Posted on 10/17/2019 10:14:36 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009. Meanwhile, all subsets of the religiously unaffiliated population – a group also known as religious “nones” – have seen their numbers swell. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up modestly but significantly from 2% in 2009; agnostics make up 5% of U.S. adults, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009. Members of non-Christian religions also have grown modestly as a share of the adult population.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at pewforum.org ...
Is Christianity waning or is it people admitting to their Christianity is waning? I am not at all convinced Pew has this right.
Is Christianity waning or is it the number of people admitting to their Christianity is waning? I am not at all convinced Pew has this right.
There will always be exactly as many Christians at any given time as God wants there to be.
Those who stay Christian will have stronger faith.
I will never believe a poll from Pew. I will believe George Barna, however.
Pew would be like the Kaiser or Ford Foundation doing this...a bunch of baby-sacrificing leftists.
HERE IS AN EXPLANATION:
Mainline churches are tanking as if they have super-sized millstones around their necks. Yes, these churches are hemorrhaging members in startling numbers, but many of those folks are not leaving Christianity. They are simply going elsewhere. Because of this shifting, other very different kinds of churches are holding strong in crowds and have been for as long as such data has been collected. In some ways, they are even growing. This is what this new research has found.
The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained absolutely, steel-bar constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today. These authors describe this continuity as “patently persistent.”
The percentage of such people is also not small. One in three Americans prays multiple times a day, while one in 15 do so in other countries on average. Attending services more than once a week continues to be twice as high among Americans compared to the next highest-attending industrial country, and three times higher than the average comparable nation.
One-third of Americans hold that the Bible is the actual word of God. Fewer than 10 percent believe so in similar countries. The United States “clearly stands out as exceptional,” and this exceptionalism has not been decreasing over time. In fact, these scholars determine that the percentages of Americans who are the most vibrant and serious in their faith is actually increasing a bit, “which is making the United States even more exceptional over time.”
This also means, of course, that those who take their faith seriously are becoming a markedly larger proportion of all religious people. In 1989, 39 percent of those who belonged to a religion held strong beliefs and practices. Today, these are 47 percent of all the religiously affiliated. This all has important implications for politics, indicating that the voting bloc of religious conservatives is not shrinking, but actually growing among the faithful. The declining influence of liberal believers at the polls has been demonstrated in many important elections recently.
actually, it appears to be MUCH WORSE
since
many of those remaining 65%
are in (Protestant, Jewish, Catholic) churches/parishes/congregations that are little more than Communist Party front groups — and which often preach, teach AGAINST Biblical morals and faith
There will always be exactly as many Christians at any given time as God wants there to be.
........
Not sure where that theology is from, but it isn’t true. He wants everyone, and that is in the Word. If what you say there is true, then free will does not exist. There is no quota system; we are simply told to go, and make disciples of all men (people, nations, ethnos)
Wasn’t Pew Research Center a group that told us Hillary would be President?
And their results tend to mirror how liberals ‘feel’ about issues?
Could be a pattern here...
Agreed - and Barna shows that many people who actually identify as "Christian" do not hold to essential Christian doctrine. When you examine the internals of many Barna polls about what Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelicals who identify as "Christians" actually believe - most (well above 50%) have beliefs that differ significantly from historical Christian beliefs (what orthodox Christianity viewed as essential doctrine). Well over 50% of self-identified Christians today would be viewed as heretics by their respective denominations just 50-100 years ago (and on back to the start of the Church). The times - they are a-changin' - and not for the better - 2 Timothy 4:3, 4.
It’s not Chritianity that’s declining, it’s the various organized churches and their left wingism.
Then what's the point of evangelism?
Sad to say it is waning among our young.
Attendance at my church has plummeted over the past 15 years and it’s the young who aren’t attending.
I have had mind-bending conversations with Millenials who tell me that this is because of Biblical teachings that homosexuality is sinful, which they regard as “mean” and “hateful”.
Gonna be a long climb back.
This is a lie
Millions of us believe strongly and will NEVER set foot in a corrupt church
How do these idiot lying Marxist’s know what I think ?
You Can bet damn sure they don’t read free republic or they would know!
Catholic church deserves scorn. Priests can’t get married so they play with little boys?
My daughter went to a Catholic school. But was raised Lutheran (1 less sacrament is the difference). Her Catholic school denied her communion. Think Jesus would’ve done that?
Catholic church is all about $. That’s why priests can’t get married. The church didn’t want its assets diluted by spouses and offspring.
My mother in law was banned from her Catholic church because she was divorced. My church wanted $350 to dissolve my marriage. Sound like stuff Jesus would do?
My hometown used to have five large "mainstream" churches and about six smaller "also rans" while I was growing up. Fifty years later, three of the five are at 1/4 occupancy maximum on a good Sunday, and two of those three are also down to being tended by circuit-riding female pastors who hold services at multiple small churches of the same denomination.
The biggest church attendance in that town nowadays is to be found at the most recent iteration of what was - in my day - a small Baptist church, but is now a large unaffiliated Bible-centric church. They have recently added a second addition to their "new" building.
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