 49 percent pray daily or weekly.
Overall, over 90 percent of Americans have believed and continue to believe in some form of God.
Young people leaving?
The exodus of young people from the church has been a major concern. Popular speakers, including apologist Josh McDowell, have frequently stated that some two-thirds of the younger generation was leaving the Christian faith and that unless something was done now Christianity wouldn't survive another decade.
The popularly cited statistic is that only four percent of young Americans will be Bible-believing Christians as adults.
Wright found that the four percent figure came from an informal survey a seminary professor did 10 years ago. He interviewed 211 young people in three states.
"In terms of quality, this statistic is about as valid as someone putting a survey question on their Facebook page and then having their friends and acquaintances answer it," Wright wrote in his book. "There's nothing wrong with doing it, it's just not very trustworthy."
Yet Christian speakers and youth leaders have organized conferences and developed resources around such statistics.
"My sense is that they're using these statistics with the best intentions, that their goal is to try to save the church from what they perceive to be a terrible problem and imminent disaster," Wright noted. "The expression I use is 'scary statistics are useful,' that it helps us to create audiences and create a need for our message."
Wright went further to compare today's generation of young people to previous generations.
He pointed out that since the 1970s, between 20 and 25 percent of young people have been affiliated with evangelical Christianity. Currently, 22 percent of young adults affiliate with evangelical churches, down from 25 percent in the 1990s, but up from 21 percent in the 1970s.
Though the percentage of young people who are religiously unaffiliated increased to 25 percent over the past couple of decades, the increase in the unaffiliated is seen across all age groups. In fact, the percentage of the religiously unaffiliated almost tripled among people in their thirties to sixties.
Today's evangelical youth were also found to be more committed and more active than young Christians of previous generations.
In the 1970s, only about one-third of young evangelicals viewed themselves as "strong evangelicals" compared to 50 percent today. About half prayed daily in the 1980s but over two-thirds do so today. Church attendance also increased from about 35 percent in the 1970s and 1980s to over 40 percent now among young evangelicals.
Also, young people who leave organized religion often rejoin when they grow older and start families of their own, Wright noted. Citing the General Social Survey, the sociologist revealed that with previous generations – those born in the 1910s up until the 1980s – evangelical involvement increased with age. Only 19 percent of those born in the 1930s and 1940s identified as evangelicals when they were in their twenties. By the time they were in their seventies, 30 percent were evangelicals.
Though he can't make any predictions, Wright says he doesn't see evidence in the data "of a cataclysmic loss of young people."
Things are going well
When Wright set out to analyze data for a more accurate look at Christianity, he was expecting at least half of the data – on church growth, beliefs, participation, morals, how Christians treat others and how others view Christians – to be negative. But surprisingly, much of it was positive.
"I think it’s more accurate to have a more positive perception of Christians. In many ways, things are going well," he said.
But Wright doesn't want to ignore the bad news.
Even though the divorce rate among evangelicals is lower than reported, it has still doubled over the last three to four decades. Sexual promiscuity and porn viewing may be lowest among regular evangelical church attenders compared to other groups, but still many are struggling. And though evangelical Christians score high when it comes to selfless caring for others and accepting others even when others do things they think are wrong, their attitudes toward minorities and gays are dismaying, Wright said.
Wright has gained a much more positive outlook on U.S. Christianity after finishing his book, but he acknowledged that there are things Christians need to work on.
"But that’s part of the value of data is that it tells us where the real problems are," he said. "If we think everything’s a problem, then in a sense nothing’s a problem because it almost becomes white noise."
I Disagree!!
Mega Church Willow Creek Pastor Bill Hybels and his wife are now Supporting the Obama AMNESTY Plan. The Illinois Minutemen are attending a meeting at Willow Creek this Wednesday at 7Pm.
They are bringing in American Hate Monger:Matthew Soerens
The time is NOW to voice your opinion! Come out at 6:30PM this Wednesday July 28th to Willow Creek Community Church, 67 Algonquin Rd. South Barrington Illinois. Join the Illinois Minutemen as we listen to MARXIST LIBERATION Theology being preached: HERE IS A PREVIEW...OOZZING with Marxist liberation theology and WHITE GUILT!!
It’s America’s fault and you should be ashamed of yourself is the message.
Some christian circles who do not know their bible will drink in MARXIST LIBERATION THEOLOGY..........
http://causeup.ning.com/video/matthew-soerens-on-theoozetvs
Then IMNSHO that brings the veracity of their “faith” into question.
A “socialogist” that supports Christianity in one of their reports???
Are you sure about that?
Socialogists, through their training, are like young pioneers who passed through the Soviet Party training school. They pretty much all are uniform in their thinking by the time they come out.
The article doesn’t debunk anything. Anyone can profess to be Christian, but the question is what does he believe? Dr. Christian Smith in Soul Searching, which was published by Oxford University Press, looked at that issue in the largest academic survey of “Christian” teens ever done. The results were not pretty, and they were completely consistent with the bad news from Barna and elsewhere.
This sociologist is speaking about religiosity, not Christianity. I’ll go one step further than some other posters and say that these churches that do not preach correct biblical doctrine and embrace all these liberal causes and attitudes, that are in direct conflict with the Word, are WORSE for the nation, then if there were no churches at at. They trick people into thinking that they are saved because they are a “nice” person, or they have done a work that will get them into heaven, or that there are many ways to reach salvation.
They are the proverbial wolves amongst the sheep, and a lot of people are going to face their judgment with much surprise when they find out they have willfully allowed themselves to be led astray.
I post the above as a sinner saved solely by the grace of God. The Lord has ruined me; I am not perfect (by a long shot), I am forgiven, though.
I’m guessing indicators of the popularity of the “theistic, moralistic, therapeutic” mode-of-thought, right? (eg “I’m ok; basically everyone is a good person and while we fail sometimes as long as you ‘try to be good’ everything is fine.”)
I’m reminded of a small video I saw wherein a speaker said, to a room full of *PASTORS*, “There is a difference between you and me: you believe that something is true because you believe it; I believe in it because it is true.” (Or something similar.) And I have to say that such seems to be the state of much [American] Christianity today: people don’t believe it because it’s true, but believe it based on ‘feelings.’ {There’s a theory/supposition that this is tied into the “feminization of the Church”-phenomena, and this is why many men don’t like church: it’s all about [feminine-type] ‘feelings’ and not at all about ‘Truth’/’Justice’ and “standing against evil.”}
Hybels and WCCC are nothing more than another version of Schuller and the Crystal Cathedral. WCCC has become another cathedral to mans glory.
‘Basically, if you have a sinking ship, you don’t invite people to it, you jump off and get away. And so I would say it’s perhaps the most harmful myth that Christians believe about ourselves.”
Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens.
You have about nailed it...
>‘Basically, if you have a sinking ship, you don’t invite people to it, you jump off and get away. And so I would say it’s perhaps the most harmful myth that Christians believe about ourselves.”
>
>Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens.
Are you commenting on the article, or on my observation (post #7)?
John 6.67, 68.
Where is "For ALL have SINNED, and fall short"?
Where is "And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment"?
Too many churches are "seeker sensitive", and don't want to offend "seekers" by telling them that they are sinners and need a savior.
If people don't know they're sinners, why do they need a savior.
If people don't need a savior, whats the purpose of a "missions" trip to "bring Christ" to them.
Is this Christ a savior from sins, or just a feel good Kumbahya song leader?
I see that you perfectly see my assessment of what is missing from a [sadly large] portion of America’s ‘Christian’ church.
You can take Buddha out of Buddhism, you can take Confucius out of Confucianism, you can even [arguably] take Mohammad out of Islam, but you cannot take Christ out of Christianity: He is the ‘cornerstone,’ if we were talking about arches He would be the keystone (the piece on which the whole structure is dependent).
Jesus’s purpose was to reunite man (who is/was sinful*) with God (who cannot abide the abhorrence and evil of sin). The act of that reconciliation is utterly insane when considered by human standards: The Timeless, Infinite, Powerful, Life-giving and Unassailable God, seeing that sin and Righteousness cannot co-exist, decided that He loved us so much that “If someone is going to die, it’s going to be me.” And so He died.
*I say “is/was” because the conflict of describing time and eternal/timelessness can get in the way of understanding the underlying for some people. When God said that we are a ‘new creation’ He means it and we ARE... but right now we’re ‘trapped in time’ with an odd warring between already & not-yet; this is [I believe] Paul’s observation about “seeing things darkly, as in a glass.”
Now, the story would be rather sad if it just ended there with God dead and man left on his own against a uncaring universe and a host of malevolent angels. That’s not what happened, thank God, instead He overcame His own death and lives *now*. {All three ‘persons’ of God claim responsibility for the Resurrection of Jesus: the Father, the Holy Spirit, and [Jesus] the Son.} And, as a *living* savior, Jesus Himself, intercedes as High-priest between God and man... and *that* is very good news indeed.
You did an EXCELLENT job summing up the Gospel.
Thank you! :D
On the article. Apologies if you thought it was directed at you.
Yes, very true. We are not called to be successful, but faithful. We are warned that we shall suffer, even die for Him.
This fellow is like the disciples one the boat before Christ walked on water. They were afraid of drowning.
Or Elijah, when he went to Mount Sinai. ‘I am the only one left’.
So of course, this is the stat the atheist Daniel Dennett cites in his debates with Dinesh D'Souza...
My point is, in all subjects you'll see Christians AND non-Christians. So, you may see a lot of sociologists, economists, psychologists, and so on that are also Christians. Sociology actually might give opportunity to critical minds to merge his knowledge with his faith. In fact, there is a Christian Sociologist group that always has a table on ASA meeting every year.
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