BishopAccountability.org
	Faith & Works | Passion for Churches Declines By Peter Smith Courier-Journal October 21, 2011 http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20111021/COLUMNISTS22/310220011/1001/Faith-Works-Passion-churches-declines?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CHome%7Cp Bleak and bleaker. That’s the assessment of a new report on the state of American religious congregations. Many “Oldline Protestant” churches are showing little spiritual vitality, and their small, aging congregations are showing little of the openness to the kinds of changes that might turn things around. Many Evangelical Protestant churches, which once seemed to be bucking these trends, are stalling out as well. Yes, of course, there are vital and growing congregations, says the report’s author, David Roozen of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. But the overall trend is clear, Roozen said of the 2010 survey of more than 10,000 congregations — Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Baha’i. It compares results with a similar survey a decade ago and smaller ones in between. By several measures, the report said, religious congregations’ health is declining. That, Roozen said, fits with other research showing a rising number of people who claim no religion or to be spiritual but not religious. “Despite bursts of innovation and pockets of vitality, the first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a slow, overall erosion of the strength of America’s congregations,” begins the report, “A Decade of Change in American Congregations: 2000-2010.” The report reflects a continuing survey project called Faith Community Today, which measured congregations in 27 denominations or other religious categories. Attendance is down, money is down, conflict is high and, even by their own measure, congregations have less spiritual vitality than they used to. The worst news, Roozen wrote, is for what traditionally is called Mainline Protestantism because of its onetime cultural prominence, including the nation’s largest Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran denominations. Roozen calls them “Oldline Protestants,” and he said the stark demographic reality is that their overwhelmingly aging members cannot be expected to live much longer. Their congregations can’t be feeling so good themselves, to paraphrase the late columnist Lewis Grizzard’s reaction to Elvis’ death. “What’s interesting is how old the Oldine really is,” Roozen said in a statement. “Half of the congregations could lose one-third of their members in 15 years.” Sixty-three percent of Oldline congregations report a weekly attendance of 100 or less, compared with 56 percent a decade ago. But evangelical churches are also experiencing a decline in attendance. Their percentage of low-attendance churches is rising, from 33 percent to 47 percent. That bucks older conventional wisdom that conservative equals growth. In recent years, conservative denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Christian Reformed Church and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod have reported plateaus or losses. “Many denominations in evangelical Protestantism are beginning to have the same dynamic as in the Roman Catholic Church,” Roozen said. “The white constitutency is eroding. To the extent they’ve got a growing segment, it’s their racial/ethnic” minority population. As might be expected in a country with steady immigration and high minority birth rates, congregations with mostly racial or ethnic minorities are on the rise, going from 23 percent to 30 percent of the total in the past decade. It also shows that minorities aren’t flocking to mostly white, non-Hispanic churches. First Church of Springfield is less likely to be revived by an influx of immigrants than it is to be replaced by La Primera Iglesia. And while the number of megachurches “roughly doubled during the decade, they still only constitute about a half of one percent of all congregations in the U.S.,” the report said. “And while it appears ... they are attracting an ever bigger slice of the religious attender pie, it is a bigger slice of a shrinking pie.” What are the odds of reviving the Oldline churches? Long, given that more than half have at least a third of their membership in the 65-and-older category. Willingness to change is associated with both youth and growth, according to the survey numbers. Jewish groups are also struggling for some of the same reasons as the Oldlines, such as aging memberships, and unique challenges, such as intermarriage. Mosques are growing, mainly because of immigration and higher birth rates among Muslims. Which kinds of congregations are thriving? There’s no one attribute, but congregations with innovative worship styles, particularly contemporary, are more likely to see growth. So were those with strong beliefs and purpose, mission outreaches and new suburban locations. Many of these are successful routes that evangelicals have taken in the past. But Roozen said current young adults are less prone than their parents to be open to organized religion, especially since they’re coming of age at a time when it’s associated with everything from political rancor to sexual-abuse coverups to terrorism. Overall, asked to assess their own spiritual vitality, only 28 percent of congregations reported it to be “high,” down from 43 percent in 2005. Who’s most vital? Fifty percent of “very liberal” congregations describe themselves as having high spiritual vitality. Second-most: “very conservative” congregations, at 33 percent. The more moderate the church, the less so. And where are the “very liberal” congregations most likely to be found? Among Oldline Protestants. The only problem, Roozen said, is that this accounts for only about 5 percent of Oldline Protestant congregations. “It feels to me like we’re in a very transitional time,” Roozen said. “When you’re in the middle of that, you don’t know where it’s going.” Maybe, he said, religious groups will successfully tap into new technologies, as they are trying to do. “Twenty-five years from now there may be a whole different thing engaging the aging gen-Xers in a way nobody would have guessed,” he said. “But it feels like the old habits aren’t working for the most part, and it’s not self-evident what the new habits will be.”
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.