US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds. [W:210]

[joG]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Pull up about 20 or so of the files. Some of them are over 250 pages. Letters sent to parents of kids raped where the cardinal says that this was the first time anyone ever made a complaint...but there are 20 years of complaints in the files.

Pure evil. The church allowed rapists to do whatever they wanted, and they lied to the families and attacked the victims.

I want NO part of that religion.

Sure. But as I said....

 

[Gathomas88]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

http://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/files/Kohnke,%20John.pdf

http://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/files/Sutphin,%20Carl.pdf

http://clergyfiles.la-archdiocese.org/files/Llanos,%20Theodore.pdf


A few files for you to read. And this is just in one diocese....multiply this by the thousands.

And, again, the fact of the matter is that you could pull up tens of thousands of such files from any organization on the planet, secular or religious, which dealt with large numbers of children during the same era. The problem was largely how our society as a whole chose to deal with these kinds of problems, rather than the Church itself.

This is not to say that the Church was blameless, of course. However, it was hardly the root of all evil your emotionally charged arguments are making it out to be here either.

It has also since made amends for the harm it did cause as well.

 

[joG]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

And, again, the fact of the matter is that you could pull up tens of thousands of such files from any organization on the planet, secular or religious, which dealt with large numbers of children during the same era. The problem was largely how our society as a whole chose to deal with these kinds of problems, rather than the Church itself.

This is not to say that the Church was blameless, of course. However, it was hardly the root of all evil your emotionally charged arguments are making it out to be here either.

It has also since made amends for the harm it did cause as well.

That is pretty much exactly, what i found, when I looked into it a while back.

 

[Fiddytree]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

It has also since made amends for the harm it did cause as well.

Not quite. Local diocese remain intransigent as ever in redress and the Vatican remains an entity almost beyond the control of pontiffs hellbent on reform.

 

[Paschendale]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Why should I have to live life the way you think I should live? I won't tell you how to live your life, so why are trying to tell me how to live mine? I choose to live a life of faith. You choose not to. I'm not one of these people who is going to stand there, wagging their finger at you, because that is your choice on how to live. You shouldn't do it to me, either.

My point is that with or without faith, we're actually trying to live almost entirely the same way. We are both trying to live good lives, but you have to go through this extra faith lens that only seems to make it more complicated. I'm not telling you anything. I asked you a question. Why not just be good? Why would you want to have something else involved in that equation? We both know that being good is just better. That's intrinsic to being human. And then otherwise good people who are trying to live good lives end up compelled to do bad things because of their faith. That's just an extra complication to get in your way of being good.

 

[LeoVlaming]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds - BBC News

The number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen nearly eight percentage points in only seven years, according to a new survey.

Pew Research Center found that 71% of Americans identified as Christian in 2014 - down from 78% in 2007.

In the same period, Americans identifying as having no religion grew from 16% to 23%.

Fifty-six million Americans do not observe any religion, the second largest community after Evangelicals.



Does this surprise our American members? What impact do you think this will have on Ameerica socially and politically in the future if this number continues to fall?

Also why do you think these numbers are dropping? Failure of the church or is it a disconnect with young people and organised Religion ?

In related news: the people able to do elementary math in the US has dropped sharply.

 

[cpwill]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

I have no proof, but I completely disagree with you.

Oh. Well then unfortunately you are not disagreeing merely with me, but with the actual stats.

For example:

the Episcopal Church continued to liberalize its sexual teachings, lifting a moratorium on any more gay bishops in 2006 and creating a “blessing ceremony” for gay couples in 2009. In 2002, the number of baptized U.S. members of the Episcopal Church stood at 2.32 million. By 2012, that number had fallen to 1.89 million, a decline of 18.4 percent. Meanwhile, attendance has fallen even more steeply. Average Sunday attendance in its U.S. churches was 846,000 in 2002, but had fallen 24.4 percent by 2012 to only 640,000. Other signs of congregational liveliness have fallen even further. Baptisms have fallen by 39.6 percent, and marriages have fallen by 44.9 percent. As for the ACNA? It’s seen its membership rise by 13 percent and its Sunday attendance rise by 16 percent in the past five years....


From ELCA’s [Evangelical Lutheran Church of America] formation in 1987 to 2009, the average decrease in membership each year was only 0.62 percent. But after the liberalization of the ELCA’s stance on sexuality, membership declined a whopping 5.95 percent in 2010 and 4.98 percent in 2011. Since 2009, more than 600 congregations abandoned the denomination, with almost two-thirds joining conservative Lutheran denominations like the North American Lutheran Church and Lutheran Churches in Ministry for Christ. By the end of 2012, ELCA had lost 12.3 percent of its members in three years—nearly 600,000 people....


...in 2005 UCC [United Church of Christ] became the first U.S. mainline Protestant denomination to support same-sex marriage, and has been an outspoken voice in the gay marriage debate ever since. While UCC has been bleeding members for decades, its decline rapidly accelerated after the gay marriage vote. Since 2005, UCC has lost 250,000 members, a decline of 20.4 percent over seven years. While an average of 39 congregations left UCC annually from 1990 to 2004, more than 350 congregations departed in the following three years. The UCC’s own pension board called the 2000’s decline “the worst decade among 25 reporting Protestant denominations,” and admitted that “…the rate of decline is accelerating.”...

2006, 2.2 million people were members of PCUSA [Presbyterian Church USA], a number that dropped 22.4 percent to 1.85 million by 2013. PCUSA’s decline accelerated significantly after approving the ordination of non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy in mid-2011, which led to the creation of an alternative denomination in 2012 called ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. Over 100,000 members left the PCUSA in 2012 alone....​

The overall loss is being driven by large losses in the liberalizing churches.

Christianity in this country,the christianity in the news, is hateful and arrogant, something no God would be.

No Our secular society has merely decided that to have a non-progressive moral code is hateful and to state that some teachings are universal is arrogant.

When the churches go back to being places of peace and refuge maybe the flocks will return.

:shrug: they never stopped being so.

 

[LeoVlaming]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Oh. Well then unfortunately you are not disagreeing merely with me, but with the actual stats.

For example:

the Episcopal Church continued to liberalize its sexual teachings, lifting a moratorium on any more gay bishops in 2006 and creating a “blessing ceremony” for gay couples in 2009. In 2002, the number of baptized U.S. members of the Episcopal Church stood at 2.32 million. By 2012, that number had fallen to 1.89 million, a decline of 18.4 percent. Meanwhile, attendance has fallen even more steeply. Average Sunday attendance in its U.S. churches was 846,000 in 2002, but had fallen 24.4 percent by 2012 to only 640,000. Other signs of congregational liveliness have fallen even further. Baptisms have fallen by 39.6 percent, and marriages have fallen by 44.9 percent. As for the ACNA? It’s seen its membership rise by 13 percent and its Sunday attendance rise by 16 percent in the past five years....


From ELCA’s formation in 1987 to 2009, the average decrease in membership each year was only 0.62 percent. But after the liberalization of the ELCA’s stance on sexuality, membership declined a whopping 5.95 percent in 2010 and 4.98 percent in 2011. Since 2009, more than 600 congregations abandoned the denomination, with almost two-thirds joining conservative Lutheran denominations like the North American Lutheran Church and Lutheran Churches in Ministry for Christ. By the end of 2012, ELCA had lost 12.3 percent of its members in three years—nearly 600,000 people....


...in 2005 UCC [United Church of Christ] became the first U.S. mainline Protestant denomination to support same-sex marriage, and has been an outspoken voice in the gay marriage debate ever since. While UCC has been bleeding members for decades, its decline rapidly accelerated after the gay marriage vote. Since 2005, UCC has lost 250,000 members, a decline of 20.4 percent over seven years. While an average of 39 congregations left UCC annually from 1990 to 2004, more than 350 congregations departed in the following three years. The UCC’s own pension board called the 2000’s decline “the worst decade among 25 reporting Protestant denominations,” and admitted that “…the rate of decline is accelerating.”...

2006, 2.2 million people were members of PCUSA, a number that dropped 22.4 percent to 1.85 million by 2013. PCUSA’s decline accelerated significantly after approving the ordination of non-celibate gay and lesbian clergy in mid-2011, which led to the creation of an alternative denomination in 2012 called ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. Over 100,000 members left the PCUSA in 2012 alone....​

The overall loss is being driven by large losses in the liberalizing churches.





No Our secular society has merely decided that to have a non-progressive moral code is hateful and to state that some teachings are universal is arrogant.



:shrug: they never stopped being so.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[it's just me]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Personally, I consider myself a religious person, but do not affiliate myself with religion. Organized religion is, in my opinion, one of the problems we are having. More of a groupthink, where if one person thinks something is wrong, then everybody else has to think it's wrong too, or they aren't as good a Christian as the other person.

Just my two cents.

Spent the weekend with a church that provides medical services, mental health counseling, substance abuse counseling, a free pantry, and even put on a community feed while we were there. They can do this because they are organized, and use their own time, talent, and treasure to do this. They are also opposed to SSM.

When you distance yourself from Christians who are against SSM, make sure you distance yourself from the Christians who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, take care of the sick and imprisoned, and give alms to the poor also. They are obviously not as good as you are.

 

[nota bene]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Right, but as I was saying earlier, you can't judge an entire religion based on what a few did. How many priests have we heard about, who molested children? Maybe 100? Which means that there are probably more like 1,000 that actually did it. There are over 400,000 priests in the world, and that's just priests alone. Not Bishops, Cardinals, etc. Just priests. When you look at it that way, it doesn't look as bad. Now don't get me wrong. I am not condoning what the priests did - not at all. I think it was horrid, as they ruined the lives of children, and most of them were just moved to other churches instead of getting into any kind of trouble. I just think that it's wrong, or closed-minded, to assume that all religions are bad just because of a few bad seeds.

There are "bad seeds" in every human endeavor.

As for persistent memes:

Insurance companies, child advocacy groups and religion scholars say there is no evidence that Catholic clergy are more likely to be involved in sexual misconduct than other clergy or professionals. Yet ongoing civil litigation of decades-old cases against a church with deep pockets keeps the Catholic Church in the headlines.

“There is no plausible evidence that Catholic priests are gangs of sexual predators, as they are being portrayed,” said Pennsylvania State University Prof. Philip Jenkins, eminent religion and history scholar, and a non-Catholic who’s studied the church’s abuse problems for 20 years.

Jenkins said there has been no formal study comparing denominations for rates of child abuse. However, insurers have been assessing the risks since they began offering riders on liability policies in the 1980s. Two of the largest insurers report no higher risks in covering Catholic churches than Protestant denominations. Catholic priests no guiltier of sex abuse than other clergy

 

[cpwill]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Perhaps for many faiths, but I would say that the Roman Catholic Church has evolved quite successfully over the centuries. Many of its traditions changed to improve relations with the laity, and it strengthened their position in the world of religion.

It's kept its substance--and there's always been debate in where that substance should be--, but it has also often times correctly identified when to "modernize" or "liberalize."

You might enjoy GK Chesterton's description of the RCC. I'll see if I can dig it up somewhere, but I believe the imagery I am thinking of is at the end of "Orthodoxy".

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

I did catholic school K-12, took me a few years to recover. When I go back for weddings and funerals, it is so alien now, it is all just empty rituals and baloney. And we had the pedo priests in grade school, even worked for one during high school on weekends, cleaning the church, mowing the yard, etc. It was disturbing then, but I look back now and just go....wow....

Thankfully, none of these perverts did anything to me, but I know people they did it to.

To each their own. The lady I am dating right now took me to her catholic church and I am finding beauty in there that was severely lacking in southern churches. (it may be a northern cultural thing or a catholic thing, im not sure, but its nice to have intellectualism take a primary seat over emotionalism)

Still its far superior to what caused me to stop going to church which is the hatefulness over gay people and such that I experienced in other churches. I do not like bullying.

 

[nota bene]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

I'm sorry you've experienced this. It's difficult for me to imagine; wherever I've worshiped, the focus has been on the Word of God.

What do you mean by "intellectualism"?

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

I'm sorry you've experienced this. It's difficult for me to imagine; wherever I've worshiped, the focus has been on the Word of God.

What do you mean by "intellectualism"?

There is a certain dignity that is lost when people run around, scream, hop up and down, get red in the face, speak in gibberish, yell, expect the crowd to say amen, and do whatever else. Its disorganized, the message gets lost in the noise, and there's no room to reflect on who I am, God, focus on love and gratitude, and grow as a person.

It boils down to intellectual style, I am a highly logical person and I need that environment to reflect on God and those sorts of topics.

Plus people at this place at least are respectful of others who may have other lifestyles and opinions, which is an essential necessity for life and being a good person

 

[KevinKohler]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

It's Millennials driving the change. We're in our mid twenties to early thirties on average now - as opposed to teens and mid twenties in '07 - and we seem to be increasingly shifting away from religion and more traditional morality in general as we strike out on our own.

Will that change as we age further, eventually settle down, and start looking to raise families? Maybe, but I doubt it'll be enough to offset the overall trend.

It's also worth noting, however, that the - largely white, Middle Class - culture non-religious Millennials represent is in relative decline at the moment, as birth rates continue to sag. It's entirely possible that the significantly more religious and culturally conservative Latino demographics that are showing the strongest growth right now might eventually start to reverse this trend as they fill the ever widening gap the receding majority culture leaves behind.

Hope isn't entirely lost just yet, thankfully.

So....the great conservative hope for the survival of christianity are uneducated, anchor baby making immigrants that they like to bemoan?

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

So....the great conservative hope for the survival of christianity are uneducated, anchor baby making immigrants that they like to bemoan?

lol, welcome to politics! where every social resource is good or bad, depending on agenda, principals be damned. Hell, often that same resource is both good and bad, depending on the topic. Hated one moment and loved the next.

 

[LeoVlaming]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

There is a certain dignity that is lost when people run around, scream, hop up and down, get red in the face, speak in gibberish, yell, expect the crowd to say amen, and do whatever else. Its disorganized, the message gets lost in the noise, and there's no room to reflect on who I am, God, focus on love and gratitude, and grow as a person.

It boils down to intellectual style, I am a highly logical person and I need that environment to reflect on God and those sorts of topics. If people are running around and acting like fools, its too confusing.

Plus people at this place at least are respectful of others who may have other lifestyles and opinions, which is an essential necessity for life.

Being Roman Catholic myself I understand and appreciate what you write. That being said, there is quite a bit of diversity in the style of worship within the Roman Catholic Church depending on different countries and parishes. And the "style" of worship is secondary to the faith that the Church embodies. In that sense I respect the diversity among different Christian Churches in their respective styles of worship. The common core of the faith that binds us is more important than the stylistic differences that divide us.

I'm not trying to minimize the divisions within the Christian community, some of which are more profound and some of which I deplore. But we have to put this in context.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Being Roman Catholic myself I understand and appreciate what you write. That being said, there is quite a bit of diversity in the style of worship within the Roman Catholic Church depending on different countries and parishes. And the "style" of worship is secondary to the faith that the Church embodies. In that sense I respect the diversity among different Christian Churches in their respective styles of worship. The common core of the faith that binds us is more important than the stylistic differences that divide us.

I'm not trying to minimize the divisions within the Christian community, some of which are more profound and some of which I deplore. But we have to put this in context.

Thank you actually. All I can say is I like this particular church, whether it goes beyond that, time will tell.

Its nice to go to a place that doesn't piss me off when they delve into social issues for once.

 

[nota bene]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

There is a certain dignity that is lost when people run around, scream, hop up and down, get red in the face, speak in gibberish, yell, expect the crowd to say amen, and do whatever else. Its disorganized, the message gets lost in the noise, and there's no room to reflect on who I am, God, focus on love and gratitude, and grow as a person.

It boils down to intellectual style, I am a highly logical person and I need that environment to reflect on God and those sorts of topics.

Plus people at this place at least are respectful of others who may have other lifestyles and opinions, which is an essential necessity for life and being a good person

Thank you for this explanation, and I think I understand what you're saying--by "intellectual," you mean "cerebral" (vs "emotional")?

I was reared as a very "High-Church" Episcopalian, a denomination that those from more expressive denominations might call "frozen chosens." In my own experience, attending worship services that have been more expressive has been an eye-opener.

Also a heart-opener. Recently, I attended the funeral of someone I loved at a black evangelical Pentecostal church. It was awesome. Also novel; because there is an expectation that some worshippers will be overcome, there were ladies with pretend nurses caps on and white coats ready to minister in their own way.

I think you're right that sometimes the message is lost in the "noise." But it's also true that what you and I might be very comfortable with can be very uncomfortable for those from different familial and cultural traditions.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Thank you for this explanation, and I think I understand what you're saying--by "intellectual," you mean "cerebral" (vs "emotional")?

I was reared as a very "High-Church" Episcopalian, a denomination that those from more expressive denominations might call "frozen chosens." In my own experience, attending worship services that have been more expressive has been an eye-opener.

Also a heart-opener. Recently, I attended the funeral of someone I loved at a black evangelical Pentecostal church. It was awesome. Also novel; because there is an expectation that some worshippers will be overcome, there were ladies with pretend nurses caps on and white coats ready to minister in their own way.

I think you're right that sometimes the message is lost in the "noise." But it's also true that what you and I might be very comfortable with can be very uncomfortable for those from different familial and cultural traditions.

I agree. Different strokes for different folks. I've been through those experiences and they always felt like masturbation to me. Once the experience is over, I am no better off than when I started and possibly worse off as I feel a vague emptiness. Once the heat of the experience dies down, I find no gain.

I go to a calmer place, and I am amped up and often have experiences that leave a lasting positive mark in both my internal world and my behavior.

 

[nota bene]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

I too tend toward the contemplative. And sometimes I've been guilty of judging others for what I think of as "sensation-seeking." I've seen this...but I think that most worshipers are sincere.

 

[Gathomas88]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

So....the great conservative hope for the survival of christianity are uneducated, anchor baby making immigrants that they like to bemoan?

It depends.

If they manage to make a relatively smooth transition to the Middle Classes, while keeping most of their cultural conservativism, we might very well see the emergence of a new "Religious Right," helmed primarily by Catholic Latinos, rather than Evangelical Protestants.

If, on the other hand, they succumb to the pitfalls of existing American minority culture, and basically wind up in "welfare state limbo" like most of the Black Community has, it's unlikely that any such shift will occur.

 

[Risky Thicket]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds - BBC News

The number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen nearly eight percentage points in only seven years, according to a new survey.

Pew Research Center found that 71% of Americans identified as Christian in 2014 - down from 78% in 2007.

In the same period, Americans identifying as having no religion grew from 16% to 23%.

Fifty-six million Americans do not observe any religion, the second largest community after Evangelicals.

Does this surprise our American members?

No, it doesn't surprise me at all.

What impact do you think this will have on Ameerica socially and politically in the future if this number continues to fall?

It's difficult to say. I believe that religious extremists will become even louder, something difficult to imagine these days, and more demanding. The result of that will be much as it is today. Fewer and fewer people will want to be associated with organized religion.

Politically we can only hope that the religious extremists in the US will lose their obsession with the religious extremists in the Middle East and the vast majority that is everyone else in the world can enjoy a bit more peace.

Also why do you think these numbers are dropping?

You've lived in the US. Religion is damn near inescapable from bumper sticks to billboards to Facebook to graffiti to attempts to change laws, change school curriculum, to forums of all types, sports to political to letters to the editor. It's relentless. Americans are tired of the constant public assault.

Also, I believe the extremists have made religion unpalatable for others of faith with their insistence on strict adherence to rules and their condemnation of others of the faith who do not adhere to strict interpretation.

Money has also cheapened religion. Cyndi Lauper was right, Money Changes Everything. Megachurches with chain restaurants, their own top quality gyms, huge new buildings, preacher's living in multimillion dollar homes, private jets, private privileges have turned religion into huge competitive businesses. Some people feel those churches have left Jesus behind. The focus on money and material wealth within churches has tainted small churches who have eschewed the big bucks.

Failure of the church or is it a disconnect with young people and organised Religion ?

Both. Old country preachers and priests used to lead by example, often times quiet example. I don't know what young people today feel that they want in religion, but I doubt most of them want a flash preacher, a church with a Starbucks, the intimacy of 12,000 members and a church with its own broadcast network. That world isn't real and people live in it ALL DAY, why would they want more?

I think young people are damned tired of mega-production and showtime in their everyday world. In fact, IMHO, television programing, live entertainment events and the like are probably major contributors to attention deficit disorder. I'm serious. People can't entertain themselves as they once did. They need constant visual and audial stimulation. Churches try to compete with that and that is a huge mistake. Churches were once places of respite from the outside world. Now they've taken the outside world into churches and churches into the outside world.

 

[ludin]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

:shrug: broadly, the rate at which the mainstream churches are losing membership is the extent to which they liberalize. As churches cease to stand for anything, folks see little reason to stand with them.

I think this has a lot to do with it. As church start accepting worldly views and worldly ways as right and attempt to justify it more people will leave them.
It is a separation of the chaff from the wheat. It is hard to stand up on principle when people are screaming at you.

I find it funny that posters here mention free thinking and logic yet use little of it themselves when it comes to discussions.
they still believe in outdated never proven theories. then when a major theory is disproven they still can't accept the results.

when science finds a new discovery they act like it has never existed before when the fact is it always existed since time began.
The church is getting away from Godly teachings and that is why we are seeing people not being drawn to the church.

it doesn't help that we don't stand up and defend our beliefs and let the same people as in this thread demean and insult us.

I don't hate gay people. have nothing against them. doesn't mean I say marriage is anything other than a man and a women.
they will never convince me that you can hack your body apart and become a different sex because you can't.
they will never convince me that a baby is just a mass of cells.

they have the right to believe in nothing and they need to realize that we are Christians are not afraid of them. they are afraid of us.
they are scared of something they say doesn't exist.

which is an irony to be scared of something that doesn't exist.
I have no fear of these people. There is nothing they can do to me that will stop my testimony nor my faith in God, and that is what they are
afraid of.

 

[ludin]

Re: US Christians numbers 'decline sharply', poll finds.

Hogwash. That just tells me that you are one of those people who thinks that a liberal person can't be a Christian. That is part of the problem. Too many people trying to play God, and too many people saying, "You can't go to Heaven because of so and so." You are NOT God, and have NO right to say who is, or is not, Christian. When you do reach that lofty position, let me know. Until then, you are perpetuating the problem.

no you can't have idea's that go against the bible and against what God says is right and wrong and not have issues.
it isn't that a liberal person can't be a Christian, however when their views contradict what God says then yes it should call into question their Christian faith.

No he is pointing out an issue in the church. That is the church is trying to change what the bible says to fit the worlds view instead of standing on God's word and what it says.
They are attempting to build a house on sand and wondering why they are falling apart instead of building on the rock which is Jesus Christ.