eChurch Christian Blog

Interesting research coming out of the US looking at the religiosity of those believers affiliated with church and those not.

Written by Tom Rees of Epiphenom:

One of the big news stories from last year was the revelation that Americans are leaving their churches and religious institutions in droves. They are becoming “unaffiliated”, although there was a lot of debate over what that meant. Are Americans losing religion, or is it simply that they are disillusioned with what they’re being offered?

A new analysis, using data collected over the last three decades by the General Social Survey, sheds some light on this – and also tells us more about just who is religious in the USA these days. Some of the answers are quite surprising.

First a little bit about how they framed the questions on religion in the General Social Survey – it’s not straightforward. First, they asked “what is your religious preference”. Those who said “none” were counted as unaffiliated and weren’t asked any further questions. Those who gave a religious preference were then asked how often they attended religious services and how strong was their faith.

So the data on strength of faith and religious attendance relate only to the dwindling number of people who are affiliated. That’s important to remember.

The new analysis (Kevin Flannelly and colleagues from the Spears Research Institute, New York) confirmed that religious affiliation has dropped off over the years of the survey (since 1972). Now, you might think that this happens because those who are lukewarm in their religion have dropped out. If that were so, then the average ‘religious strength’ of those left in would go up.

In fact, that hasn’t happen. Even those still affiliated to a religious faith go to services less often than they used to. And people still in religion are no more fervent than the religious of 30 years ago.

But there are some interesting differences between the affiliated and the non affiliated. For example, the unaffiliated are, on average, better educated than the affiliated. Yet, among the affiliated, the better-educated actually have stronger faith and go to Church more often.

Perhaps that’s because those educated people who remain in religion do so as an active choice.

It works the opposite way around for income. After adjusting for all the other factors, richer people are more likely to be affiliated. However, among the affiliated, wealth means weaker faith.

The last anomaly is children. Previous research suggests that religious people tend to have more children than the non-religious. And, indeed, this new research shows that the unaffiliated have fewer children than the affiliated. But, among the affiliated, those with stronger religious faith actually have fewer children those whose faith is weaker.

Now, the effect is tiny. However, it does suggest something interesting about the connection between religion and fertility. It suggests that families join (or remain in) a religion for the religious congregations – a social structure in which to raise their children – rather any particular religious zeal.

It’s the classic demonstration of the difference between being religious and being believer.

I heartily enjoyed this blog post written by Vincent, hailing from the Orthodox tradition, and rebuffing the myth of a “golden age” of the Church:

The Golden Age of the Church – Franciscan Mafia

There wasn’t one.

This is a myth and it is something often curiously thrown in the face of Orthodox Christians as a supposed “refutation” of our claims regarding the Apostolic Faith.

We don’t believe there was ever a “golden age” of the Church.

Sure, it would’ve been interesting to live during the thousand-or-so years’ reign of Byzantium, but that was one of the most violent eras of the Church! Yes, Christianity was the State religion of the time, and yes the emperors (well, many of them) were God-fearing and helped push the agenda of the Faith and preserve, protect and maintain peace throughout the empire through the Church and Her influence, but there were far more problems than can easily be recounted.

Those ignorant of this time period and indeed of the Orthodox Faith in general like to suggest that our claims regarding Apostolic succession, the Ecumenical Councils and the conciliar view of Ecclesiology (just as examples) are somehow rendered moot by the fact that the Church was essentially in turmoil and utter chaos from the very beginning. The reality is, however, that this is all part and parcel of not only our Theology of the Church but also why we believe the way we do regarding everything from Tradition to Icons.

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Daphne Anson:

They’re really pulling out all the stops these days – those perverse Christians who seem to detest the existence of Israel. Last week the Quakers’ headquarters in Manchester hosted both Israel-basher Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz and – like so many Christian places of worship up and down the British Isles – Rod Cox’s notorious Israel-demonising exhibition of children’s drawings from Gaza. “Greenbelt”, a four-day musical festival at Cheltenham Racecourse that began this past weekend, organised by Christian groups with a pro-Palestinian agenda including Christian Aid and – fresh from their June call to boycott produce from “illegal” West Bank settlements – the Methodists, asks the 12,800 people attending to “confront the stark contrast” between the festival and the “day-to-day life” of Gazans.

Replacement theology and Successionism is undermining Israel, and many Christians have been seduced by Naim Ateek, founder of the Palestinian Christian organisation Sabeel, who denies that the “Old Testament” justifies Zionism and has made conflicting statements regarding Israel’s right to exist. Churches have produced one-sided reports about the situation in the Middle East that depict Hamas as a charitable organisation, completely overlooking its terrorist credentials and its antisemitic genocidal Charter. There’s even a tendency in some quarters to twist reality for political purposes and depict Jesus as a Palestinian rather than as a Judean. In London both the Bloomsbury Baptist Church and St James’s Church, Piccadilly, hold carol services in conjunction with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign with the words to well-known carols altered to demonise Israel.

And so on.

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The birth of a splinter Lutheran group last Friday in the US has garnered little in the way of media coverage and the Get Religion blog mulls over the reasons for this.

The new North American Lutheran Church (NALC) was an inevitability following the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) decision last year to allow pastors to be in non-celibate same-sex relationships.

Lutheran Core – a Lutheran coalition for reform -  lamented the decision made by the ELCA, and are the group behind the formation of the new NALC. They have released this press release (PDF) in which they rather interestingly claim that the decision to form a breakaway group was not based solely on issues of sexuality:

Lutheran CORE leaders note that the problems in the ELCA are really not about sexual behavior but rather about an ongoing movement away from the authority and teaching of the Bible throughout the ELCA, on issues far broader than simply human sexuality.

“It was not our choice to leave the ELCA, but the ELCA has chosen to reject ‘the faith once delivered to the saints,’ so now we are acting to maintain our position within the consensus of the Church catholic,” said Schwarz.

“The ELCA has decided that it is in a position of authority over the Bible itself rather than submitting to the authority of the Bible over all matters of faith and life,” Chavez said. “And unfortunately, most of the attention is given to the sexuality issues, but there are actually much more disturbing trends within the ELCA.”

On an aside, just before the ELCA took this vote to allow for non-celibate gay pastors, there was an announcement of  a new full communion agreement between the ELCA and the United Methodist Church. As part of this agreement was the decision to allow for the sharing of pastors. After the ELCA’s “gay clergy” vote, this threw up the question for the United Methodist Church as to whether they would allow non-celibate gay pastors from the ELCA to minister in their churches.

The answer was a resounding no.

I wonder if the new NALC will seek their own communion agreement with the United Methodist Church?

I imagine there will be a forging of links between the NALC and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as they will most certainly view each other as comrades-in-arms.

Well, you’re pretty much up-to-date.

It’s the Feast of St Augustine of Hippo today and I didn’t know that he is in fact the patron of brewers because…

…..of his conversion from a former life of loose living, which included parties, entertainment, and worldly ambitions.

St Augustine had a massive influence on me, to which I owe him a debt of gratitude.