03/21/2009 In All posts, Evidence of evangelical trouble by Christine
Internet Monk Michael Spencer made headlines and stirred the blog world up with his predictions about the decline of evangelicals. He was criticized by some because he didn’t include numbers.
Now Michael Bell adds to the debate by looking at Baptists in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). They are reproducing themselves at a bit over one-third the rate they need to in order to keep up with population growth, his calculations show. In two generations, people who call themselves Baptists will fall from 15 percent of the population to 6 percent.
I weighed in at Huffington Post with numbers from ARIS that show fewer Hispanic and Asian Baptists, dropping baptisms, dropping birthrates and massive defections among the young.
03/12/2009 In Evidence of evangelical trouble by Christine
Churches need more babies, say researchers. If their birthrate among evangelicals doesn’t go up they’ll soon find themselves in the same situation the mainline Christians churches are in.
For details, see The Tennessean.
03/12/2009 In All posts, Changing evangelicals by Christine
After the Christian Science Monitor and the Drudge report picked up Internet Monk Michael Spencer’s predictions about the collapse of evangelical faith Christianity Today weighed in.
But the best statement of what’s happening in America was published years ago, and again this week, by the USA TODAY.
Here’s a paraphrase from a 1993 book, One Nation Under God:
The American tradition is to identify with a faith, and yet often it’s a
superficial attachment with no understanding of what a religion means for
behavior or lifestyle, said Seymour Lachman, one of the co-directors of the 1990 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) (more…)
03/12/2009 In All posts by Christine
Megachurches look good on paper, but take a closer look. There was trouble afoot, says USA TODAY, even before the gas crisis, which made commuting more expensive, and before the downturn, which has hurt church coffers everywhere.
03/12/2009 In All posts by Christine
In a recent speech columnist Leonard Pitts objected to the idea that Christian has come to mean Religious Right. What he doesn’t say is that media itself has created that image.
“Under the definition formulated by the Christian Right movement, Christian no longer meant just one who follows Christ, but meant one who follows Reagan, Linbaugh, Bush, Gingrich, Coulter, Caldwell, Robertson. (more…)
03/10/2009 In All posts by Christine
Our friend Michael Spencer from Internet Monk is in the Christian Science Monitor tomorrow with startling predictions. One of them is that evangelicals will be kaput within 10 years.
03/10/2009 In All posts by Christine
There’s bad news for the country’s biggest group of evangelicals, Baptists, in a new study that shows their membership is getting older. Much older than the rest of the country.
And perhaps even worse they’re losing influence in the growing Hispanic and Asian communities.
02/17/2009 In Evidence of evangelical trouble by Christine
Internet Monk has published his own reasons for believing that evangelical faith is on its way out in the United States. He’s harder on it and more drastic in his predictions than I was.
02/17/2009 In Reviews by Christine
Funny thing about this book, the people who are hardest to convince are people outside the evangelical world. Here’s a review from a site that attracts people hoping I’m right. It stirred up some comments.
02/10/2009 In All posts by Christine
Rick Warren has often been cited as a new kind of evangelical leader. He cares about AIDS victims. He’s willing to have a Democratic candidate for president speak at his church. He doesn’t think destroying the earth is all right. But where women are concerned, he’s more of the same ol’ same ol’.
As author Kathryn Joyce writes in Religion Dispatches:
What is a good enough reason for divorce? Well, according to Rick Warren’s Saddleback church, divorce is only permitted in cases of adultery or abandonment—as these are the only cases permitted in the Bible—and never for abuse. (more…)
