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I was reading this article on the trend in Christianity in America. The article is about “white Christianity”, but if you look at total Christianity, regardless of race, you see the grand total of Christianity is declining. This being replaced by people who are considered unaffiliated and my non-white Christians, which seems to be growing. But this group is not growing as fast as white Christianity is declining. It is pronounced in the younger generations, of course. This is no suprise. We also know our church has been affected by this national trend. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/08/15/white-christian-america-is-dying/ Quote:When PRRI surveys have asked religiously unaffiliated Americans who were raised religious why they left their childhood religion, respondents have given a variety of reasons — stopped believing in teachings, conflicts with science, lack of time, etc. — but one issue stands out, particularly for younger Americans. About 70 percent of millennials (ages 18-33) believe that religious groups are alienating young adults by being too judgmental about gay and lesbian issues. And 31 percent of millennials who were raised religious but now claim no religious affiliation report that negative teaching about or treatment of gay and lesbian people by religious organizations was a somewhat or very important factor in their leaving.
Quote:Generational differences make it clear that opposition to gay rights will ultimately lose its power as the culture war weapon of choice. Anti-gay rhetoric is unlikely to appeal to younger religious Americans, regardless of their religious affiliation.
For example, 45 percent of young evangelicals (ages 18-29) and 43 percent of young Mormons favor same-sex marriage, compared to only 19 percent of white evangelical seniors and 18 percent of Mormon seniors. Most notably, the data show that young Republicans have passed the tipping point: 53 percent of young Republicans now support same-sex marriage.
SilentDawning wrote:I was reading this article on the trend in Christianity in America.
The article is about “white Christianity”, but if you look at total Christianity, regardless of race, you see the grand total of Christianity is declining. This being replaced by people who are considered unaffiliated and my non-white Christians, which seems to be growing. But this group is not growing as fast as white Christianity is declining. It is pronounced in the younger generations, of course.This is no suprise. We also know our church has been affected by this national trend. To be honest saying Christianity is “dying” in America sounds a bit dramatic given that over 70 percent of Americans in the 2014 Pew survey still self-identified as being affiliated with specific Christian religious groups compared to just 3.1% for atheists and 4.0% for agnostics which would translate to about 225 million “affiliated” Christians compared to only about 9.89 million atheists and 12.76 million agnostics. Also this article is specifically talking about the percentage of white Christians declining over time but in their charts the percentage of non-white Christians has increased to some extent which makes sense because whites are simply not as much of a majority in the US as they used to be in previous decades so that makes the decline look more dramatic in a misleading way if you focus mostly on the percentage of white Christians over time.
At this rate I would be surprised if the Catholic Church and various evangelical churches are actually dead in America 100 years from now in spite of what looks like obvious wishful thinking on the part of some anti-religious people that would like to see Christianity die. Personally I think what I would call evangelical-lite churches such as Joel Osteen’s mega-church are the wave of the future as far as Christianity goes. Also just because a significant number of people don’t affiliate with a specific organized religious group that doesn’t mean that none of them are “Christian” much less that they don’t believe in God because they could still have their own personal religious beliefs without necessarily affiliating with specific religious groups.
DA and I agree on this one. I read a few years ago that the fastest growing “denominations” in America (numerically) are “non-denominational Christian” and “spiritual Christianity”. Islam is growing through immigration, mostly – as is Catholicism, when you include legal and illegal immigration from Central and South America.
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