A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows a decline in the number of Americans who identify themselves as Christians.
The survey showed the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians fell almost 8 percent, from 78.4% to 70.6%.
The survey showed that the decrease is because of millennials leaving the church. Since 2007, the number of millennials who say they are unaffiliated with any faith has increased 10 percentage points. More than one-third of millennials say that they have no faith.
However, the number of those who say they have no faith does not mean there has been an increase in atheism; the poll showed only a ride from 1.5% to 3%. A Pew researcher noted that many who said they have no faith were just choosing to not identify as religious.
“It’s not as if young people today are being raised in a way completely different from Christianity,” said Greg Smith, Pew’s associate director of religion research and the lead researcher on the new study. “But as adults they are simply dropping that part of their identity.”
Gregory Jones, senior strategist for leadership education at Duke University, cited a different survey that showed 70% of youth pastors have no theological education and said perhaps the problem is that students are not being engaged intellectually by leaders on issues that matter to them. Jones said it leaves the youth bored with church.
“If it is the case that millennials are less ‘atheists’ than they are ‘bored,’ then serious engagements with Christian social innovation, and with deep intellectual reflection (and these two things are connected), would offer promising signs of hope,” Jones said.
A man who led a Seventh Day Adventist church until last March when he resigned and said he was going to “try atheism for a year” has announced he no longer believes in God.
“For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God,” he explained. “I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.”
Ryan Bell was the leader of Hollywood Adventist Church until he was asked to resign by church leaders because of his opposition to Scripture on issues such as creation.
“Not being a pastor for nine months has given me the freedom to not have to believe in something for other people’s sake,” he explained to Religion News Service.
Bell now not only denies the existence of God, he is actively trying to undermine the Scriptures and truth of Christ by claiming it was just made up to fit the view of the leaders at the time.
“It’s probably been a decade since I was convinced about the virgin birth or the historicity of the birth narratives more generally,” Bell wrote. “In fact, Mark doesn’t even have a birth narrative, suggesting that it was invented later to tie the story together.”
A new study from Barna Group says that unchurched Americans are more hostile toward evangelism than ever in the country’s history.
The survey says that since 1993, the number of unchurched Americans who would be open to attending church if invited by a friend was down from 65 percent to 47 percent.
The study showed that most people open to visiting church did so because of personal invitations from friends they knew well. Advertising and impersonal contacts such as cold phone calls were shown to have more negative than positive impact on those who do not attend church.
“The gap between the churched and the churchless is growing, and it appears that Christian communities of faith will struggle more than ever to engage church outsiders in their neighborhood, town or city,” Barna Group President David Kinnaman told the Christian Post.
He said that secular society has taken aggressive steps to make Christians seem “increasingly alien and difficult to understand.”
Matthew 24:12 tells us one of the characteristics of the last days will be that the “love of many will grow cold.” I don’t know about you, but when I thought of that verse before, I always thought Jesus was talking to those who were outside the Church; those that were in the ‘world’. But of recent days, I have begun to see how this verse may apply to those who are within the Church, or appear to be in the Church.
In the last days, churches will contain both, wheat (the real deal Christians) and tares (pretenders). Within their ranks, there will be those who are ruled and motivated by many things; some by a search for significance, some by a need for control, some by a need for recognition, and some are motivated by love. Jesus said not to try and separate them because only He knows the heart – and if you try to uproot the tares, you may pull up and destroy some wheat with them. But be assured, there is a Church within the church. Continue reading →
A new Gallup poll shows that only 28 percent of Americans believe the Bible is the “actual Word of God” and should be “taken literally, word for word.” The number continues the decline seen every year since 1979 (with the exception of holding firm in 2012.)
The poll showed that almost 50 percent of Americans said the Bible was the “inspired Word of God” and that the content should not be taken literally. The 47 percent who said they believe that way is 5 percent below the high point for that question in the 2003 survey.
The number of people who say the Bible is just a book of fables reached a record high of 21 percent.
Gallup claims the study shows “two ongoing debates” in Christian theological circles.
“One is about whether the words of the Bible came directly from God — essentially using the writers as scribes — or if they are the words of men, but guided by divine inspiration,” Gallup said in the report. “The other debate involves the meaning of the words: whether they should be taken literally, or be viewed partly — or merely — as metaphors and allegories that allow for interpretation.”