Reading Time: 2 minutes A new Gallup poll out today finds that the percentage of Americans who believe in God is at an all-time low. In 2017, 87% of Americans said they believed in God. That number has now dropped to an astonishing 81%, according to the group’s Values and Beliefs poll, which is all the more fascinating considering […]
Gallup
Posted inReligion
Why Jesus-ing Harder Won’t Bring Churchless Believers Back
Reading Time: 10 minutes When we were talking about churchless believers last week, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen a lot of Christians offering concrete strategies for bringing these believers back into church sheepfolds. The ones who do offer strategies tend to offer ones based around Jesus-ing harder. But that won’t work here any more than it’s ever worked anywhere in Christianity. Today, let me show you why Jesus-ing harder doesn’t ever fix anything — and why it can’t.
Posted inReligion
How Christians Are (Not) Coping With the Rise in Churchless Believers
Reading Time: 8 minutes Recently, I showed you this new Gallup poll bearing yet more bad news for Christians (here’s the original story). In it, we learned that fewer than half of Gallup’s survey respondents said they belonged to a church. Church-belonging Christians now represent a minority in America. And you can guess that Christian leaders — especially from the really authoritarian, reality-challenged flavors — don’t like that poll at all. Today, let me show you some responses to the news, and what I discovered when I went to find out what Christians plan to do about it.
Posted inReligion
What Churchless Believers Tell Us About Christians’ Powers of Coercion
Reading Time: 10 minutes What we see now in Christianity’s declining numbers is what a purely-optional, coercion-free Christianity looks like. And it looks like a little minority religion that is largely irrelevant and meaningless even to its own believers.
Posted inReligion
Come Meet the Growing Ranks of Churchless Believers
Reading Time: 6 minutes Last time, we talked about one of those factors: the rise of Nones who simply opt out of religion entirely. The other factor, though, caught my attention: more believers are walking away from church culture by the generation. These folks still believe, but they just don’t have what evangelicals like to call ‘a church home.’ Today, let me introduce you to Christianity’s growing numbers of churchless believers.
Posted inReligion, Science
It’s All in How You Ask the Questions: Christian Polls
Reading Time: 7 minutes How questioners phrase their questions really matters — and quite a few Christians very obviously do not want to gather accurate information.
Posted inReligion
That Gallup Church-Membership Survey: More Devastating Than It Seems
Reading Time: 5 minutes Hi and welcome back! Recently, Gallup released a new survey they did. In it, they asked Americans about their religious affiliations. And oh dear, Gallup got back some bad news for Christians! For the first time ever, fewer than 50% of Americans claimed membership in any churches! Today, let me show you this survey — […]
Posted inReligion
The Ongoing Crisis in Christianity Continues Apace
Reading Time: 11 minutes I thought it was hilarious that this news comes out now, amid a Gallup poll showing that belief in Creationism is at its lowest point since Gallup began asking that question of Americans. But that’s not the only bad news for Christians. Come see the newest developments!
Posted inReligion
Ken Ham’s Creationists Know Exactly How to Reverse Evangelical Churn
Reading Time: 12 minutes Ken Ham says that he totally thinks that families that do not already buy into Creationism will choose to spend their vacations at his park rather than at Disney World or the Smithsonian Institution–and from there become persuaded of his fringe religious beliefs. Shall we see together how likely that pipe dream is to become reality?
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
The Silence in the Pews: Pro-Choice Evangelicals.
Reading Time: 9 minutes Fred’s written an excellent piece at Slacktivist about how Lifeway has discovered that a third of evangelicals are pro-choice, meaning they think abortion should be legal. As you can imagine, evangelical leaders are freaking out about this finding and trying to think up ways to rationalize the results of the survey, with many of them deciding that pro-choice evangelicals aren’t TRUE EVANGELICALS™. They’ve been on a kick lately to define who is in the tribe and who’s out, so their new line in the sand isn’t a big surprise to see. But they’re wrong about their tribe’s monolithic opposition to abortion–just like they’re wrong about all the other ways they’re trying to police the use of Christian terms–like “Christian” itself.