I find Gallup data interesting because they collect so much of it and also because they have been doing it for a long time.
U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time
In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.
Note that membership is defined more concretely and institutionally than the question of religious preference.
Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years. As would be expected, Americans without a religious preference are highly unlikely to belong to a church, synagogue or mosque, although a small proportion -- 4% in the 2018-2020 data -- say they do
The decline in religious preference accounts for about half the decline in religious membership
Given the nearly perfect alignment between not having a religious preference and not belonging to a church, the 13-percentage-point increase in no religious affiliation since 1998-2000 appears to account for more than half of the 20-point decline in church membership over the same time.
We should not assume that a decline in religious preference means that people do not believe in the God, or pray. Gallup does not address those issues, however I suspect they continue to ask those questions and would likely have included them in the report if they helped explain the data. So I assume many people without a religious preference still believe in God, and many without a church membership continue to pray, even daily. For example in past data the percentage of people praying daily was about double those going to church weekly.
The decline in church membership, then, appears largely tied to population change, with those in older generations who were likely to be church members being replaced in the U.S. adult population with people in younger generations who are less likely to belong.
However churches are still losing people from all generations over time .
Still, population replacement doesn't fully explain the decline in church membership, as adults in the older generations have shown roughly double-digit decreases from two decades ago
Also, each generation has seen a decline in church membership among those who do affiliate with a specific religion
Church Membership Decline Seen in All Major Subgroups
However not equally:
Among religious groups, the decline in membership is steeper among Catholics (down 18 points, from 76% to 58%) than Protestants (down nine points, from 73% to 64%). This mirrors the historical changes in church attendance Gallup has documented among Catholics, with sharp declines among Catholics but not among Protestants.
Implications
The U.S. remains a religious nation, with more than seven in 10 affiliating with some type of organized religion. However, far fewer, now less than half, have a formal membership with a specific house of worship
Organizational relationships such as religious affiliation, membership in a specific house of worship, and attendance at worships services are becoming less important. However religion can be expressed in all sorts of beliefs, values, and practices that are not tied so clearly to religious organizations.
Sermons and homilies often seem aimed to promoting more religion in our daily lives. Perhaps people are finding more of the transcendent in their daily lives in terms of family, friendship, and nature and therefore have less need of formal religion. That seems to be the opinion of those who have studied the Nones.
Gallup does not think that its data was affected much by the pandemic because it extended previous trends. Religious organizations including parishes have certainly been online more since the pandemic. It remains to be seen if this is a temporary necessity or the beginning of better support for people where they live and work. It also remains to be seen if people have come to appreciate family, friendship and nature more during the pandemic, and whether this will impact their engagement with religious organizations.
Finally, the Catholic Church is doing more poorly than Protestants both in terms of church membership and attendance. Obviously this is partly due to trends that are affecting other churches such as the declines in affiliation and membership detailed here. But there must be other factors, too. Will the trend towards less attendance at Mass over the decades be increased due to the pandemic?
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ReplyDeleteAccording to Gallup, "In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999."
ReplyDeleteSo I am confused by this bit: "The U.S. remains a religious nation, with more than seven in 10 affiliating with some type of organized religion. However, far fewer, now less than half, have a formal membership with a specific house of worship."
It seems that there are two different things expressed by the statistics.
I think it is true that there is a lot more parish-hopping than there used to be, and that people are less likely to formally join a parish than previously. There are a lot of reasons for this. But it isn't quite as dire for organized religion as assuming that 53% are "nones".
DeleteWhat constitutes a religious nation or a religious person depends upon how one defines religious by what questions one asks, and what answers one accepts as evidence of being religious.
ReplyDeleteSelf-definition: you allow the persons to define how religious they are? Would you describe your self as? very religious, somewhat religious, slightly religious, not religious at all.
Belief: you define a person as religious if they believe in God, that varies from those who have no doubts through those who have some doubts though those who are are agnostic or atheistic
Prayer; You define those people as religious who pray daily or at least weekly
Affiliation: you define people as religious who identify with some religious tradition.
Membership: you define people as religious if they have membership in some religious organization.
Attendance: you define people as religious if they attend church regularly, e.g. weekly or monthly.
My contention is that more one defines religious as meaning organized religious behavior the more likely one is to find a decline in religiosity. If the questions are more about one's own thoughts, emotions, and behavior the less decline in religiosity.
Organized religion is in trouble, but God not so much.
Another way of thinking about this is that organized, traditional religion (i.e. denominations, congregations, worship services) has a lot of competition from disorganized religion, i.e. books, music, videos, lectures, retreats, courses, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn order words people have a lot more choices now and can move among those choices far more freely than in the past. So it is difficult to say that people are less religious or more religious, they are being religious in different ways.
Jack, you are pretty good at seeing what underlies trends and where they are going.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you see as the underlying causes of disaffection and disaffiliation from organized religion in the US? Where is the bottom?
Disaffiliation in the US is still considerably less than in Europe, but is continuing to trend in Europe’s direction. The decline in membership in the RCC specifically in the US would be even more dramatic without the addition of millions of Latino immigrants during the last 30-40 years. But this boost may not last. Second and third generation Latino Americans are leaving organized religion also. Many Latinos have left the RCC for evangelical - especially Pentecostal - churches.
As far as I know, the type of evangelical Protestant churches that grew so rapidly in the US are not found in large numbers in Europe. For a long time in the US the evangelical churches seemed to buck the disaffiliation trend seen in mainline Protestant churches and the RCC, but that is no longer true. They are also losing members, especially the young adults, and especially young adult women.
One of the problems of predicting the future of religion in the US is that we don’t conform to the rest of the world. We are far more religious than most first world countries, more like a third world country.
DeleteFor the rest of the world less developed agrarian countries are far more religious than more developed industrial and post-industrial service economies. The religiosity of agrarian countries is very simple. They find security in God, family, and authoritarian legal systems that work well in that environment. Once countries become industrial people depend more upon themselves and their own labor rather than God, or their family. However authoritarian government often remains as seen in the Soviet era.
The decline of religion in industrial societies seems to accord with the classical secularization hypothesis that religion would disappear with socio-economic development. Two things however contradict the secularization hypothesis
First once economies move into the post-industrial phrase and consumer goods dominate then religion seems to change its purpose, i.e. psychological well-being takes the place of merely becoming safe from the weather and social and political disorder.
Second birth rates decline dramatically as wealth increases. More secular societies have fewer children so while they may grow more secular, poorer more religious societies produce more children. So we have the paradox that while more societies are getting wealthier and therefore more secular, the total number of religious people is growing in comparison to the total number of secular people.
The notion that the US was founded as a religious nation is a myth. Sure some groups came here for religious freedom but the vast majority of people came here in search of wealth. Over time the USA became a more religious nation through a long series of Protestant religious movements. The Catholic immigrants from Europe also were not particularly religious. (The notion that medieval Europe was very religious is another myth; there were not enough and big enough churches) The Catholic bishops, especially the Irish, were afraid that Protestant revivals would convert Catholics. Church going grew in the USA steadily, except for a plateau around the Civil War, with the peak being in the 1950s. Most of that growth was fueled by religious competition among churches for the unchurched. So many social scientists see the entrepreneurship demanded by disestablishment as the engine that fueled the growth of American churches. Remember Catholic bishops were known as builders, of parishes, schools, hospitals, etc. They, as well as woman religious were great entrepreneurs.
Another factor in religious behavior is the threat of external political forces. The Irish, the Polish are primary examples of where politics and religion opposed external threatening forces. Communism likely helped a lot in making the 50s into our most religious age, here in America. A lot of external threat has helped to build churches here, e.g. the threat of Catholic immigrants and of Protestant revivals. It has been shown that Catholic dioceses in states with small Catholic populations (e.g. 10% to 20%) are more vibrant than dioceses with larger Catholic populations (e.g. 30%). They produced more priests, deacons, and religious per Catholic.
The future of religion in the US likely lies in entrepreneurship. A lot of that recently has gone into non-denominational churches. There are many small congregations of less than fifty adults that are not easy to discover. A lot of religion may take the form of books, lectures, videos, etc. that do not require on going congregations. Who knows what the pandemic has brought in terms of innovation online.
Research suggests that non-religious people rather than religious people are most ripe for conversion. The two most famous and influential Catholics were Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. They both converted from essentially secular upbringings.
"The future of religion in the US likely lies in entrepreneurship." That's an interesting thought. Also worth thinking about, that the bishops and religious of the past were entrepreneurs. We are used to thinking about entrepreneurship related to business, but it can apply to religion, too.
DeleteWe have enough nukes to erase mankind ten times over and are looking to upgrade them. We're applying AI to oppression and death (sorry, Isaac Asimov, but you were full of baloney). Then, the world system is being crashed and any slight inconvenience to save it is intolerable. Money has corrupted both political parties and our whole society. How religious are we, actually, churched or unchurched?
ReplyDeleteOverall, the findings of this poll are bad news. Christianity (and, I presume, Judaism and Islam) have a communal dimension. I don't know how to understand disaffiliation from church membership except as disaffiliation from the communal dimension of a faith life.
ReplyDeleteI do think there is something to the notion that prosperity and openness to religion are inversely related. When I was involved in prison ministry years ago, a mentor from the diocesan ministry noted that the residents of the local county jails, most of whom were poor, were pretty open to attending ministry events. But the residents of the local federal pen, many/most of whom were white collar criminals, were uninterested in hearing about God; getting them to come to a prayer service was like pulling teeth (or so I am told; I only went into a county facility).
There is a notion that politics is replacing religion - that it is into politics rather than to God that Americans are pouring their dreams, hopes and fears. We see this, I think, in some of the more mystical trappings we seem to increasingly ascribe to the presidency - that we want the president to be Comforter in Chief, that we seek the president's thoughts and views on topics which really aren't even relevant to the federal government, and so on. It's the conception of the president as the Great Father Chief of the Tribe, rather than as an executive with carefully defined and limited powers and responsibilities.
Belief in religious tenets also seems to be inversely related to overall educational levels in a country.
DeleteThe people in wealthier countries have a larger proportion of their population achieve at least a secondary level of education than poor countries. Within wealthy countries, the more educated population tends to be more skeptical of religion than those with less education.
And, It is no longer socially unacceptable for the wealthy to not attend church.
Your prison experience reflects this - the poor prisoners also have far less education than the rich, white collar prisoners.
The trump cult’s base is dominated by conservative christians. Some actually do see him as chosen by God. So politics and religion are interwoven here.
These political/ religious cultists are not the majority of “ nones” in the Gallup poll though, I suspect. It seems the “ nones”, especially the younger than 40 cohort, are often as skeptical about politics as they are of organized religion.
About jail ministry, my husband is on the local jail ministry team. Unfortunately since the pandemic they have not been able to do any actual ministry because of them not allowing any visitors in the county jail. Some of the team members have also done ministry in the state pen. I don't think we get too many educated white collar offenders there, maybe that's more in federal facilities? Anyway, the people in either place are at a difficult time in their lives, and are maybe motivated, at least temporarily, to make changes. K. has found that the ones who attend the Bible classes are open to discussing faith and religion.
DeleteI should add that though the jail ministry team uses Catholic materials (mostly focused on the Scripture readings of the liturgical year) they are not there to make converts. There isn't time, anyway, the same people may not be there next time. The goal is to get them thinking and praying, and maybe exploring the Scriptures. The Protestants also do classes.
DeleteI would imagine that those who would choose to attend bible study are open to change and hope that religion might open a path. Those who aren’t open probably won’t go to the classes - unless of course cookies and coffee are offered too. :)
Delete“Christianity (and, I presume, Judaism and Islam) have a communal dimension. I don't know how to understand disaffiliation from church membership except as disaffiliation from the communal dimension of a faith life. “
ReplyDeleteWe do have some important information about religious social networks from the 2010 American Grace book and study.
Social scientists had long observed a correlation between health, and happiness and frequent church attendance. The American Grace study was able to make those relationships much more specific.
It found that persons with a religious social network (i.e. family, friends, or small groups who talked about religion with one another) who attended church frequently were heathier, happier, and more likely to give of their time, talent and treasure to others not only in church organizations but also in civic organizations.
Moreover since this was a panel study over a couple of years, they documented that as religious social networks increased or broke up they were followed by changes in health, happiness and voluntarism. So it looks like its cause and effect not just correlation.
The good news for religion is that while ordinary non religious social networks also produce some of these effects, the effects were very strong for religious networks. The comparison made was these benefits were as strong as a person going from a lower middle class income to an upper middle class income.
But the bad news for religion was two-fold.
First people who attended church frequently but did not have these religious social networks were not healthier, happier or more likely to volunteer. Putnam, one of the author’s compared it to his classic study Bowling Alone in which merely going to a bowling alley and playing with whomever showed up had few of the benefits of belonging to a league in which people played and socialized regularly.
Secondly beliefs and values had little effect. It really wasn’t important what you learned at church, e.g. to love one another, but rather the relationships themselves that mattered. For example it did not matter how many of your family or friends or small group members were of the same denomination.
Obvious a good way to locate people who have religious networks is to ask if they go to church frequently. However it might be possible that people who don’t go to church very often may still have the equivalent of “religious networks” i.e. family, friends or a small group where they share what is important to them in life. Putnam hinted in his book that he was looking for the possibility that things other than religion can produce deep binding relationships among people. So far he hasn’t produced another book.
While religious professionals often seem to act as if they have the magic that heals people if they just go to church services, the reality is that these services are the occasion or at most the catalyst for the real magic which is love of one another. Church going does not always produce that, but it seems to make it more likely. It is an open question if there are things other than religion that make caring for one another more likely.
There have been some great "humanists" who did much for society without an overtly religious identity. I think it's possible to substitute a particular set of humane and altruistic secular principles and values for those that spring overtly from religious faith or the bible. But that set of values would have to be or a particular type; there are many competing secular values which tend to make the world a worse place. Unfortunately, President Biden's predecessor personified many of these!
DeleteJack “However it might be possible that people who don’t go to church very often may still have the equivalent of “religious networks” i.e. family, friends or a small group where they share what is important to them in life“
ReplyDeleteI found this in my small Centering Prayer group. It provided the spiritual support that I never found in a lifetime of going to mass every Sunday, even though I was active in selected ministries in the parish and knew plenty of people to converse with at doughnuts and coffee. Liturgy and rote ritual has never touched my soul. CP does, and the group provided extra spiritual support.
I also have a couple of small groups of close friends with whom I have shared “what’s important to me in life” - one is a “group” of two Catholic women with whom I became friends at the Catholic elementary school our children went to. The other is a “group” of three women with whom I became friends when we formed a playgroup for our two year olds. Those 2 year olds will be 42 this year. I was Catholic, one is Greek Orthodox, one is now non-churchgoing Christian, but came from an Orthodox family, and attended a Presbyterian church with her husband and children for several years. And one is an agnostic. (her older daughter is a Quaker minister, working as a hospital chaplain) We often talked religious and spiritual values and concepts, in between diaper changes, problems with kids, first girlfriends and boyfriends, college angst - handling all the highs and lows of family life. It seems likely that many “nones” have similar small group relationships that provide what organized religion does not. The social pressures from society and families are no longer a strong influence in pushing people into the pews as was the case when I was growing up.
Many studies have been done. Many religious people don’t read the stories, and find ways to put the blame on those who have chosen a different spiritual path. In a podcast, Daniel Horan says church leaders often ask the wrong question when they try to figure out this problem. Instead of asking, "What's wrong with them?" we should be asking, "What's wrong with us?"
https://www.ncronline.org/news/coronavirus/ncr-connections/will-catholics-come-back-post-pandemic
Anne, I'm very happy to hear that you have these small groups which have provided you with spiritual support and sustenance. I agree with you that small groups fill a human need which a huge parish and formal ritual can't fill. The inverse also would seem to be true: e.g. formal ritual addresses a human need which a small network of friends can't provide. Really, the small groups and the larger communities should complement one another.
DeleteI am given to understand that this complementarity between small groups and larger communities is part of the "secret sauce" of successful Evangelical mega-churches. Some Catholic leaders have figured this out and have endeavored to get "programs" of small groups set up. In my experience, this has been with mixed success (at best). Catholic leaders haven't yet cracked the code of getting Catholics to be part of formally structured small groups. Maybe the groups can't really be formally structured; maybe they work better when they form organically, as you described.
Andrew Greeley excoriated bishops for failing to invest adequately in Catholic schools. This was not because of the educational value of the schools themselves, but because Greeley recognized, correctly I think, that schools are the communal "glue" of a parish community. It is at school that children form bonds of friendship which may last a lifetime; and it is at schools that parents come together and form adult friendships.
I was an election judge last week at our local elementary school. I saw a number of old friends and acquaintances who stopped in to vote that day. In virtually every case, I knew those adults because our children went to school together, or because our children played soccer together.
At our local parish, I see many instances of the same sort of adult friendships: adults who know one another because their children go to school together, and so the schools have brought the adults together. Our parish doesn't have a school; I can only imagine that, at a parish with a school, these sorts of adult friendships would be much more numerous.
Jim says,
ReplyDeleteThere have been some great "humanists" who did much for society without an overtly religious identity. I think it's possible to substitute a particular set of humane and altruistic secular principles and values for those that spring overtly from religious faith or the bible.
Anne says:
I also have a couple of small groups of close friends with whom I have shared “what’s important to me in life” -
My candidate for expanding the notion of positive results of religion comes from John O’Malley’s book, The Four Cultures of the West which he relates to the Four Medieval Transcendentals: the One, the True, the Good, the Beautiful. He admits “cultures” is a poor word for what he is describing. He relates prophetic culture to the Bible and what we normally think of as religious culture. He relates the True to philosophy, science, research and academic culture. He relates the Good to the humanities, humanism, and political life. He relates the Beautiful to the arts and performance.
I conceptualized these as four dimensions of western spirituality, and that people can bond as much around the search for Truth, the Good, and Beautiful as they can about the search for God. Medieval culture unlike our own did not see these pursuits as separate disciplines or professions. Of course, academic, political and artistic life have much corruption just as religious life has. People compete with one another, and for money and other resources. However within all these forms of human life, there is the call to the transcendent , to go beyond our narrow selfish interests and relate to others and the universe. I suspect families, friends, and small groups which engage in any of these transcendent activities are likely to be healthier, happier and more likely to contribute their time, talent and treasure to others.
I have read a couple of O’Malley’s books but not that one. It sounds interesting. I will look for it. Thanks for the reference, Jack.
ReplyDeleteJim: ...formal ritual addresses a human need which a small network of friends can't provide. ...the small groups and the larger communities should complement one another.
ReplyDeleteSometimes.
Not everyone needs formal ritual. Not everyone thrives in small groups. There is a problem with generalizations. Small groups of friends or a small group that meets to pray or discuss religious ideas etc fill a need for some people. Others like a large church community to pray and find people to talk with, and maybe to fry fish with. Most evangelical protestant churches do not have formal ritual. They have fog machines and huge screens and sound systems, and the preacher wears a T-shirt and jeans. Others seek out large churches with liturgy and ritual.
I don’t believe that everyone needs religious ritual. You do. But not everybody. Sometimes the big and small approaches to spiritual life complement each other in the same large community. But not everyone needs both. I get the feeling that the mega-churches operate somewhat like large universities - classes are huge and (sometimes) taught by the professor (minister). Grad students (church facilitators) lead small groups for discussion and questions.
Long ago I noted that different personalities seek different ways to support their personal, everyday lives, and their spiritual lives (if they even have an interest in spirituality). I have never sought out therapy to deal with challenges, because I had my friends! So my small groups of friends have supported several aspects of my life - personal, practical, and spiritual for 40 years. I know that the others in the group benefited the same way. My children went to a Catholic school, but not a parochial school - it was an independent, all boys school, founded by a layman. The families belonged to several parishes. I became friends with the two other moms because our sons became friends. and we hit it off when meeting with the children outside of school. It is likely that the same thing would have happened if we had met through our sons' friendships at the local public school.
Some people - like you and Katherine and Tom - felt the absence of Sunday mass very acutely. Others, like Jack, do not. I did not miss the Sunday routine at all. After leaving active practice as RC, I only joined the EC parish to support my husband's desire to go to church on Sunday. He has never had the slightest interest in anything else - no Men's Group or Bible study or whatever. He was only interested in the liturgy/ritual. But, the real reason I think, is that he likes the music. The Episcopalians do a great job with music in most of the churches I have visited. Really good choirs. The liturgy we went to was Rite I, the more formal service, so we got Mozart and Bach - classical music. And the Agnus Dei was sung in Latin. ;)
Jim, I imagine Myers-Briggs would classify you as a "high extrovert". I am an introvert. You like to be surrounded by lots of people. I prefer small groups or no people most of the time. I suspect that Jack is also an introvert. Jack's spiritual life is perfectly supported by joining the monks online to pray/chant the Office. Sometimes he joins his local Orthodox community because they offer this and apparently his RC parish does not. Few RC parishes offer Centering Prayer. When I looked at the websites of my two former RC parishes, I see the traditional stuff (K of C, Sodality, Right to Life) and Bible Study - using materials developed by a couple of well-known converts from evangelical christianity.
One more possibility - as churches get bigger and bigger, it seems that they lose more and more people. A parish of 4000 families is not a good place to form friendships. Hundreds of people around you at mass whom you don't know. In Catholic churches, the opportunities for small groups are very limited it seems, and for the oddballs like me and Jack, don't offer the type of spiritual small group that we seek.
Anne, you hit the bulls-eye re: Myers-Briggs: I am as far along the extrovert scale as one can go :-). And my wife is as far along the introvert scale! In fact, she had I had perfectly complementary (or at least different) ratings: I was EMTP, and she was ISFJ.
DeleteThis material gets me right in a number of ways: https://www.verywellmind.com/the-entp-personality-type-and-characteristics-2795982#:~:text=ENTP%20is%20one%20of%20the,innovative%2C%20clever%2C%20and%20expressive.&text=ENTPs%20are%20less%20interested%20in,in%20generating%20ideas%20and%20theories.
I have taken the MB several times over a 30 year period. It’s been several years since the last time (10 or more at least) so I just took it again - INFP. It’s consistent- I’ve gotten that every single time.
DeleteVen though it’s only an online friendship, I do see why you got EMPT after reading the description.
Sorry, EMTP
DeleteYeah that was a typo I am ENTP. As you and I are both N and P that probably means we share some similarities but I not adept enough to know what they are.
DeleteP.S. interesting comment at NCR about liturgy and Centering Prayer.
ReplyDeleteI am 81-years-old and rarely have missed a Sunday liturgy. That is only to say that I have a wide-ranging experience with Sunday liturgy over the past 75 years. The last couple of decades have given me a radically different view of what it means to pray, to know God in my life and to visualize what a meaningful liturgy might look like.
During the course of my wife's 15-year decline and death from Alzheimer's, I had to find a way to cope with the pain and disorientation with which my life confronted me. Thankfully, a friend introduced me to meditation and centering prayer. This practice plus spiritual reading led me to finally grasp the meaning of the life of the Spirit within!
I can't speak for others, but I have become so sensitive to the disconnect between what is emphasized in liturgy and my personal experience that I often wonder why I keep attending. The answer so far is that my need for community outweighs the unhelpful message. Younger generations are not as patient and, as we know, are dropping out.
For those concerned about growing their congregations, an interesting article from Religion News Service might give you some ideas
ReplyDeletehttps://religionnews.com/2021/04/16/study-multiracial-methodist-churches-draw-and-keep-more-people-than-their-white-counterparts/