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.
Hence God’s reply to Moses “No man can see my face and live,” thus did he hide Moses”In the cleft of the rock”(yes an old church hymn...”he hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock”) and allowed him to see the “hind parts of God” as God passed by. Yet a funny thing...the scripture records Moses as speaking with God “face to face”!. A contradiction(?)...I don’t think so. God’s inner face and Moses’ Inner face or inner man were in direct communion...even if Moses couldn’t physically see God’s face and live. That will come later when he and we have our glorified bodies...then we will be like Jesus for we will see him as He is and in turn we will be able to behold the Father as Jesus beholds him! No, you won’t go crazy then!
Thanks, Binger. We had some great times up there in God’s country. Will be great to go again.
I saw a small church turn into a multi-million dollar money machine. I once knew everyone and their families.
Seminars, gatherings, the faithful opened their homes to visitors.
Two services on Sunday morning, everyone wearing name tags.
They out grew the converted bowling alley church building.
When they bought a Convention Center the city was losing money on They exploded into a mega church. ATM, Starbucks the whole nine yards. They even sold breakfast buffet and lunch in the fellowship hall.
When they started taking donations in wheelbarrows up front so they could see who contributed I left.
I’ve not been in a church since. I pray, I believe.
I won’t support the money changers in the temple though.
And people have come to the realization that it doesn't necessarily mean church services as we've been raised to believe.
Meeting together with other believers is good and necessary to a degree, but it should not be nor can it be, the mainstay of our relationship with God.
If church attendance is what we require then it reveals a serious defect in out relationship with God on the more personal intimate level, the one of daily Bible reading and prayer.
How does that translate into, *You have to go to church on Sunday*?
Like the woman who washed his feet with her tears, it’s a measure of how much one loves the LORD Jesus Christ.
Thank you
I have been to Catholic Mass, many times.
Last time I went to Catholic Mass it was in Latin and my cousins couldn’t eat meat on Friday.
“4 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord....
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body....If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”...
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 28 And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But earnestly desire the higher gifts.” - 1 Cor 12
I’m not saying that everyone needs to be a member of a formal church, but the NT doesn’t support playing Solo Christian either.
I am so very sorry that you experienced this. It is so sad how the ‘church’ has been perverted in far too many situations. I pray that the Spirit will bring you into fellowship with other believers so you can enjoy growth and Brotherhood the way it was intended. We were without a fellowship after our ‘smallish’ church started traveling down the same big, seeker-sensitive path. We are now happily a part of a much smaller fellowship of Christians who are hungry to be fed and to serve. It’s family, like our former church used to be.
I prefer evening services to Sunday morning services. I’m attending more than ever before.
+1
Again, good points.
You are always welcome back.
There are still Churchs that have the Mass in Latin. Not many.
I really appreciate that Jesus is there in the Eucharist.
Great link. There are some good parody’s on there.
As I have gotten older, my appreciation for the blessings from God is centered on the Mass and the Eucharist.
God’s Peace be with you.
Romans 3:31 Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.
To all that are okay with going it alone instead of being part of a church: Revelation shows a multitude worshipping God, not an individual or even a small group. Perhaps now is the time to get used to this idea.
My $0.02.
SDG,
K51
No, you can’t go it alone, but having your spiritual life depend on church once a week is no better than eating one meal a week. It’s just not going to sustain you spiritually.
It’s my daily interaction with my Savior that keeps be going through out the week, not the once a week thing. Church nice but it’s not what I depend on for spiritual growth and maturity. That way if you happen to miss church for some reason, it doesn’t throw you for a loop.
Nor does Scripture tell us that it has to be church (as we know it) worship services. All we are commanded is to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. It could be a Bible study or small group as well. As long as you are getting together with fellow believers for time focused on God.
A friend told me once that church attendance for him was tertiary in his relationship with God. First and foremost for him was prayer and Scripture reading and mediation and his own worship time with the Lord.
Jesus was a practicing Jew. We Gentiles are not Jewish Converts, as Acts clearly recognized.
“I did this first in private conference with the church leaders, to make sure that what I had done and proposed doing was acceptable to them. Not one of them intimated that Titus, because he was a Greek, ought to be circumcised. In fact, the suggestion would never have arisen but for the presence of some pseudo-Christians, who wormed their way into our meeting to spy on the liberty we enjoy in Jesus Christ, and then attempted to tie us up with rules and regulations. We did not give those men an inch, for the truth of the Gospel for you and all Gentiles was at stake...
...11-14 Later, however, when Peter came to Antioch I had to oppose him publicly, for he was then plainly in the wrong. It happened like this. Until the arrival of some of James’ companions, he, Peter, was in the habit of eating his meals with the Gentiles. After they came, he withdrew and ate separately from the Gentiles—out of sheer fear of what the Jews might think. The other Jewish Christians carried out a similar piece of deception, and the force of their bad example was so great that even Barnabas was affected by it. But when I saw that this behaviour was a contradiction of the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter so that everyone could hear, “If you, who are a Jew, do not live like a Jew but like a Gentile, why on earth do you try to make Gentiles live like Jews?”
15-21 And then I went on to explain that we, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, know that a man is justified not by performing what the Law commands but by faith in Jesus Christ. We ourselves are justified by our faith and not by our obedience to the Law, for we have recognised that no one can achieve justification by doing the “works of the Law”...
...But if I attempt to build again the whole structure of justification by the Law then I do, in earnest, make myself a sinner. For under the Law I “died”, and now I am dead to the Law’s demands so that I may live for God. As far as the Law is concerned I may consider that I died on the cross with Christ. And my present life is not that of the old “I”, but the living Christ within me. The bodily life I now live, I live believing in the Son of God, who loved me and sacrificed himself for me. Consequently I refuse to stultify the grace of God by reverting to the Law. For if righteousness were possible under the Law then Christ died for nothing!” - Galatians 2
I am not in any way under the Law of Moses.
“now I am dead to the Law’s demands so that I may live for God”
Romans 3:31 says, “31 Are we then undermining the Law by this insistence on faith? Not a bit of it! We put the Law in its proper place.”
And it is then followed by the rest of Romans, putting the Law in its proper place:
“For if, after all, they who pin their faith to keeping the Law were to inherit God’s world, it would make nonsense of faith in God himself, and destroy the whole point of the promise.... Now we find that the Law keeps slipping into the picture to point the vast extent of sin. Yet, though sin is shown to be wide and deep, thank God his grace is wider and deeper still!...
...1-3 You know very well, my brothers (for I am speaking to those well acquainted with the subject), that the Law can only exercise authority over a man so long as he is alive. A married woman, for example, is bound by law to her husband so long as he is alive. But if he dies, then his legal claim over her disappears. This means that, if she should give herself to another man while her husband is alive, she incurs the stigma of adultery. But if, after her husband’s death, she does exactly the same thing, no one could call her an adulteress, for the legal hold over her has been dissolved by her husband’s death.
4 There is, I think, a fair analogy here. The death of Christ on the cross had made you “dead” to the claims of the Law, and you are free to give yourselves in marriage, so to speak, to another, the one who was raised from the dead, that you may be productive for God....”
If you are under the Law, you need to repent and believe!
What Paul is saying in this passage is, as Matthew Henry said in his commentary:
” ... though we do say that the law will not justify us, yet we do not therefore say that it was given in vain, or is of no use to us; no, we establish the right use of the law, and secure its standing, by fixing it on the right basis. The law is still of use to convince us of what is past, and to direct us for the future; though we cannot be saved by it as a covenant, yet we own it, and submit to it, as a rule in the hand of the Mediator, subordinate to the law of grace; and so are so far from overthrowing that we establish the law.”
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