I’m not an avid poll watcher, but I pay attention when Gallup shares some finding about the church. I’m pondering a recent revelation. For the first time since they have been surveying the topic, less than half the country belongs to a church of any kind.
Along with broad church leadership, I have known that church membership was diminishing, but that fact is so dramatic now that maybe we will pay attention.
Only 47% of Americans today are affiliated with a church. From 68% 20 years ago, to 47% today. That’s dramatic.
Of more concern should be the fact that the younger the generation, (Generation Z vs Generation X), the smaller the percentage of affiliation.
Analysts make some quick judgments about the decline, believing that the Roman Catholic massive child-sex scandal undermined the church’s moral authority. In the same vein, the religious right’s alignment with thrice-married Trump, who bragged about sexual victories, gave question to evangelical strict moral stances.
I am sure those dynamics have impacted church involvement, but I believe there is an issue to which we must pay more. I wrote a few weeks ago about the diminished “sense of the holy.” In creation, we humans are hardwired to worship something and seek some transcendent purpose. Secular forces have been more effective in diminishing that aspect of our nature than the church has been in cultivating and developing it. We have been reticent in claiming who we are as a “spiritual” community, a people guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit. We allow ourselves to be intimidated by “rational” argument, and we surrender too quickly to the notion that the Christian faith is “un-scientific.”
Another issue to which we must pay attention is the fact that the Christian faith is personal, but not private. Our holiness is personal and social. Holiness without love is not God’s kind of holiness; and love without holiness is not God’s kind of love. We must continually remind Millennials that most of the great social change agents of the past, which they claim as heroes, have been Christian. Though often failing, and never as prophetic as we might have been, the church has been the gathering and sending place for champions of social justice.
The news of dramatic decline is sad, but we can take it as a wake-up call. Rather than become defensive, let’s respond as the “spiritual community” we are. In repentance and deep faith, let’s become humbly dependent upon the Holy Spirit, claiming God’s promises. History witnesses to the fact that in times like these God brings revival. Let this be the time!