Growing Protestant Churches Believe a Fairly Literal Interpretation of the Bible

Study finds conservative theology mixed with innovative worship approach helps Protestant churches grow congregations

© Carlo Allegri / Reuters

The study, conducted over five years, surveyed 2,225 churchgoers in Ontario, Canada

Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent, Guardian

Churches that are theologically conservative with beliefs based on a literal interpretation of the Bible grow faster than those with a liberal orientation, according to a five-year academic study.

“If we are talking solely about what belief system is more likely to lead to numerical growth among Protestant churches, the evidence suggests conservative Protestant theology is the clear winner,” said David Haskell, the Canadian study’s lead researcher.

The findings contradict earlier studies undertaken in the US and the UK, which attempted to discover the underlying causes of a steep decline in church attendance in recent decades but concluded that theology was not a significant factor.

The results of the new study are likely to fuel anxious debate among church members about the reasons for decline and what measures or approaches might stimulate growth. Those promoting evangelical styles of worship and strict adherence to what they see as biblical truths will be bolstered by the findings.

The authors of Theology Matters: Comparing the Traits of Growing and Declining Mainline Protestant Church Attendees and Clergy surveyed 2,225 churchgoers in Ontario, Canada, and conducted interviews with 29 clergy and 195 congregants. The paper is to be published in next month’s issue of the respected international journal, Review of Religious Research.

The researchers compared the beliefs and practices of congregations and clergy at mainline Protestant churches whose attendances were growing with declining churches. On all measures, the growing churches “held more firmly to the traditional beliefs of Christianity and were more diligent in things like prayer and Bible reading,” Haskell said.

Among the key findings are:

Only 50% of clergy from declining churches agreed it was “very important to encourage non-Christians to become Christians”, compared to 100% of clergy from growing churches.

71% of clergy from growing churches read the Bible daily compared with 19% from declining churches.

46% of people attending growing churches read the Bible once a week compared with 26% from declining churches.

93% of clergy and 83% of worshippers from growing churches agreed with the statement “Jesus rose from the dead with a real flesh-and-blood body leaving behind an empty tomb”. 

This compared with 67% of worshippers and 56% of clergy from declining churches.

100% of clergy and 90% of worshippers agreed that “God performs miracles in answer to prayers”, compared with 80% of worshippers and 44% of clergy from declining churches.

The study also found that about two-thirds of congregations at growing churches were under the age of 60, whereas two-thirds of congregations at declining churches were over 60. 

This second last bullet is disturbing. 80% of worshippers believe God performs miracles in answer to prayer compared to just 44% of the clergy in declining churches. This is disturbing on several levels such as, it would appear that clergy in such a position are destroying the faith of believers rather than building it up. It would also appear that far too many in the clergy do not have a real and vital relationship with Jesus Christ. Without such a relationship, you should never be in a position of teaching Christ to others. Bible teachers are held to a higher standard in judgement than others; this should put the fear of God into a Bible teacher.

Believers - if your pastor or minister does not believe Jesus is alive and answers prayer, even with miracles at times, then either get rid of that clergy or go find another church. Otherwise, your church is no more than a social club.

Services at growing churches featured contemporary worship with drums and guitars, while declining churches favoured traditional styles of worship with organ and choir.

According to Haskell, research on general social groups has shown that those with a consistent unified message and clear boundaries with people outside the group are attractive to outsiders.

“Conservative believers, relying on a fairly literal interpretation of scripture, are ‘sure’ that those who are not converted to Christianity will miss their chance for eternal life,” he said. “Because they are profoundly convinced of [the] life-saving, life-altering benefits that only their faith can provide, they are motivated by emotions of compassion and concern to recruit family, friends and acquaintances into their faith and into their church.

“This desire to reach others also makes conservative Protestants willing to implement innovative measures including changes to the style and content of their worship services.”

Theologically conservative believers were more unified in terms of priorities and what was right and wrong, he added. “That also makes them more confident and, to those on the outside looking in, confidence is persuasive all on its own. Confidence mixed with a message that’s uplifting, reassuring or basically positive is an attractive combination.”

Haskell said he expected the findings of the study, which was not commissioned by any group or organisation, to be controversial. “If you’re in a mainline church and that church is dying, and you’ve just heard that the theological position that you have is likely what’s killing it, you’re not going to be very happy about that,” he said. “Theological orientation cuts to the very core of the religious practitioner.”

In the UK, attendance at Church of England services dropped by half between 1980 and 2015. Statistics published last month showed that 960,000 adults and children – less than 1.5% of the population – went to church each week during the sample month of October 2015. The C of E has launched a programme of evangelism in an attempt to stem the decline.

1980-2015 is when the Church of England began slipping into more and more liberal theology.

The Pew Research Centre reported last year that that the congregations of Protestant churches in the US were decreasing by up to a million people a year. Canada’s four largest mainstream Protestant churches have seen their membership drop by half since the mid-1960s while the population has nearly doubled.

Main Religious Denominations in Canada

	19911		2001		20112
	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
Total Population	26,944,040		29,639,035		32,852,300
Christian	22,503,360	83	22,851,825	77	22,102,700	67.3
- Roman Catholic	12,203,625	45.2	12,793,125	43.2	12,728,900	38.7
- Total Protestant	9,427,675	34.9	8,654,845	29.2
- United Church of Canada	3,093,120	11.5	2,839,125	9.6	2,007,610	6.1
- Anglican	2,188,110	8.1	2,035,495	6.9	1,631,845	5.0
- Baptist	663,360	2.5	729,470	2.5	635,840	1.9
- Lutheran	636,205	2.4	606,590	2.0	478,185	1.5
- Protestant, not included elsewhere3	628,945	2.3	549,205	1.9
- Presbyterian	636,295	2.4	409,830	1.4	472,385	1.4

Christian Orthodox	387,395	1.4	495,245	1.7	550,690	1.7
- Christian, not included elsewhere4	353,040	1.3	780,450	2.6

As you can see, the UCC lost fully one-third of its congregants in just 20 years. Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches lost about one-quarter of their congregants in the same period. These are the mainstream, liberal Protestant churches referred to above.

Eastern Orthodox churches, on the other hand are growing. The last category would include the evangelical churches other than Baptist, which have, apparently, more than doubled in just ten years.

That should tell you something loud and clear. It is not technique, confidence or music that draws people to evangelical churches, that may get them in the door, but it's the presence of the Holy Spirit that keeps them coming back. The Holy Spirit only shows up in churches where the truth is preached with faith and conviction.

Don't look to American Christians as examples; they are nothing like most Canadian evangelical Christians, although their poison is spreading northward and must be guarded against. 

Popular Christian Author Is Downright Baffled By Evangelical Support For Trump

Philip Yancey wants to know: How can evangelicals support someone who “stands against everything that Christianity believes”?

 video 2:53

Carol Kuruvilla 
Associate Religion Editor
Huffington Post

Award-winning Christian author Philip Yancey is dumbfounded by the way that many members of his faith have rallied around Donald Trump. 

Yancey expressed his doubts about the Republican presidential candidate and his Christian supporters during an interview with website Evangelical Focus.

“I am staggered that so many conservative or evangelical Christians would see a man who is a bully, who made his money by casinos, who has had several wives and several affairs, that they would somehow paint him as a hero, as someone that we could stand behind,” Yancey said.

“To choose a person who stands against everything that Christianity believes as the hero, the representative, one that we get behind enthusiastically is not something that I understand at all,” he added.

It's really not that difficult, Philip. American Christians, and many Canadian Christians too, believe what they hear on Fox TV. Fox TV, and the Republican Party have demonized Democrats to the degree that even Donald Trump looks good. This hyper-polarization of the political scene in the USA is completely undermining democracy and will destroy the country in very short order. 

The day will soon come when the Whitehouse will either dissolve Congress and the Senate, or completely ignore them. If the Democrats are in power when it happens, 'patriots' will take up arms and there will be bloodshed like we haven't seen since Lincoln. If the Republicans are in power, there will be bloodshed like we haven't seen since Lincoln - not as in a civil war, but as in ethnic cleansing. And, they will do it in the Name of God, which will lower Christianity to the level of Islam.

In either event, America is finished.

To choose a person who stands against everything that Christianity believes as the hero ... is not something that I understand at all.

Philip Yancey

Yancey, a respected author and columnist whose books about Christianity have sold millions of copies, is just the latest evangelical heavyweight to speak out against Trump. A number of high profile evangelical Christians have parked themselves in the “Never Trump” camp, pointing out that the candidate’s policies and actions don’t reflect Christian values.

And yet, rank and file white evangelical Christians don’t seem to mind ― or at least, are willing to forgive. The group, which counts for one-fifth of all registered voters in the U.S. and roughly one-third of all voters with Republican leanings, has been rallying strongly around Trump. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June, 78 percent of white evangelical voters said they would vote for Trump.

In private meetings with evangelical pastors supportive of his campaign, the nominee promised to cherish and defend America’s “Christian heritage,” which has struck a chord with Christians who feel that they are losing the culture wars.

But Yancey believes that tying the church and politics together in this way isn’t good for American Christianity in the long run.

“There are countries in Europe where the church is set back for decades and decades, because they have been stained by how they sold their soul for power, I would say.”

Decades? More like centuries. But Yancey's point is that Christians in America are becoming more and more indistinguishable from the rest of society. As I have been writing for some time, we have become consumed by politics. We call ourselves Christians, yet Christ never had anything to do with politics, nor did any of His disciples, and neither should we. We should be completely consumed with spiritual matters, but in reality, we are not spiritual at all. 

The American evangelical church is currently in a state of apostasy!

So why do we think that God will restore the USA to it's former glory? That was always the message of the false prophets of the Old Testament.

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

Trump has not pledged to ban all Muslims, he pledged to ban them until they could be properly vetted. Considering what is happening in Europe, it would be idiotic to do otherwise.

ANALYSIS - Too Much Democracy? Donald Trump Dividing Republicans Top to Bottom

Before getting into Neil's excellent piece, just a couple of very quick thoughts regarding Trump and the electoral process:

Donald Trump is a caricature of American politics

American politics has ceased to be politics and become entertainment

Mitch McConnell is the Koch Brothers instrument on earth

Trump's ascendancy has Republican thinkers, brass talking of thwarting the will of primary voters

By Neil Macdonald, CBC News

The Republican establishment's dilemma: How to remove Trump's podium without totally fracturing the GOP
(Joe Skipper/Reuters)

It's generally accepted in America that democracy is an absolute good; that, like tolerance, there can never be too much of it.

But absolutism never survives the test of rational thought.

Tolerance goes too far when it tolerates intolerance. And democracy flounders when people are convinced to embrace something fundamentally undemocratic.

That is what the Republican Party appears to be doing at the moment by embracing Donald Trump, who by his own words, would behave undemocratically as a president.

For example, he says he would order the U.S. military to torture captives, and go beyond waterboarding when dealing with enemies of the state.

He says he would bar a quarter of the world's population from entering the U.S. solely on the grounds of religion.

His ban might even apply to Muslims who are already American residents returning from travels abroad; it is impossible to know because Trump speaks in such bizarre, sweeping terms.

And, of course, he would deport 12 million undocumented, mostly Hispanic, workers, throwing the American economy into chaos — he would throw out even those whose children were born in the U.S.A.

So Republican intellectuals are now talking about making a courageous choice, albeit one with potentially calamitous consequences: That would be thwarting, if necessary, the will of millions of the party's voters, many of whom comprise its bedrock base.

Columnist George F. Will, whose conservative credentials are beyond question, has warned that Trump is not just a buffoon ("Is there a disagreeable human trait he does not have?" Will asks) but an "avatar of unfettered government and executive authoritarianism."

Michael Gerson goes even further. Trump, he says, undermines American security and must be denied the Republican nomination, even if he arrives at the party's convention in Cleveland with the most delegates.

'Disqualifying in a president'

Gerson, based in Washington, is a member of America's evangelical intelligentsia, a man whose conservatism is infused with Christian values — the compassionate sort, rather than the ferocious nativism embraced by the more fundamentalist evangelical cohort.

Michael Gerson, a Washington-based op-ed columnist, was an adviser and speechwriter with former Republican president George W. Bush. (CBC)

As a speechwriter and adviser to George W. Bush, Gerson was in the Oval Office the day after the 9/11 attacks, as the president struggled with what to tell an enraged, volatile American public.

"At that moment," Gerson told me recently, "we had no idea how Americans would react to Muslims in U.S. To Muslim-Americans.

"And George Bush set out as a leader to say we're an inclusive, tolerant country… we don't blame a religion for what happened. He went to a mosque within days of the attacks.

"But imagine," Gerson went on, "if George Bush had said, 'Yeah, I'm going to whip up resentment of Islam for my own political purposes? He could have done it in a minute."

That, says Gerson, is what Trump has done, manipulating public fear by proposing his blanket ban on Muslims following the mass shootings by Islamic extremists in Paris and in California.

"When Donald Trump does this as a populist tool … he is directly undermining the national interest of the United States for political reasons," says Gerson. "That itself is disqualifying in a president."

'A hot rock'

Gerson is among a growing group of Republican thinkers these days who feel the party must deny Trump the nomination, vox populi be damned.

"The U.S. government does not have an absolute populist democracy," he argues, "and the parties are not run as absolute populist democracies.

"There's some deliberative role in the party structure that says, is this best for the party? Is this best for the country?"

That's a more refined version of what Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, urged: that the party drop Trump "like a hot rock," even if he wins the primary season.

The calculations and rules for the Republican convention in July are bewildering, but there are options for keeping Trump from the nomination even if he arrives in Cleveland with the most delegates.

Most of these delegates are only obliged to vote for him on the first ballot.

The trouble is, the man now running second, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, is, in some ways, more extreme than Trump, though perhaps somewhat more predictable.

So "moderate" Republicans — and they do still exist, even if they've been pushed into the margins by this wave of bare-fanged populism — need to find someone capable of moving a mass of delegates.

There is no such candidate now in the race. House Speaker Paul Ryan, if he could be persuaded to stand, is a possibility.

There is even the possibility the party brass will orchestrate a rewriting of the rules at the convention to exclude Trump, says Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

That, of course, would mean the party leadership overriding the millions of voters supporting Trump, not to mention ignoring all the anger feeding the party revolt against the Republican leadership itself.

As Ornstein puts it: "That would mean blood on the streets, and on the convention floor."

Be it resolved

In Texas last week, a Republican local president, Buffie Ingersoll, showed me a resolution her precinct had passed following Trump's big Super Tuesday victory. Several other precincts passed identical measures.

It cites McConnell's "hot rock" comment, and goes on: "Be it resolved that Republican voters reject the decision of the United States Senate Majority Leader to abort the will of the people," and condemns any effort to "silence voters" at the convention.

The party had better pay attention, says Ingersoll, "or else."

And yet, that is exactly what people like Gerson, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist Kathleen Parker are urging, if necessary. With all the attendant consequences.

Kathleen Parker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated newspaper columnist in the U.S. (CBC)

"I can easily see vast numbers of people descending on Washington," Parker told me. "I can see people rioting. I think it's going to be a historical moment when that happens. And I don't think it's going to be pretty."

Nonetheless, she says, "I agree with Michael Gerson. I think he [Trump] has to be stopped."

It didn't have to come to this. The party could probably have found a sensible, winning champion had it not remained deaf to grassroots anger and dismissed Trump as a joke for as long as it did.

But if voters must be thwarted, it's probably good that it will be conservatives themselves doing the thwarting. They are, after all, the ones who have complained most loudly about Barack Obama and liberal judges corrupting democracy.

The Democrats need only stand back and watch.

Neil Macdonald is a Senior Correspondent for CBC News, currently based in Ottawa. Prior to that he was the CBC's Washington correspondent for 12 years, and before that he spent five years reporting from the Middle East. He also had a previous career in newspapers, and speaks English and French fluently, and some Arabic.


Now if the party leadership were successful in robbing Trump of victory in the leadership race, he might well start his own party which would make a Republican victory next November absolutely impossible. 8 more years of Democratic government - I shudder to think it. Not that I'm afraid of what the Democrats would do, although I am, but more-so because I am afraid of what all you gun-toting, super-patriots might do. 

Canada's Next Prime Minister (Maybe) Declares Evangelical Christians UnCanadian

OTTAWA – NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair lashed out at evangelical Christian groups Monday, accusing them of going “completely against” Canadian values and law with their beliefs about homosexuality.

Current Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair
could become Prime Minister after the October federal elections

Mulcair’s anger spilled over when reporters asked about Crossroads Relief and Development – a group that’s received $389,000 from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to build wells and provide clean water to 11,000 people Uganda.

Crossroads has called homosexuality a sin, a belief the NDP connects to anti-gay violence in Uganda and a stalled Ugandan bill to prohibit gay rights promotion.

“We don’t understand how the Conservatives can … subsidize a group in Uganda whose views are identical to those of the Ugandan government,” Mulcair said.

This is a remarkable statement; he seems to be saying that Canada should only be supporting people in Uganda who oppose the government. Isn't that supporting insurrection in a sovereign state?

Mulcair's statement is troublesome for another reason. The views of government and media toward homosexuality have changed dramatically in the last 2 decades. Evangelical Christians believe the same thing they believed 2000 years ago; the same thing Canadians believed from it's first European settlement until the end of the last century - homosexuality is sin! 

The Canadian media's 100% about face on the subject is shaping the opinions of Canadians and leading us down the garden path. It is based on untruths - gays are born gay; and it is based on a singular hatred for anything genuinely Christian - especially Evangelicals.

This is a shot across the bow of the good ship evangelical, and is a sign of the full barrage awaiting us should the SS NDP be permitted to pull alongside.

It’s not clear how Mulcair drew that conclusion.

Crossroads’ water project partner group in Africa, Victory Outreach Ministries, states on its website that while homosexuality is sinful, gays are “created in God’s image, and we condemn the activities of those who are violent towards gays.”

The CCRF called on Mulcair to apologize in the House to traditionally-minded Christians across Canada.

Spokesman for the Canadian Council for Religious Freedom, Father Geoffrey Korz, expressed concern over Mulcair’s attempt to perpetuate a stereotype of Canadian evangelical Christians.

“One can only imagine if Mr. Mulcair called Canadian Muslims ‘terrorists’, made a slur about Sikh turbans, or attacked the financial integrity of Jewish Canadians. Such statements are unbecoming of the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition,” he said.

Don Hutchinson, with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, said Mulcair should know the Supreme Court has ruled religious beliefs don’t disqualify Canadians from engagement with government.

He adds that Canadian evangelicals have spent more than $535 million on development work overseas.

“When you work with organizations that function on the ‘love your neighbour’ principle, you get a better return on your dollar,” he said.

CIDA has frozen another $156,000 in Crossroads funding until it can review the organization’s work.

A government source told QMI Agency the review is to ensure Crossroads isn’t denying aid to Ugandans based on sexual orientation.

Excellent Insight into the 'Falling Away'

Viewpoints: Why is faith falling in the US?

From BBC Magazine (2012)

Hundreds of people stand with umbrellas and rain gear in front of a tent
Thousands attended an atheism rally in Washington DC this March

A new poll suggests that atheism is on the rise in the US, while those who consider themselves religious has dropped. What's the cause? Two writers debate.

Recently, researchers conducting a WIN-Gallup International poll about religion surveyed people from 57 countries.

The poll suggests that in the US, since 2005:
the number of people who consider themselves religious has dropped from 73% to 60%
those who declare themselves atheists have risen from 1% to 5%

What's behind the changing numbers? Is the cause churches that chase modern trends at the expense of core beliefs? Or are those who have always been ambivalent about religion now less likely to identify as Christian? We asked two writers for their take.

Rod Dreher: Progressive churches fuel apathy

As a practicing Christian of the Hitchens sort (Peter, the good one), I welcome the news that more Americans are willing to identify as atheists. At least that clarifies matters.

I respect honest atheists more than I do many on my own side, for the same reason Jesus of Nazareth said to the tepid Laodicean church: "because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth".


About the contributors

Rod Dreher is a senior editor at the American Conservative. He is the author of Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots. Dreher lives in Louisiana with his family.

Dreher

He also has, according to Wikipedia, become associated with a new religion 'The Templeton Foundation', dedicated to finding 'spiritual truths' through scientific pursuits (sound like 'Scientology"?)

There is no mention of God or Jesus Christ in their mission statement. It is certainly possible that he can maintain his faith while associating with Templeton, but I suspect it will be difficult over the long-haul.

Dickerson

David Ellis Dickerson is also the author of House of Cards: The True Story of How a 26-Year-Old Fundamentalist Virgin Learned about Life, Love, and Sex by Writing Greeting Cards. He has also contributed to the Atlantic and This American Life. He lives in Tucson, AZ. And he is a Christian turned atheist.

Take this summer's General Convention of the Episcopal Church, the triennial gathering of the main American branch of the Anglican Communion.

The church's legislative body approved a liturgy for same-sex unions and removed impediments for transgender people to serve as priests.

During the debate on transgender clerics, one bishop said the proposal, if adopted, would bring about theological confusion. Another rose to say that confusion is precisely why the measure should pass. As it did, easily.

At a special communion service after the victories, a lesbian bishop of the church recited an offering prayer thanking the "Spirit of Life" for "disordering our boundaries", and asking the non-specific, non-patriarchal spectre "to feel your laughter".

Laughter indeed - but not the sort the liberal bishop was looking for, I fear.

This is not to make fun of the dignity of sexual minorities, but rather to marvel at the way these Episcopal elites run like lemmings off the cliffs of progressive extremes.

Like Wile E Coyote of the old Warner Brothers cartoons, one of these days the bishops are going to look down and see that there is no ground beneath their feet.

America's postmodern religious future would appear to belong to theological slackers who believe in a vague deity, who makes no demands and only provides psychological comfort. Who needs that mush?

They are nearly there already. The Episcopal Church, like all of America's mainline Protestant denominations, is in steep decline, and has been for decades.

Yet as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat laments, progressive Christians and secular media sympathisers are unable to admit that that their willingness to radically redefine the faith is helping drive liberal Christianity to extinction.

Douthat points out that the media freak-out over the Vatican's chastising liberal American nuns conveniently ignored the complete collapse in female vocations. Over 90% of US nuns are 60 or older. Conservative women's religious orders are the only ones growing.

Conservative US churches may be doing better, but can't gloat. According to exhaustive social science data analysed by Robert Putnam of Harvard and David Campbell of Notre Dame, all organised American religion is in demographic decline.

So, good news for atheism? Not really. Putnam and Campbell, writing in their much-praised 2010 book American Grace, found that atheism continues to be confined to a relatively tiny population, disproportionately concentrated in academia and media.

The blockbuster growth in American religion is happening among a category the authors dub the "Nones" - people who claim no religious affiliation, but most of whom believe in God.

This is the "spiritual but not religious" crowd. About 17% of America belongs to their number, three percentage points higher than mainline Protestantism.

But the Nones number is deceptively low, understating the generational wave now breaking upon the US religious landscape. Among young adults aged 18-29, 30% are Nones, and their numbers are rapidly rising.

Why? Gays & Republicans!

According to the research, the young are leaving conservative churches because they disagree with traditional views on homosexuality. They chafe at those churches' association with the Republican Party.

They're not joining liberal churches, the ones that make a big deal out of welcoming and affirming gays. Instead, young adults increasingly see no reason to go to church at all.

A mourner attends a funeral service in Mt Vernon, New York,
for the noted restaurateur Sylvia Woods

This rapid and widespread falling away of the young from institutional Christianity is the first harvest of what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton dub "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism".

According to Smith's research, MTD is the default religion of nearly all American young people, both Christian and non-Christian, who are a generation of theological illiterates (Mormon youth are a fascinating exception).

MTD teaches that God exists and wants us to be nice, and that happiness is the point of life. In MTD, God, who is "something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist", doesn't have to be involved in one's life unless one needs something.

It's the perfect pseudo-religion for an individualist, consumerist, prosperous culture. You can see why a generation raised on MTD would have no interest in traditional religion, with its truth claims and strictures.

If God expects nothing of you but to be nice and to be happy, why roll out of bed on Sunday morning, even for the most progressive of liturgies?

America's postmodern religious future, then, would appear to belong to theological slackers who believe in a vague deity who makes no demands, and only provides psychological comfort. Who needs that mush? At least atheists have the courage of their lack of religious convictions.

The thing is, if America's historic religion had been about therapeutic self-love and bourgeois bedlam instead of rigour, repentance and reform, neither the 19th-century abolitionists nor the 20th-century civil rights marchers would have had a thing to go on.

At some point, the Nones may discover that neither MTD nor atheism can give them the otherworldly hope they need to endure and to triumph over true suffering.

Should that come-to-Jesus moment happen, there will be some churches, diminished, yes, but still extant, left to take in the shipwrecked souls.

Christian churches that traded their faith inheritance for a pot of progressive message will not be among them.

Email: rod.dreher@gmail.com

Conservative churches are losing the moral high ground

David Ellis Dickerson:
Atheism in America has quintupled since 2005. Or, to put it another way, it rose 400%.

Seven years ago, atheists were barely a blip.

But more significant than the atheist numbers is the 13% drop in people identifying as "religious."

Even if some of these form the new atheists, that still leaves at least 9% who have left their religious identity entirely.

Many of these respondents are presumably the religious equivalent of undecided voters; the mushy middle that shrugs at questions like this. But now they say, "I guess I'm no religion" when seven years ago they said "I guess I'm Christian".

It's a large shift, but it's probably not a passionate one. So what caused these folks to bother changing their minds at all?

Although this drop in religious identity comes during the spread of "New Atheism" in the wake of bestselling books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others, attributing this change to those works seems unlikely.

Nothing has happened in the last seven years to make the philosophical arguments for God any more or less plausible.

What's more, as a person who has read Harris and Dawkins—who both treat saying grace at dinner as if it were morally adjacent to slapping Galileo—you can hardly claim that the New Atheists have mounted an unusually empathetic charm offensive.

I give them credit for a 1% atheism bump, max. Maybe two.

So what else happened? It can't be the Catholic abuse scandal, because that started over seven years ago, and it's not just Catholic churches losing members. It's not Muslim terrorism, because hostility to radical Muslims is often more a reason to cling defensively to Christianity than it is a reason to reject all religion entirely.

And as much as my liberal friends might want to tell themselves otherwise, it can't be that people suddenly woke and realised the religious right wants to clamp down on sex, birth control and lady parts in general, as if this were some surprise tactic that only liberals were ever wise to.

Heck, that's been part of the public platform of the religious right since the Moral Majority, and people on those platforms continue to get elected to Congress.

The real issue is homosexuality.

The conservative Christian church, though it may still own the label "religion", no longer owns public morality along with it.

Consider: In the early 2000s, the Barna Group—an evangelical survey organisation that has long tracked American attitudes toward religion—discovered that, almost overnight, the reputation of evangelicals had cratered.

For the first time in Barna's polling history, Americans were more likely to view Christians negatively than positively. This attitude was especially marked in Americans aged 16-29, and so David Kinnaman, now the president of Barna, spent the next three years examining why.

When he asked these younger people what words described evangelicals, the number one answer was "anti-homosexual," at 91%. (You can see the full survey results in his book, unChristian).

Evangelicals were also called judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), too involved with politics (75%) and out of touch (72%), but any of these critiques could have been—and have been—levelled by Christians' enemies since at least the 1970s.

Only our attitudes toward homosexuality have actually changed since 2005, and that change tracks with younger respondents. So does loss of religious identity. I'm no pollster, but this does not seem coincidental.

I speak from personal experience here, too. I was raised a devout evangelical, and studied to be a pastor.

But although scholarly readings of the Bible troubled me, and although I was startled that many of my fellow students weren't Christians but still seemed like moral people, I remained a devout conservative.

Global findings

Worldwide, 59% of those polled consider themselves religious; 23% consider themselves non-religious and 13% say they are atheists

Top three atheist countries: China: 47%, Japan: 31%, Czech Republic: 30%

Top four religious countries: Ghana 96%, Nigeria 93%, Armenia and Fiji, 92%

82% of Hindus said they were religious, compared to 81% of Christians, 71% of Muslims and 38% of Jews

Source: WIN-Gallup International 'Religiosity and Atheism Index'

It was only when three of my friends came out of the closet in one month that I was forced to look at the consequences of my theology. It was The Literal Bible As I Understood It v My Friends, and my friends won.

What a pity your faith was in the Bible, not in the One Whom the Bible reveals. Had you really prayed and sought the mind of Christ on the issue, you would not have abandoned Him Who died for you. He is your real Friend, not the ones who pulled you away from Him.

Historically, friends always win. When Republicans have spoken in favour of gay rights they have always talked about their love for family and friends, and their unwillingness to yank happiness away from others.

You need to read the column above by Rod Dreher, or the writings of any classic Christian: happiness is not the purpose of life! I'm not defending Republican attitudes towards gays, that is indefensible and abhorrent, but it seems that perhaps you were one of those MTDs Dreher was talking about.

That's the unanswerable argument: Why would God be against good people loving each other? If that's what religion is, we can do better.

Forgive me for answering the unanswerable argument but Jesus Himself said that there is none that are good, no, not one. Also, people who are practicing something that God abhors enough to obliterate Sodom and Gomorrah, can hardly be called 'good'.

God did not make gay people, and He did not make people gay. Sin makes people gay - sin is 'my right to make my own decisions regardless of God'. That is exactly what you have done, Mr Dickerson, and worse, you have judged God and found Him wanting. I would not want to be in your shoes when the situation is reversed.

This is why it's good news that mushy-middle people are saying "I'm no religion" in response to poll questions. Not because anyone's behaviour has actually changed—I doubt these folks were going to church anyway, even when they called themselves merely "religious" in 2005—but because it means that "no religion" is now the safe neutral thing to say.

It means that the conservative Christian church, though it may still own the label "religion", no longer owns public morality along with it. Can't argue with that, unfortunately.

This gives everyone else—other Christians, other religions, and even atheists like me—room at the conference table.

And it also means that evangelicals will have to change if they plan to stay popular enough to convert people, as they've always striven for. Can't argue with that either.

For the near future, and if it can manage to, the conservative church is going to have to listen, humbly, to homosexuals and atheists who are both fresh out of the closet.

Because on this issue, those are the groups that currently have the moral high ground. If evangelicals don't change, their numbers will continue to fall. Can argue with that! Evangelical numbers are not falling, they have increased steadily for decades. 

How do you define ' moral high-ground'? I admit far too many of us Christians fall well short of the moral high-ground. But to suggest that homosexuals and atheists don't fall short, is absurd. Most gays and atheists don't tolerate Christians any better than immature Christians tolerate them. So where's the high-ground? That's for God to determine, not you.