Posted on 01/19/2012 7:18:48 AM PST by blam
How Will The Shocking Decline Of Christianity In America Affect The Future Of This Nation?
January 19,2012
Is Christianity in decline in America? When you examine the cold, hard numbers it is simply not possible to come to any other conclusion. Over the past few decades, the percentage of Christians in America has been steadily declining. This has especially been true among young people. As you will see later in this article, there has been a mass exodus of teens and young adults out of U.S. churches. In addition, what "Christianity" means to American Christians today is often far different from what "Christianity" meant to their parents and their grandparents.
Millions upon millions of Christians in the United States simply do not believe many of the fundamental principles of the Christian faith any longer. Without a doubt, America is becoming a less "Christian" nation. This has staggering implications for the future of this country. The United States was founded primarily by Christians that were seeking to escape religious persecution. For those early settlers, the Christian faith was the very center of their lives, and it deeply affected the laws that they made and the governmental structures that they established. So what is the future of America going to look like if we totally reject the principles that this nation was founded on?
Overall, Christianity is still the largest religion in the world by far. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, there are currently 2.2 billion Christians in the world. So Christianity is not in danger of disappearing any time soon. In fact, in some areas of the globe it is experiencing absolutely explosive growth.
But in the United States, things are different. Churches are shrinking, skepticism is growing and apathy about spiritual matters seems to be at an all-time high.
Before we examine the data, let me disclose that I am a Christian. I am not bashing Christians or the Christian faith at all in this article. In fact, I consider the decline of Christianity in America to be a very bad thing. Not everyone is going to agree with me on that, but hopefully this article will help spark a debate on the role of religion in America that everyone can learn something from.
Unfortunately, the reality is that most Americans spend very little time thinking about religion or spiritual matters these days.
Just consider the following quote from a recent USA Today article....
"The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal," says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College" This is backed up by the numbers. For example, a survey taken last year by LifeWay Research found that 46 percent of all Americans never think about whether they will go to heaven or not.
To most Americans, faith is simply not a big deal. This is particularly true of our young people. Those under the age of 30 are leaving U.S. churches in droves. The following comes from a recent CNN article....
David Kinnaman, the 38-year-old president of the Barna Group, an evangelical research firm, is the latest to sound the alarm. In his new book, "You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith," he says that 18- to 29-year-olds have fallen down a "black hole" of church attendance. There is a 43% drop in Christian church attendance between the teen and early adult years, he says. But it isn't just young people that are leaving American churches. The proportion of Americans that consider themselves to be Christians has been steadily declining for many years. Back in 1990, 86 percent of all Americans considered themselves to be Christian. By 2008, that number had dropped to 76 percent.
Meanwhile, the number of Americans that reject religion entirely has absolutely soared. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans with "no religion" more than doubled between 1990 and 2008.
So what is going to happen if these trends continue?
Dave Olson, the director of church planting for the Evangelical Covenant Church, has made some really interesting projections regarding what is going to happen to church attendance in America if current trends continue.
According to Olson, only 18.7 percent of all Americans regularly attend church right now. If this number continues to decline at the current pace, Olson says that the percentage of Americans attending church in 2050 will be about half of what it is today.
Other research has produced similar results.
According to a study done by LifeWay Research, membership in Southern Baptist churches will fall nearly 50 percent by the year 2050 if current trends persist.
If you are a Christian, you should be quite alarmed by these numbers.
But what is happening to the faith of our young people should be even more alarming for Christians.
The American Religious Identification Survey by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society & Culture at Trinity College is one of the most comprehensive studies on religion in America that has ever been done.
According to that study, 15 percent of all Americans say that they have "no religion".
That is up from 8 percent in 1990.
That is quite a change.
But the move away from religion is particularly pronounced among our young people.
One recent survey found that 25 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say that they have no religion.
Obviously the Christian faith is not winning the battle for the hearts and the minds of our young people. The cold, hard truth is that in America today, the younger you are, the less likely you are to consider yourself to be a Christian.
Large numbers of young Americans that went to church while they were growing up are now leaving U.S. churches entirely. A recent study by the Barna Group discovered that nearly 60 percent of all Christians between the ages of 15 and 29 are no long actively involved in any church.
But not only have they left the church, our young people have also abandoned just about all forms of Christian spirituality.
Just check out the results of one survey of young adults that was conducted by LifeWay Christian Resources....
•65% rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either.
•65% rarely or never attend worship services of any kind.
•67% don't read the Bible or any other religious texts on a regular basis.
If this does not get turned around, churches all over America will be closing their doors. When the survey above first came out, the president of LifeWay Christian Resources stated that "the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships."
But it is not just church that our young people are rejecting.
The reality is that they are also rejecting the fundamental principles of the Christian faith.
One survey conducted by the Barna Group found that less than 1 percent of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 23 hold a Biblical worldview.
The Barna Group asked participants in the survey if they agreed with the following six statements....
1) Believing that absolute moral truth exists.
2) Believing that the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches.
3) Believing that Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic.
4) Believing that a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or by doing good works.
5) Believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth.
6) Believing that God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.
Less than 1 percent of the participants agreed with all of those statements.
That is staggering.
But it is not just young adults that are rejecting the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Even large numbers of "evangelical Christians" are rejecting the fundamental principles of the Christian faith.
For example, one survey found that 52 percent of all Americans Christians believe that "at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life".
Another survey found that 29 percent of all American Christians claim to have been in contact with the dead, 23 percent believe in astrology and 22 percent believe in reincarnation.
Without a doubt, the religious landscape of America is changing.
Over the past several decades, church attendance has been steadily declining, the percentage of Americans that consider themselves to be Christians has been going down, and the number of people that hold traditional Christian beliefs has been dropping like a rock.
So what does all of this mean for the future of America?
This is just not true. How did you come to this conclusion? Due to the incredible number of manuscripts extant we can be confident that modern Bibles are over 95% accurate and true to the original writings. Futher, the Bible commands us to have fellowship with our Christian brother and sisters, a function which is fullfilled by attending Church. One should not look to what a Church can do for them but what they can do for the Church. We are called to be the salt and light and that can't be accomplished in front of the bathroom mirror.
I once again point out this utterly utilitarian justification of religious belief.
The religious beliefs of the settlers and founders of the United States is an interesting historical fact (just as is the religious beliefs of the founders of all other countries), but it has nothing to do with what is the One True Religion.
Every single human being has the obligation to seek out, acknowledge, and obey the One True G-d. One does not do this by merely adhering to the religion of the founders of one's country (else there would be a different "one true religion" for every nation on earth!).
George Washington was a great man, but he did not create the universe. Seek out the True G-d, and you can't do that by merely seeking to share George Washington's religious beliefs.
Blam,
those doing the wrong things you witnessed will have to answer for their actions. You can’t control those, you have to answer for yours though and the Word clearly tells Christians to gather and attend church. The hypocrites will indeed answer for their actions but don’t let them drag you down as well.
You see the wrongs, fight the good fight to expose and right the wrongs. You dropping out speaks to the great falling away.
We are witnessing the great falling away and even more so the persecution of Christians that Christ spoke off. It will get worse as evil continues to infest our society. Eventually society will break down and the law of the jungle will apply.
As more churches water down Theology and its application to daily life, more people conclude there is no point in going to church, just to be told “you can make it up as you go along”.
The liberal “Catholic” church, 1 mile from me, is medium size and never more than half full.
The Traditional Catholic church, 5 miles from me, is very large and always full to overflowing!
People are thirsty for the Truth!
ping
“we can be confident that modern Bibles are over 95% accurate and true to the original writings.”
Nah...Protestant Bibles contain more than 5% error, compared to the Catholic Bible they watered down.
When you add to that, the notion that the Holy Spirit reveals different interpretations, to each of us individually, the compounded error rate is astounding.
Excellent article and I agree with the removing children from public schools.
Those who advocate that Christians should stay in them and try to fix them have been proved wrong. It’s been decades that the public education system has been broken and all the efforts to fix it has failed.
That’s why people have turned to homeschooling. It’s the only way to protect your children from what this article is addressing since the public schools have become the indoctrination arm of the secular state.
No they don't. Please give an example of the error you cite. I would also note Protestant translations are based on ancient Greek texts (over 6,000) and not a 5th Century Latin tranaslation.
Of the thirteen original colonies, only two - Massachusetts and Rhode Island - had any religious component to their founding.
The other eleven were founded for commercial and political reasons.
Of the two with a religious component one - Rhode Island - was founded by settlers fleeing from the religious persecution visited upon them by the settlers of the Massachusetts colonies.
And the persecutors who ran the Massachusetts colonies were actually a minority of the colonists - they had the land patents, but most of the settlers were recruited from a variety of Englishmen seeking their fortunes, not people motivated by a particular sect.
99% of the first generation of permanent American colonists were there for commerce, not theology.
Ironic too, isn’t it? that churches turned to Worship Teams, bands, and Praise songs while abandoning convictive preaching. The result was to drive away elderly people to cater to the young. It sounds as though that didn’t work.
Thanks for the ping!
Ironic too, isn’t it? that churches turned to Worship Teams, bands, and Praise songs while abandoning convictive preaching. The result was to drive away elderly people to cater to the young. It sounds as though that didn’t work.
bttt
As we abandon Christianity, we are looking at the atheistic regimes of the 20th century as our future.
Those who think that we can establish a non-Christian culture that will remain free and just are fooling themselves. Our being mostly secular and still reasonably successful is not proof that secular or atheistic works.
The only reason that this country is still in decent shape is that we’re still riding on the coat tails of the Judeo-Christian heritage it was built on.
Once that erodes, we’re screwed.
On September 11, 2001, YHvH allowed a breach in our hedge of protection. The stock market fell 7% on Sept 17, 2001 Seven years later on the 29th of Elul, Seven years after the attack on September 11, 2001, In 721 BCE, the walls of Israel were breached. Isaiah 9:10 "The bricks have fallen down, This nation was dedicated in St Paul's chapel The New York Stock Exchange was Ten years later the nation of Israel was attacked I love metaphors; After years of pagan idolatry, YHvH allowed the hedge
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
of protection to be lowered and the nation of Israel
was attacked by the Assyrians.
The following day, Democrat Tom Daschle called down a curse on America.
On September 11, 2004, Democrat John Edwards repeated the curse on America.
On February 24, 2009 Democrat Barack Hussein Obama repeated the curse for the third time.
(Matthew 18:16; 2 Cr 13:1; Deu 19:15 & Amos 3:12)
( 29 day of the month of Elul)
it fell again 7 %
At the end of each Sabbatical year,
all debts are made worthless.
We elected a man to lead this country whose
whole persona is built on lies.
The nation's leaders with pride and in arrogance
of heart cursed YHvH.
See Isaiah 9:10.
Isaiah 9:9 .....Asserting in pride and in arrogance of heart:
But we will rebuild with smooth stones;
The sycamores have been cut down,
But we will replace them with cedars."
located at the corner of Ground Zero.
The Sycamore tree at St Paul's chapel
was destroyed by a steel beam from
the World Trade Center.
chartered under a Sycamore tree.
and overrun by the Assyrians.
Half the nation was captured
and taken off to imprisonment.
they teach those who have ears to hear.
For more information buy the book Harbinger
by Jonathan Cahn if my people,
who are called by my name,
shall humble themselves,
and pray, and seek my face,
and turn from their wicked ways;
then will I hear from heaven,
and will forgive their sin,
and will heal their land.
ping to 35
Not to mention the "holy wars" of the late 80's. That was a shot heard around the world if there ever was one.
I am convinced that *churchianity* is the biggest detriment to Christianity that this world has seen.
The strongest and most mature Christians I know are those for whom church is optional.
I am also convinced that the church in the book of Acts would not even recognize what is called church today.
I too, am disgusted by much of what I see going on in churches today and can understand where you’re coming from.
People who worship the dollar when they could home school their children will pay an enormous price.
Additionally every low-life that can squeeze their agenda into the equation to further damage the minds of our children. It isn't about the children at all..it's about changing this society to something which is an outright offense to all that's good. There is no discerning good and evil now....it's reversed and successfully so.
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