Want to reverse declining church membership? Take Jesus seriously
Ian Church
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Based on the most recent Gallup poll on religious affiliation, for the first time in America’s history, the number of citizens who are church members is in the minority.
The poll’s results are illuminating: “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.”
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An even newer report from the Pew Research Center echoes Gallup’s findings and puts the ramifications in stark terms: “If recent trends in religious switching continue, Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades.”
So why are we seeing this shift within the religious landscape in the United States? It’s unlikely to be a result of atheist or agnostic arguments winning the day. Despite what we might want to think, humans rarely change deeply held beliefs because of arguments — such arguments typically only become effective in light of broader social factors.
And it probably isn’t happening because of the proliferation of “godless” cultural influences. If anything, the causation goes the other direction: The proliferation of “godless” cultural influences is a result of diminishing church membership and religiosity. Indeed, many people who are otherwise surrounded by religious cultural influences are walking away from their faith — sometimes precisely because of those influences.
The etymology of the word “religion” is revealing. Its Latin forebearer, “religare,” means “to bind together” or “unite.” That’s certainly what early Christianity did. It was defined by radical love and concern for the “other.” It gave us a picture of love that transcended boundaries drawn by culture, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Men and women, rich and poor, slave and free, the orphaned, the widowed, the sick, and the marginalized were all welcome and bound together in one faith. It wasn’t through political power, violence, or coercion that early Christianity spread. It spread despite such things, largely because of the early Christians’ radiant, countercultural love and concern for society’s outcasts, outsiders, and sojourners.
Such Christianity is now almost unrecognizable to us in the U.S. After the mobilization of the so-called “religious right” and the “moral majority,” Christian “orthodoxy” became increasingly associated with the machinations of a political party. Political power became front and center.
While the Christ of Christianity utterly shunned political power (to the initial surprise and disappointment of his disciples) and died a humiliating, sacrificial death, this politicized Christianity, in contrast, emphatically and explicitly aims to change the cultural landscape — not by sacrificial love, but via political coercion and power.
Of course, there’s little to attract an outsider to such a religion. Endlessly mocking M&Ms, Mr. Potato Head, and K-12 textbooks for purportedly going “woke” isn’t going to bring anyone closer to Jesus, nor can anyone be legislated into authentic faith. The radical, otherworldly, self-sacrificial, and genuinely beautiful love that animated Christianity and commended it to so many people in its earliest days seems all but lost. This politicized Christianity doesn’t “bind together” or “unite.” It’s no surprise, then, that church membership is down.
If Christians seek to reverse the downward trend in church membership, attempting to use the blunt force of the state to try and achieve the goals of the church won’t do it. It also won’t be fixed by engaging in a seemingly never-ending deluge of culture war squabbles and grievances. The change we need will only come from demonstrating authentic Christ-like love for the poor, the sick, the orphaned, the widowed, and all of society’s marginalized peoples. It will come from a genuine effort to bind together to unite once again.
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Ian Church is an associate professor of philosophy at Hillsdale College and the director of the Arete Research Center for Philosophy, Science, and Society. He is also the principal investigator of the “Launching Experimental Philosophy of Religion” project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.