Posted on 08/28/2016 2:41:41 PM PDT by Salvation
The Surprising Reason Why More Americans Are Not Going To Church
The standard narrative of American religious decline goes something like this: A few hundred years ago, European and American intellectuals began doubting the validity of God as an explanatory mechanism for natural life. As science became a more widely accepted method for investigating and understanding the physical world, religion became a less viable way of thinking—not just about medicine and mechanics, but also culture and politics and economics and every other sphere of public life. As the United States became more secular, people slowly began drifting away from faith.
Of course, this tale is not just reductive—it’s arguably inaccurate, in that it seems to capture neither the reasons nor the reality behind contemporary American belief. For one thing, the U.S. is still overwhelmingly religious, despite years of predictions about religion’s demise. A significant number of people who don’t identify with any particular faith group still say they believe in God, and roughly 40 percent pray daily or weekly. While there have been changes in this kind of private belief and practice, the most significant shift has been in the way people publicly practice their faith: Americans, and particularly young Americans, are less likely to attend services or identify with a religious group than they have at any time in recent memory.
If most people haven’t just logicked their way out of believing in God, what’s behind this shift in public religious practice, and what does the shift look like in detail? That’s a big question, one less in search of a straightforward answer than a series of data points and arguments constellated over time. Here’s one: Pew has a new survey out about the way people choose their congregations and attend services. While Americans on the whole are still going to church and other worship services less than they used to, many people are actually going more—and those who are skipping out aren’t necessarily doing it for reasons of belief.
There were at least three fascinating tidbits tucked into the results of the survey. First, people who report going to worship services less frequently now than they used to overwhelmingly say the logistics of getting there are the biggest obstacle.Second, a significant number of people who said they’re not part of any particular religion expressed mistrust of religious institutions, suggesting these organizations’ reputations have something to do with why people are dropping out of public religious participation.
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, the country seems to be split in half in terms of how often people get to services. Roughly 51 percent of Americans say they go to church or another worship service somewhere between once a month and multiple times per week, while 49 percent said they go rarely or never. But within that 51 percent, more than half of people said they go more often than they used to—in other words, about quarter of Americans have gotten more active in their religious communities in recent years, not less.
On the other hand, fewer than half of the people who rarely or never go to church said this has been a new decline in the last few years; a greater portion of that group said they’ve always stayed home on Sundays. All of this is a way of saying that, comparatively speaking, there’s more activity happening on the devout side of the spectrum than the drop-out side; this study suggests that even in a time of religion’s public decline, some people are experiencing religious revival.
According to the survey, about one-fifth of Americans now go to religious services a few times a year, but say they used to go a lot more. Roughly half of this group stopped going as often because of what the researchers called “practical issues”: They are too busy, have a crazy work schedule, or describe themselves as “too lazy” to go. Others said they just don’t care about attending services as much as doing other things.
While it’s easy to empathize with the hassle of trying to wake up and rally kids to go sit still for several hours every Sunday morning, this explanation is interesting for a slightly different reason: It suggests that many people view religious services as optional in a way they might not have in the past. Fifty or 60 years ago, churches, in particular, were a center of social and cultural life in America. For many people, that’s still the case, but the survey suggests that many people may be creating their social lives outside of a religious context—or perhaps forgoing that kind of social connection altogether.
The experience of those who are losing their religion shouldn’t obscure those who are finding it.
The sidelining of services may connect to another factor indicated in the survey: Among people who were raised religiously and who fell away from religion in adult life, roughly one-fifth said their dislike of organized religion was the reason. Another 50 percent said they stopped believing in the particular tenets of the faith they were raised in. Insofar as the decline in U.S. religious affiliation is an intellectual or philosophical story, it seems to be this: Fewer people are willing to sign on with the rules and reputations of institutions that promote faith. That doesn’t mean people don’t care about religious ideas or questions—many of those who are unaffiliated with a particular group still consider themselves “religious” or “seeking”—but they might not be as sold on the religious institutions themselves.
The experience of those who are losing their religion shouldn’t obscure the experience of those who are finding it, though. Twenty-seven percent of people in the survey say they’re attending services more often than they did in the past, cutting against the country’s overall decline in religious practice. This was most common among evangelical Protestants, three-quarters of whom say they go to church at least once or twice a month. Half of the people who said they’re going to services more often explained the change in terms of their beliefs: They’ve become more religious; they found that they need God in their life; they’ve gotten more mature as they’ve aged. By contrast, relatively few said they started going to church more often for practical reasons. Belief brings people to worship, it seems, while logistics keep people way.
The survey offers evidence that at least some Americans find worship services less relevant than other things they could be doing with their time, or perhaps they’re too hard to make time for. But the biggest takeaway is the variety of religious experience in America. Just as some people are drifting away from religion, others are moving toward it—and no matter what they might do on Sunday mornings, many people seem to find religious thinking still relevant to their lives.
Kind of funny how folks on the left like to believe in "Mother Nature" but see God the creator as silly and childish...
I think it's because mother nature comes with no rules or expectations... God on the other hand expects us to live a clean life... Something the left definitely has a problem with....
I personally hate the music they play at church. I drag my feet and try to be late just so I can miss the 20 minutes of music before the sermon. Modern church music sucks. Maybe it's good for the radio but not before a sermon. The lyrics are empty and repetitive.
They said that at an LMCS church????
So what are you doing now? Staying home, going somewhere else?
Sorry, LCMS I meant. :)
For some but not all. Sometimes the pettiness inside the church with the "clicks" drives people away. That and all the focus to help people overseas or in urban communities but never any help for some of the church members themselves.
God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him forever in the next.” Here, in just 26 words, is the whole reason for our existence. Jesus answered the question even more briefly: “I came so that [you] might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
The mission of the Church is to help us be with God when we die for our eternal salvation. Catholics believe that Christ founded a visible Church—which subsists in the Catholic Church—and has protected its doctrines from error.
The Church offers the Sacraments that Christ provided for our benefit. Baptism, Confession and the Eucharist where we can receive the Body and Blood of Christ and 4 other sacraments.
Jesus said it is not enough to have faith in him; we also must obey his commandments. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ but do not do the things I command?” (Luke 6:46, Matt. 7:21–23, 19:16–21).
All the alternatives to Catholicism are showing themselves to be inadequate: the worn-out secularism that is everywhere around us and that no one any longer finds satisfying, the odd cults and movements that offer temporary community but no permanent home, even the other, incomplete brands of Christianity. As our tired world becomes ever more desperate, people are turning to the one alternative they never really had considered: the Catholic Church. They are coming upon truth in the last place they expected to find it.
And oddly enough, he's a Jew.;-)
:So I guess we are Jewish after all.
It seems the author of the Book to the Hebrews disagrees with you. See Hebrews 10:25.
The cultural center of modern society has shifted from the church to oneself. That’s where it went.
Some churches preach less about God’s glory than what He can do for you. In effect, He becomes a cosmic vending machine designed to cater to the most selfish in today’s society.
In days gone by, people would wear their finest clothes in order to go to church. So you don’t want to wear a suit? That’s fine; for guys in particular, “dressing up” is so painfully simple that I cannot imagine what leads my fellow men to walk into church in torn jeans and flip-flops except selfishness. How can “I” feel most comfortable?
The music in contemporary churches can reach such levels of meaninglessness as to turn a time of worship into a rock concert with no spiritual value whatsoever. Again, it’s all about making “me” feel good all the time.
As other FRiends have mentioned, cliques can be part of churches. This is simply more evidence of selfishness on a different scale - it’s all about “us,” and if you’re not one of them, you can go twiddle your thumbs in the corner.
So from my point of view, the church itself has contributed in a number of ways toward this trend. I feel blessed to have found a church family where that’s not the case.
Yeshuah is a Jew...not a Catholic.
All alternatives to Yeshuah are inadequate.
He is the Old Testament and the New Testament. They are ONE.
He is not Catholic nor Protestant...He is spreading the Jewish faith around the world.
Yes it does.
We're Catholic and since most Catholic parishes are infested with that stuff unfortunately, we now go to the Latin Mass almost exclusively. The music is mostly Gregorian Chant and a few classic English hymns.
Our choir sometimes sings this during Holy Communion...it transports me straight to heaven:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yd5EE0hAB8
"As the deer longs for flowing water, so my soul longs for Thee my God"
I walked away and never looked back. I have no further desire to put any faith in any clergy. My dad was an LCMS pastor, so I had attended that church for most of my life. Or die. The ELCA experience spanned a scant two years. Those guys are wackos.
True, I’ve seen that as well.
But I still think there’s a degree of laziness in it all the same. Because people driven away by cliques or some other petty issue often just go somewhere else.
Believe me, I’ve been wickedly lazy in this area myself....I know the thought process. You get upset because you can’t find what you want and then you just *happen* to alight on a plan that allows you to stay home on Sunday. Oh wow, well that makes it easy! :)
And you give up trying.
“I don’t feel as I should when I leave the building.”
I’ve heard that if you feel good when you leave church, the preacher isn’t doing his job. You should feel convicted and challenged.
If you miss the forgiveness part...you have missed our Lors.
“I stopped going when the ELCA decided to embrace gays.”
Our church is in the process of revising its ancient Church Constitution. It’s being updated to specifically update regarding today’s issues that weren’t discussed 100 years ago — homosexuality for one. Practicing homosexuals cannot become members.
And your view could be called a very institutional interpretation of the verse. A building all too often becomes a place to ‘slip in, toss a few in the plate, slip out, and call it good... until next Sunday anyway. There absolutely is blessed pulpit preaching without a doubt. However, the most intimate growth and maturing, and I argue disciple making, often times occurs in the intimacy and vulnerability of a small group setting for which no building is needed.
But the preacher or priest has no job, per say.
His task is to be filled with the Holy Spirit and, as a voice for that Spirit, speak...
An Hour of Eucharistic Adoration at our parish. Solemn, for sure. Come adore the Lord with us: St. Mary’s, Johnson Citym TN.
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