(Analysis) One of America’s most influential cultural changes in the 21st century was a steady decline in Christian vitality, as measured by membership, baptism, funerals, worship attendance, practice, and perception. Two major new social science studies suggest that this decline may have bottomed out.
Two weeks ago, the Pew Research Center published a 392-page report based on a large-scale survey of 36,908 adults, the first religious landscape study since 2014. Next week, by coincidence, Oxford University Press will publish “American Religious Landscapes” by Ryan Barge, a leading analyst for American religious trends, which also feature religious columns in religion.
Pew’s team concludes that “after a steady decline over the years, the share of Americans identifying as Christians is at least temporarily, at least temporarily.”
Meanwhile, Barge emphasizes the opposite trend. He observed that while the proportion of Americans identified as Christians has been leveled, the rise of non-religious affiliations known as “non-nes” is important and “find some indications of various data sources that this era may be nearing the end.”
In the big picture, Pew reports the current breakdown of American religious identities as follows: Unrelated (29%), Evangelical Protestants, Catholic (19%), Mainline Protestants (11%), Black Protestants (5%), Jews (2%), Latter-day signs (2%), Musine at around 1%, religion.
The recent dramatic changes are shown by the five biggest categories of changes compared to Pew’s 2007 “Landscape” report: evangelical Protestants (26.3%), Catholics (23.9%), mainline Protestants (18.1%), non-related (16.1%), and black Protestants (6.9%). Let’s take a closer look.
Catholic
In response to the Pew Report, Charles Collins of Crux made this drastic observation.
The above ratios are just the beginning. The current 19% share includes not only regular and occasional church people, but also people who have not attended the masses in decades.
Pew reports that only 44% of self-identified Catholics consider religion to be “very” important, compared to 60% of Protestants overall. Only 29% of Catholics attend worship services every week, while 40% of Protestants. Furthermore, 48% of Catholics think the Bible is “very” or “very” important, while 72% of Protestants do so.
Burge noted that while Catholic “the only real growth” comes through Latin American immigration, Hispanics are still underestimated by church leaders.
Mainline Protestant
These predominantly white, long-established denominations were generally moderate or free beliefs, and were once influential as the closest to established religious centers in the United States. Now, Barge predicts that this form of Christianity will “mainly disappear.” (Burge himself led the American Baptist Church on the Mainline, which he once had to break up recently).
Burge points out that these followers, which account for about 28% of Americans in the 1972 General Social Survey (GSS), currently only about 10% of them. Pew’s 2007 landscape survey found that the proportion of mainline Protestants was 18%, then dropped to 11%.
One forecast shows that even fewer remains by 2030 will fall to just 5% by 2030. The reasons for this decline include aging membership, fewer young members, inadequate maintenance of children raised in these congregations, and minimal benefits from “switching” from Evangelism or other church groups. Meanwhile, minority evangelical members within these churches are drifting away.
Evangelical
Pew reports that these well-known conservative denominations and congregations have been declining since 2007.
Burge says he experienced significant growth between 1983 and 1993, reaching 30% of Americans due to GSS counts, and was once “wide-wide” in American culture. He believes that evangelical Protestant shares will return to those heights. However, he also points out that evangelicals account for more than 1972 in the US population today, and are “a force still to be considered.”
Black Protestant
Data in this category covers historically black sects and excludes black members of primarily white evangelicals, mainline and nondenominational churches. The eight major denominations have around 7 million members in local congregations, with around 21,000 people.
As Burge observes, black Protestants share similar beliefs with white evangelicals, but in close political terms with mainline liberals. They accounted for around 8% to 9% of the US population in the 1970s, but that number has declined over the past 20 years, likely to be around 6% according to Pew or 5% according to Burge. Barge suggests that “it is likely to be heading downwards in the next decade or so.”
Today, about 23% of Black Americans report no religious affiliation.
Other observations
The Protestant map has been redrawn by the rise of independent “non-denominational” local congregations. Pew estimates that non-denominational churches currently account for 7.1% of American adults and 18% of US Protestants. This shift is extremely important. The 2020 Religious Census found that nondenominational churches are second only to Catholics, with over 21 million members. The census recorded 44,319 such congregations.
Barge carefully examines three categories of religiously unrelated Americans, as distinguished by Pew: atheists (5%) are sure that God does not exist, but Agnotics (6%) do not believe they cannot know.
Much larger groups (19%) fall into the “nothing in particular” category and have no particular religious affiliation or identity. Compared to atheists and agnostics, this group is not hostile to religious beliefs, not wealthy, uneducated, not politically liberal, and not involved in other social organizations as well as churches.
Another fascinating discoveries for Pew is that Hindus are the highest-stage religious organizations, with 57% reporting family incomes of over $100,000, and 70% earning a bachelor’s degree. Muslims rank slightly lower in third place. Then there are mainline Protestants, Catholics, evangelical Protestants, black Protestants, and things that are not religiously related fall somewhere in the middle.
Burge concludes his book with a calm prediction that the influence of American religion will “continue to retreat,” and with “small evidence” that expanding secular Americans can organize effective local social services that the church has provided for centuries. He only sees two real results. Government services will expand even further, either “appearing unlikely” or millions of poor Americans “fall through a rift in the social safety net.”
