Reading Time: 8 minutes This analysis contains some information we don’t usually see out of the Southern Baptist Convention, including an egregious example of goalpost-shifting to avoid dealing with the metric most indicative of decline.
Christianity’s Decline
Posted inReligious News
The evangelical response so far to ‘Nones’ outnumbering them
Reading Time: 11 minutes Pew Research just released a bunch of surveys and studies about Nones. At 28% of America’s adult population, they now outnumber both Catholics (23%) and evangelicals (24%).
Evangelicals have never taken their decline well, and they are not about to start now.
Posted inPhilosophy
Trump and ‘our religion’ demonstrate evangelicals’ ongoing endgame crisis
Reading Time: 7 minutes In recent months, Donald Trump has been talking about bringing back the anti-Muslim immigration ban from his single term in office.
His white evangelical fanbase loves it. Almost ten years into their decline, they are more touchy than ever about losing credibility and cultural power.
Posted inLeaving Religion
Churchless believers and Nones are finding community without church
Reading Time: 8 minutes One of the few remaining marketing claims Christians can (sometimes) use honestly involves the social and community-building functions of church affiliation. If someone was really intensely involved in their church, leaving it can feel like they’ve severed their entire sense of belonging and community! But even that claim is constantly being questioned and rejected. Recently, […]
Posted inReligious News
Another demographic time bomb goes off for evangelicals
Reading Time: 5 minutes A recent Barna survey shows churches having trouble finding pastors: first, because there are simply fewer Christians in each successive age cohort, and second, because the young adults who still affiliate with Christianity are seldom doctrinally pure enough for their elders.
Posted inReligion
The Atlantic accidentally reveals Christianity’s growing irrelevance
Reading Time: 17 minutes Another evangelical, another missed guess at how American Christianity can recover its lost membership and credibility.
Posted inReligion
Relax, everyone! Russell Moore knows exactly how to reverse evangelicals’ decline
Reading Time: 13 minutes It’s not that it’s terrible advice. It’s that almost nobody will do it. Any evangelicals still sticking around this dysfunctional flavor of Christianity are there for a reason. And this advice conflicts with that reason.
Posted inReligious News
Bart Barber easily re-elected Southern Baptist president
Reading Time: 12 minutes The 2023 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is now receding into the rearview mirror. It enjoyed some huge crowds and copious drama, as usual. And one of the biggest bits of drama to occur there involved their election of a new president for the denomination. Their incumbent president, Bart Barber, coasted to […]
Posted inReligious News
The Southern Baptist Convention had its worst-ever membership drop in 2022
Reading Time: 14 minutes The 2023 Book of Reports contains several key takeaways: a devastating membership drop, huge losses of member churches, and nowhere near enough bounceback in their baptism metrics.
Posted inReligion
Guessing why his religion is declining, a Christian clings to a beloved fantasy
Reading Time: 13 minutes A recent Medium piece about Christianity’s decline has been making the rounds on social media. In it, a Christian makes three assertions about his religion’s decline. Two are partially correct. But the last reflects a beloved but completely untrue myth that Christians almost universally embrace. Let’s examine each of these assertions to find an answer […]