Reading Time: < 1 minute The United States Bureau of Statistics has revealed what a map of America would look like right now if each state had a 50% chance of being red or blue. “The future is hard to predict,” said Liam Smalls, a spokesman for the Bureau. “However, we can be utterly certain about which side of the coin […]
Statistics
Posted inResearch
Maybe religion isn’t dying, but it’s definitely not well
Reading Time: 6 minutes In their recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Byron R. Johnson and Jeff Levin, referring to a paper they recently published in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (IJRR), argue that religiosity is not declining in the US but rather, “Americans are becoming more religious, and religious institutions are thriving.” This claim is incredible in […]
Posted inLatest research
Gallup: Americans’ belief in God just plunged to an all-time low
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 […]
Posted inReligion
‘Who’s Your One’ campaign is everything wrong with the Southern Baptist Convention
Reading Time: 8 minutes A traveling evangelist has begun upselling a failed 2014 evangelism campaign called “Who’s Your One?” Today, let me show you what this campaign is, who started it and who adopted it and why, how it failed, and most importantly what it tells us about the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole.
Posted inReligion
How the SBC Lied for Jesus With Their 2021 Annual Report Sneak Peek
Reading Time: 9 minutes It’s fascinating to me to see how the SBC’s Dear Leaders spin-doctor their decline to the flocks, not to mention how they keep trying to reverse (or at least bottom out) their decline. And friends, they outdid themselves with a shockingly-dishonest press release about their 2020 numbers. Today, I want to show you how the SBC’s leaders misrepresented the truth about last year’s numbers with their 2021 Annual Report sneak peek.
Posted inReligion
The Ride or Die Statistic the SBC Can’t Fix
Reading Time: 8 minutes Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Isn’t that the saying? Well, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has long set one statistic above all others. They knew they were in decline long before their membership numbers began to reflect that reality. Today, let me show you their ride-or-die statistic: how they arrive at it, what it means to them, and most importantly what it means to the rest of us.
Posted inReligion
2018 SBC Annual Report: The Sign of Things to Come
Reading Time: 8 minutes Here are the overarching trends in the SBC right now, how they’re responding to criticism and scandal, and what they desperately hope to accomplish in the coming year–and most importantly, why that stuff matters to us.
Posted inReligion
It’s All In How You Ask the Questions (LSP #32)
Reading Time: 6 minutes A survey released last year might shed some interesting light on how accurate surveyed responses about atheism are, and give us some new directions in finding out exactly how many atheists exist in America. We might have been counting wrong all along, it seems–and that’s both good and bad news in its way.
Posted inLGBTQ, Religion
Without Tax Exemptions, Christianity Will Collapse. (Sort Of.)
Reading Time: 10 minutes One of the most fascinating bits of fallout from the ongoing secularization of America is that we’re starting to ask some questions now that would have been completely unthinkable 20 or 25 years ago. One of the most provocative of those questions centers on whether or not we should start taxing churches and making them responsible for all of their own activities and upkeep. What would have been shocking and quickly rejected out of hand is now getting some serious attention from all kinds of places!