Where Are All the American Christians Going?
Article by Robin Brace from The Christian Hawk
On September 28th, 2009, Fox News asked: Where Have All the Christians Gone? Here is the beginning of their report:
“Christianity is plummeting in America, while the number of non-believers is skyrocketing.
A shocking new study of Americans’ religious beliefs shows the beginnings of a major realignment in Americans’ relationship with God. The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reveals that Protestants now represent half of all Americans, down almost 20 percent in the last twenty years. In the coming months, America will become a minority Protestant nation for the first time since the pilgrims.
The number of people who claim no religious affiliation, meanwhile, has doubled since 1990 to fifteen percent, its highest point in history. Non-believers now represent the third-highest group of Americans, after Catholics and Baptists.
Other headlines from the report:
1) The number of (American) Christians has declined 12% since 1990, and is now 76%, the lowest percentage in American history.
2) The growth of non-believers has come largely from men. Twenty percent of men express no religious affiliation; 12% of women.
3) Young people are fleeing faith. Nearly a quarter of Americans in their 20’s profess no organized religion.
4) But these non-believers are not particularly atheist. That number hasn’t budged and stands at less than 1 percent. (Agnostics are similarly less than 1 percent.) Instead, these individuals have a belief in God but no interest in organized religion, or they believe in a personal God but not in a formal faith tradition.
The implications for American society are profound. Americans’ relationship with God, which drove many of the country’s great transformations from the pilgrims to the founding fathers, the Civil War to the civil rights movement, is still intact. Eighty-two percent of Americans believe in God or a higher power.”
The decline in popularity of Protestantism within America is worrying but it is probably inevitable. Why? As in much of Europe, Americans have been on a slow, ‘drip feed’ of atheism and disbelief for many years. Atheistic Secularism is now the order of the day in the Western world. Schools teach their children atheistic Darwinism and Christianity is hounded out of the classroom. We cannot speak from a direct USA experience but disbelief now appears to be spreading everywhere in the West like a virus, yet this is mostly not the violent, angry disbelief of people like Richard Dawkins, rather, it is largely indifference and, perhaps, a lack of confidence in Christianity’s claims. It is practical atheism rather than studied, or, epistemological Dawkins-like atheism. The persecution of Christians, meanwhile, is gathering momentum in our former Christian heartlands. Not surprising, then, that new US President Obama’s aides recently ordered a Christian symbol to be covered over when he made a major televised speech (it would have been clearly visible as he he gave the speech). The time was when any American leader would have certainly wished to be associated with Christianity, but times change.
So America is fast approaching a time when Christian Protestants in that land will be in the minority; is it not incredible that 88% of Americans considered themselves Christians as recently as 1990 but only 76% now? 19 years is really not very long.
Looking closely at some of the figures which have been quoted, it is obvious that younger people are no longer continuing as readily in the faith of their parents as they once did. Again, should one be surprised at this since, from an early age, children in schools across America and, of course, also across Europe, are indoctrinated in evolutionary teachings? Our western peoples have removed God from the classroom to be replaced by Darwin. Let us not forget the lessons taught to us by people like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton: people need to worship something, take God away, and they will find something else to worship.
One may also wonder about the affect of the virtual plague of Protestant prosperity gospel teachers right across the West, but especially in the US. Frankly, most intelligent, reasoning people are not fooled by these arrogant, showbizzy, money merchants who are so quick to abuse Christianity. From the e mails arriving on the desk of UK Apologetics we do know that many people are moving away from Protestant evangelical Christianity because of the activities of some of these charlatans.
But there could be another factor here too. Don’t forget that these latest quoted figures confirm that absolute atheism itself has not surged ahead (still less than 1% of Americans) so it still remains tiny in support. No, the real surge appears to be away from organised, institutionalised Christianity. Look again at the four points from the Fox report which we began with, if you want to confirm this point. Apparently, those people who claim no religious affiliation have doubled since 1990 to fifteen percent today. This may well be indicative of another very new, and fast-developing trend: ‘unaffiliated Christianity,’ this is sometimes called the new, ‘unchurched Christian movement.’ We know something about these people because many of them regularly contact UK Apologetics. Many of these people have pretty much given up on organised church life but often retain a strong Christian belief, often meeting only in Christian family groups and other house-type groups. Robin Brace wrote his 2006 article, Crisis in the Local Church largely for and about these people.
So, the ARIS report does highlight some real problems within US Christianity, yet surely we Protestants must admit that some of those of our own number have at least partially caused the problems.
Tags: Christianity