Posted on 07/20/2004 2:45:02 PM PDT by Between the Lines
The United States will no longer be a majority Protestant nation in years to come, due to a precipitous decline in affiliation with many Protestant churches, a new survey has found.
Between 1993 and 2002, the share of Americans who said they were Protestant dropped from 63 percent to 52 percent, after years of remaining generally stable, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
At the same time, the number of people who said they had no religion rose from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent, and many are former Protestants, the survey's authors said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
LOL...........Hillary at 'work' again in Chicago!
/sarcasm
Ummm how would he know that they were former?
I am just surprised the article didn't end with a big Hooray. It is MSNBC after all.
Actually, more people are already presently registered in a Catholic Church than are registered in a Protestant Church, according to statistics from the National Council of Churches and reprinted in the World Almanac. This doesn't quite mean that there are fewer Protestants than Catholics, however: Catholics tend to maintain ties to their parishes even if they no longer believe what the Catholic Church teaches, or go to mass weekly. It's what we call "A & P" Catholics (Ashes and Palms), although now it's probably simply "Christmas and Easter:" Even Ash Wednesday is out of vogue, it seems.
The Catholic Church has a notoriously Democrat image, and its members often compare poorly on issues of Christian fidelity to issues such as abortion, divorce, homosexuality, etc. Further analysis, however shows that *church-going* Catholics are as conservative as "fundamentalists" on any issue. It's just that so many liberal apostates call themselves Catholics.
In surveys I've seen, 27% of Americans call themselves Catholic. About 23% of Americans are registered as Catholics in their churches. Only about 22% of Americans are registered in Protestant Churches. But if Catholic registration patterns were more similar to Protestant patterns, I'd guess only about 12-15% of Americans would be registered Catholics.
What about the rest? The Orthodox Church in America (all churches) while still small is growing. Jews are withering away, and Moslems really probably only amount to 1-2 million. Close to 50% of Americans (PLUS about half of self-identified Catholics) are not Christian in any meaningful sense of the word.
The actually reasons are first the decision to give priority on immigration to non Europeans .
Second the secularization of the society
We live in a post Christian era.
I fully expect that the day will come when we will be martyred for our faith, like our faith forefathers .
This is a guess, but I believe that 50% or more of those that attend a Protestant church on a Sunday are not "members" (registered) In my church (that has between 400 and 500 on a given Sunday ) somewhere around 100 are actually members and would be counted on the church rolls . When I joined my church a few months ago one of the things I had to affirm was that I would be under the discipline of the church .There are many that do not like the idea of being answerable to the church
Glad that you mentioned that I was a little disturbed that Orthodox Christianity was mentioned as "other Religions" right alongside with Islam. On the plus side it was shown as growing but once again the last time I checked it is and always will be the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
###"I fully expect that the day will come when we will be martyred for our faith, like our faith forefathers."###
There are some Catholic Priests who feel that it is possible in as soon as 10 years.
Secularism is the correct reason for all Christian faiths to be suffering today and the fuel of secularism is satan himself.
That is why prayer is needed today like never before. That the Holy Spirit renew the Church.
I'm one of those people who prefers to say He is a Christian, a sinner saved by grace, through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as depicted in the Holy Spirit inspired Bible, to saying "I'm a Baptist." There are traditions often maintained by just about any denomination that I don't find of best Scriptural perspective. So many Baptists fail to recognize the reality of 1 Corinthians 12 & 14, for example. And an error on the other side: so many Pentecostals believe that speaking in a language our souls don't know is required as evidence of being a mature believer.
The truth is my Church is the Body of Christ, The Bride of the Lamb of God!
It's wonderful that Tyndale, Luther, Zwingli, Wycliffe, Calvin, etc. found the truth of the salvation of Christ gained by our faith (and wonderful that so many Roman Catholics have also had this uneclipsed faith) but being "in Christ" is what it's all about, not being in some earthly tradition of worship.
Sigh. There, I got that off my chest. ;-` But this survey didn't ask me. 8-l
(i.e., "...he" is a Christian...) - no capital H for me
It very well could be, if you look around you , the secular will say what ever is necessary to save their lives, those of us that call the name of Christ may well be headless for refusing to bow the knee to a false god, be it a nation of a false religion.
More precisely, the NCC figures I stated are based on self-reporting from the actual churches. In the case of Catholic and many mainline protestant churches, that is usually based on registrations. Many Eastern Orthodox, unorthodox, "fundamentalist," and Pentecostalist churches's estimates are very rough estimates based on church attendance plus family members of church attendees plus elderly and infirmed members. In fact, the numbers I cited for Jews and Moslems don't come from the NCC at all; Moslems report to the NCC that there are 6 million Moslems, but these figures have been demonstrated by more systematic studies to be patently absurd.
Even using estimates, the last NCC estimates I saw had Catholics outnumbering Protestants by about 1 million congregants. But as I stated, apostates from a Catholic background are more likely to be counted as Catholic than apostates from Protestant backgrounds are to be counted as members of their former churches. The shocker is that there are only about 130 million adult Christians in America, about 50% of the total.
From this article -- this number agrees basically with the thread - Number of U.S. Catholics, deacons up; priests, religious down
>>This is surprising. Most LDS do not call themselves Protestants, and most Protestants do not consider us to be Protestants.<<
My guess is that the survey simply used "Protestant" as a way of saying "Miscellaneous Christians." As in, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant.
Usually, if you answer "Christian" to what religion you are, the questionner will then ask you which denomination. Only if you repeat something like, "no denomination, just Christian" will your denomination be listed as Christian.
That is not surprising if one know the history of your church , and Smiths dislike of creeds and his desire to separate himself from them , or if one knows the creeds of the Christian and knows that the LDS would not agree with much of them
I suspect that the people taking the survey had no clue of history or creeds and if you had the name Christ in your church and were not Catholic, you must be protestant.
This is fairly common as I (and I would guess you) have seen the LDS folded onto the Protestant family most of the time in surveys etc.
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