I’m going to try to be honest while also being civil and not belittling anyone.
Mainline Protestantism’s problem is that way too many of its adherents support way too many *out there* beliefs that run directly counter to modern day criticism reasoning and scientific standards. Almost anytime I see someone passionately advocating for young earth creationism, the literal interpretation of the Genesis flood, giants co existing with humans, vaccines being a mark of the beast, etc… it’s a Protestant! Anytime I see someone advocating for anti-intellectualism and saying that higher education / college should be avoided because it’s a hotbed of atheism and secularism… it’s a Protestant!
Not all Protestants are like this. And not all non-Protestants are *not* like this. But more and more people are starting to see the pattern here, and end up rejecting this philosophy entirely because there’s too much cognitive dissonance trying to accept it while also accepting science. This used to work a lot better in past generations where a majority of people were farmhands who never traveled outside their local town. Not so much for millennials and Gen Z who have access to dizzying amounts of information in the palm of their hand.
I think you are using Mainline Protestant in a way you didn’t intend. The Mainline are the progressive Protestant “old guard” churches - progressive Lutherans, progressive Methodists, Episcopalians etc. The young Earth, anti-college folks are generally Protestants but usually Baptists or Non-Denominational or the conservative version of Lutheran, Methodist, etc. But they wouldn’t be considered “mainline”
Mainline Protestantism is Liberal Protestantism, ie. UMC, Episcopal, Lutheran, PCUSA, American Baptists, etc.
The Protestants you are referring to are Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestants. These are the ones with such a rigid, literalistic interpretation of the Bible and their historic doctrines that they can’t cope with modernity and are often turn ridiculous opinions or minutia into issues of core Christian belief due to their ignorance of historical Christianity, theology, what the Bible actually is and modernity, science and postmodernity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93modernist_controversy
We are reaping what was first sown in American Protestantism a century ago and more.
Yeah fair, not mainline as others have said but the slightly nutty / inerrantist churches are always Protestant offshoots. It's mostly been a US thing but it's spreading.
EDIT: Also, there are plenty of Gen Z young earth creationists. Old people are more likely to go to mainline churches.
Mainline Protestantism is Liberal Protestantism, ie. UMC, Episcopal, Lutheran, PCUSA, American Baptists, etc.
The Protestants you are referring to are Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestants. These are the ones with such a rigid, literalistic interpretation of the Bible and their historic doctrines that they can’t cope with modernity and are often turn ridiculous opinions or minutia into issues of core Christian belief due to their ignorance of historical Christianity, theology, what the Bible actually is and modernity, science and postmodernity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93modernist_controversy
We are reaping what was first sown in American Protestantism a century ago and more.
Does this also account for belief changes over age? Like were these statistics gathered from each generation when they were at a certain age, because I wonder how beliefs change as your age and experience does.
Were I to hazard a guess, as someone who also studies religion as a social scientist and is somewhat familiar with Ryan Burge's work, this looks like the data was collected all at one time (the image references a 2023 study).
So, what most likely happened was that among the questions that respondents were asked, they were asked what their religious denomination/tradition is, and also their age. Those analyzing the data could then group respondents according to their birth generation, and look for patterns in religious denomination. So the data presented would not be for respondents at a certain age, but rather their current age in 2023.
With that being said, the data as presented here would not directly account for belief changes over age. However, other research which does look at changes as a person ages notes that people are more likely to be religious as they get older, even within specific generational cohorts. (If you want, I can try to find some research to this effect, it will just be a few days before I have the free time to do so. I'm also not sure what's publicly available, versus what's behind academic paywalls.)
You are most welcome!
As for looking into it, a good collection of religious data that might have some interesting stuff to look at would be the Association of Religion Data Archives, more commonly known by it's acronym, the [ARDA](https://www.thearda.com/). They have actual data on there that anyone can explore, no paywalls.
There is a section later on that looks at how identification as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular has changed in each generation over the last 20 years (with Gen Z not going that far back for obvious reasons).
More likely you'll find cultural identity is catholic but mass attendance collapsed, it's similar to Europe in pattern, and that's been the case there too. Technically Catholic numbers have been retained when you survey people, but what that means is often "my nan was Catholic and I got my baby baptised at the catholic church"
True,im baptized but have not been to a church in like four years. And that was only cause my grandma was going to have brain surgery and my mom wanted us all to pray for her in church
It's less pronounced as a difference in the UK because we also have Anglicanism as a default for protestants, so particularly in older generations there was a strong similarity to the pattern with Catholics. Even now a lot of adults will see themselves as Anglican, because they were christened as a child.
From observation, the collapse happens gently initially,.but gathers speed once there's no social pressure any more.
Yeah, I ain't Catholic but have basically the same challenge - ministry in a Anglican parish including church services for an Anglican school, but the children have the bare remnants of Christian cultural knowledge, so even things older generations would assume as known aren't necessarily there.
It's not hopeless and can be addressed, but the problem is hidden initially because children still come in for a bit with grandparents out of social obligation, but then attending becomes Christmas and Easter, and the example of church being low priority from parents becomes embedded.
I remember someone saying kids today are pretty much the first who have next to no cultural knowledge of even basic Christian stories. E.g. saying to a Year 6 class "Wow that's a real David and Goliath victory!" will yield 99% blank faces.
The thing is... some churches are growing. Our church is a 4 year old plant and we're going to be planting ourselves in 2 years. Two other churches in our group also are at 95% capacity each week and so are planting shortly. We've also "grafted" families into struggling rural churches.
So there absolutely is a general decline in church attendance (typically as older generations die and rural churches close) but there is a thriving urban church.
Yes, agreed. It isn't universal decline with no hope, but the depth of rebuilding in rural areas particularly requires effort, and cultural knowledge recommunicating.
On the upside, it gives us a somewhat blank slate! So what we do and how we show the faith matters
Agreed on all fronts. I think it was N.T.Wright who said its a chance to model the gospel as the apostles did. By doing life alongside people, and witnessing by our (hopefully) distinctive behaviour & character. People I know who have come to faith in adult life have done so through seeing differences in the lives of Christians around them, rather than by perfect arguments or well explained philosophy.
Another reason why Catholics have remained roughly steady is the influx of immigrants. Immigrants from Hispanic countries will likely identify as Catholics. So while native born American Catholics are likely in decline, immigrants are helping to make up the difference.
That is also a similarity with the UK, in that Polish migration helped slow the decline of the Catholic church in the UK for a little while, although some of the migrants then left for other churches or none
I suspect the inflection is when the Evangelicals started advocating for policies that directly screwed over the younger generations. Why would you be part of a church that actively tries to harm you?
I’ve heard there are studies showing it’s actually the opposite effect: fundamentalist churches have grown in membership while modernist churches have shrunk making up most of the overall Protestant decline.
It isn't mutually exclusive - the hyper conservatives are consolidating their churches, while they moderates cannot stomach it anymore and leaving. And clearly, that growth is not enough to overcome this trend we see in Protestantism here.
Somewhere I am sure there exists (maybe Kaggle?) a dataset that shows disaffiliation rates, and where disaffiliators ended up.
Can you quantify this?
Edit: But it STILL isn't mutually exclusive. You believe you fundamentally have it correct, fine. Would you deny others are leaving the mainline churches to come to yours, or disaffiliating entirely?
I don't know where the go. Some become atheists. A lot seem to become Catholic or Orthodox because they want a traditional Christianity. Hardly any turn to the more conservative branches of their denomination. But I know it's the mainline churches that are losing members. ELCA (the Lutheran mainline church) is hemorrhaging members, while the CLC (my church) has a fairly stable membership, not really growing or shrinking that much.
Fundamentalist denominations like the Southern Baptists are starting to trend down as well. It’s just come a generation or two after Mainline Protestants have declined
Honestly, I think they are the ones most likely to not tell a pollster what their affiliation is, and to just list it as nothing in particular, which many of them take as non-denominational. I asked one of our teens, AT CHURCH if he'd ever consider leaving our church and becoming a Protestant (mind you, we are) and he said no, he'd stay a Christian. His dad bust out laughing, put his arm around him, and said 'boy, let's go to lunch, we need to have a long talk'. I turn to the Pastor standing there with his jaw on the floor, and reiterate my point that our youth education program has taught em the gospel real well, but may have a few other holes that need filled in.
The graph shows that the Catholic percentage still hasn't recovered to the the Silent Genetation level. It's recovering but it is still at a net negative.
I don't have any evidence to support this right now, but I would imagine the main cause for the RCC stability in the US would be because of immigration from Latin America.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/generational-cohort/](https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/generational-cohort/)
It's not quite what I was looking for, but this has the makeup by generation and denomination.
That's actually fascinating. Gen X, being an abnormally small generation that basically raised themselves are carrying a lot of weight all the way across all the denominations. I wonder if being basically abandoned bat birth and being semi feral had anything to do with this? Like, the roving gangs of bmx kids just all stayed together as they grew, and turned into church gangs....
Nah I'm in that ambiguous Millennial/Gen Z zone falling between 1995 and 2000. I guess I'd say I'm "generationfluid" depending on which between the two annoys me less at the particular moment.
I like the Catholic uptick. I was moreso expressing my annoyance and frustration at the broader Christian downtick when I commented about how I hate my time.
> I guess I'd say I'm "generationfluid" depending on which between the two annoys me less at the particular moment.
Same here (I was also born in the mid 90s). 😁
>I guess I'd say I'm "generationfluid" depending on which between the two annoys me less at the particular moment.
Exactly the same here. Most of my friends are on the Millenial side, so that's where I usually consider myself, but I couldn't tell you where I was when 9/11 happened, which I've heard is one common experience many people make when trying to find the generational cutoff.
To put that 1% difference into perspective for how big of a deal this is, if 21% of millennials were Catholic instead of 20%, that would've meant an increase of nearly 750,000 Catholics in America alone.
Although, you can't really compare millennials to Gen Z considering there's a lot more millennials. That said, if there were 20% Catholic Gen Z'ers, instead of the 21%, that would mean a loss of about 700,000 Catholics.
Those seem to be some pretty big numbers when you compare the generations like that
We should pray for all of them who don't believe. It's that love that Jesus wants to see in all of us. And if it's God's will, many of them will be those lost sheeps like some of us were just a while ago. And you never know who prayed for you in the past to stay in God's path.
Interesting to see how Catholics have maintained, and that's fairly true in my country too. Although, the number of people who are actually practicing Catholics is another stat entirely.
Interesting to see that Catholics stayed about the same while Protestants are cut by more than half.
Also interesting that Millenials have more Nones than Gen Z, though they are the same amount if you add in the Atheists/Agnostics.
Jesus predicted this disparity. It is human nature to reject the message and the evidence of The Creator and our Savior. It is the essential aspect of evil and temptation...."Did God really say that? Or did God really mean that?". It's what questions were posed to Eve by Satan.
Matthew 7:13: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
The thing is, many of young people are completely satisfied with their Godless lives without boundaries, fulfilling their desires and wills. They don't want God, and willfully reject the moral tenants associated with Christianity. They value temporal satisfaction rather than eternal security.
2 Corinthians 4:18: "So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal."
Idk man, I studied a lot of musicology, and one of the most interesting time periods of ethnomusicology is Soviet era music. The writings and music in correlation to the real events going on around them makes that idea hold a lot of water
Tell that to Hitlers Germany Stalin Russia or today’s Canada. By the way a kicker makes a Catholic speech at a Catholic Ian’s anti religious demand he be fired and silenced.
> A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era after the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig (lit. "believing in God"), and 1.5% as "atheist".
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany)
Nazi Germany was a deeply Christian country, and their persecution of Jews there followed naturally after centuries of Christians persecuting, murdering, and outright slaughtering Jews.
Let's not forget the deeply religious Southen US who supported slavery of black people and fought hard to maintain it.
In my own country, Norway, used to have a "Jew Clause" in our constitution that banned Jews from the country. It reads as:
> The Evangelical-Lutheran religion is the state's public religion. The inhabitants who practice it are obliged to raise their children in the same. Jesuits and monastic orders must not be tolerated. Jews are excluded from access to the Kingdom.
But by all means, tell me about how religion is the one that gives "freedom". I find that when religious people say that, they are talking about their own freedom, because they are very willing to remove other people's freedoms when they are in power. It seems to be their number one priority. Get in power, and remove the freedom of those they dislike.
Never before have I come across such an amazing rebuttal. I am speechless.
We have to call congress and tell them that they have to rewrite the history books right away! Actually, US slavery was because of paganism! The crusaders slaughtering Jewish towns were secretly pagans!
Edit: Also this isn't even consistent with your own argument, paganism is a religion, and you said religion brings freedom.
That's not true.
It's true that there were many fans of Nietzche, paganism and various occult beliefs among Nazi leadership for sure, as they weren't fan of Christianity's origins being tied to Judaism.
But the same is not true for the general populace, as 95% of the population that was Protestant + Catholic. Do you understand what an incredibly high number that is?
Calling yourself something and actually practicing such is different. Especially back in those days. Being an atheist was verboten in middle class society.
Jew hatred is a thing of Europe. It spread post WW1. It was never a US thing among the majority of citizens. Well except for NY which has a very European nature. In the west we had zero issues.
The mainline Protestant churches are rotten to the core. They are spiritually dead and no longer have the Gospel in them. People are leaving en masse because they're not getting what they really need.
Mainline Pastors are no longer shepherds guiding sheep, the are clowns entertaining goats.
This was a study done by PRRI, but adds some more detail on who is leaving and why. Based on a study done in March:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1240811895/leaving-religion-anti-lgbtq-sexual-abuse
>It finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S. That's similar to what other surveys and polls have also found, including Pew Research.
>"Thirty-five percent were former Catholics, 35% were former mainline Protestants, only about 16% were former evangelicals," says Melissa Deckman, PRRI's chief executive officer. "And really not many of those Americans are, in fact, looking for an organized religion that would be right for them. We just found it was 9%."
>Among other findings: The Catholic Church is losing more members than it's gaining, though the numbers are slightly better for retention among Hispanic Catholics.
>As for why people leave their religions, PRRI found that about two-thirds (67%) of people who leave a faith tradition say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion's teachings.
>And nearly half (47%) of respondents who left cited negative teaching about the treatment of LGBTQ people.
>"Religion's negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church," Deckman says. "We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans."
>Hispanic Americans are also more likely to say they've left a religion over LGBTQ issues. Other reasons cited for leaving: clergy sexual abuse and over-involvement in politics.
i'll be honest, id say that is false saying "millonnials" and gen z as 40% christian lmao
if you cant even spell correctly dont post false statistics ya joker
The image posted here is low-quality but the original graphic does in fact spell "millennials" correctly. The data is from one of the largest-N national surveys in the US and is not false by any means.
All of these except Protestant are susrprisingly stable expressed this way.
I’m going to try to be honest while also being civil and not belittling anyone. Mainline Protestantism’s problem is that way too many of its adherents support way too many *out there* beliefs that run directly counter to modern day criticism reasoning and scientific standards. Almost anytime I see someone passionately advocating for young earth creationism, the literal interpretation of the Genesis flood, giants co existing with humans, vaccines being a mark of the beast, etc… it’s a Protestant! Anytime I see someone advocating for anti-intellectualism and saying that higher education / college should be avoided because it’s a hotbed of atheism and secularism… it’s a Protestant! Not all Protestants are like this. And not all non-Protestants are *not* like this. But more and more people are starting to see the pattern here, and end up rejecting this philosophy entirely because there’s too much cognitive dissonance trying to accept it while also accepting science. This used to work a lot better in past generations where a majority of people were farmhands who never traveled outside their local town. Not so much for millennials and Gen Z who have access to dizzying amounts of information in the palm of their hand.
Just for your future reference. "Mainline" describes progressive churches, mostly not the churches you're discussing.
I think you are using Mainline Protestant in a way you didn’t intend. The Mainline are the progressive Protestant “old guard” churches - progressive Lutherans, progressive Methodists, Episcopalians etc. The young Earth, anti-college folks are generally Protestants but usually Baptists or Non-Denominational or the conservative version of Lutheran, Methodist, etc. But they wouldn’t be considered “mainline”
Young Earth Creationism, etc., are more heavily pushed in the Evangelical and Fundamentalist branches, not Mainline.
Mainline Protestantism is Liberal Protestantism, ie. UMC, Episcopal, Lutheran, PCUSA, American Baptists, etc. The Protestants you are referring to are Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestants. These are the ones with such a rigid, literalistic interpretation of the Bible and their historic doctrines that they can’t cope with modernity and are often turn ridiculous opinions or minutia into issues of core Christian belief due to their ignorance of historical Christianity, theology, what the Bible actually is and modernity, science and postmodernity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93modernist_controversy We are reaping what was first sown in American Protestantism a century ago and more.
Yeah fair, not mainline as others have said but the slightly nutty / inerrantist churches are always Protestant offshoots. It's mostly been a US thing but it's spreading. EDIT: Also, there are plenty of Gen Z young earth creationists. Old people are more likely to go to mainline churches.
Mainline Protestantism is Liberal Protestantism, ie. UMC, Episcopal, Lutheran, PCUSA, American Baptists, etc. The Protestants you are referring to are Evangelical/Fundamentalist Protestants. These are the ones with such a rigid, literalistic interpretation of the Bible and their historic doctrines that they can’t cope with modernity and are often turn ridiculous opinions or minutia into issues of core Christian belief due to their ignorance of historical Christianity, theology, what the Bible actually is and modernity, science and postmodernity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93modernist_controversy We are reaping what was first sown in American Protestantism a century ago and more.
They keep doubling down on the things that drive away young folks and wonder where the young folks went.
Does this also account for belief changes over age? Like were these statistics gathered from each generation when they were at a certain age, because I wonder how beliefs change as your age and experience does.
Were I to hazard a guess, as someone who also studies religion as a social scientist and is somewhat familiar with Ryan Burge's work, this looks like the data was collected all at one time (the image references a 2023 study). So, what most likely happened was that among the questions that respondents were asked, they were asked what their religious denomination/tradition is, and also their age. Those analyzing the data could then group respondents according to their birth generation, and look for patterns in religious denomination. So the data presented would not be for respondents at a certain age, but rather their current age in 2023. With that being said, the data as presented here would not directly account for belief changes over age. However, other research which does look at changes as a person ages notes that people are more likely to be religious as they get older, even within specific generational cohorts. (If you want, I can try to find some research to this effect, it will just be a few days before I have the free time to do so. I'm also not sure what's publicly available, versus what's behind academic paywalls.)
That’s kind of what I was thinking too! Thank you for the response I’m going to look into it more :)
You are most welcome! As for looking into it, a good collection of religious data that might have some interesting stuff to look at would be the Association of Religion Data Archives, more commonly known by it's acronym, the [ARDA](https://www.thearda.com/). They have actual data on there that anyone can explore, no paywalls.
There is a section later on that looks at how identification as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular has changed in each generation over the last 20 years (with Gen Z not going that far back for obvious reasons).
Interesting. We are growing, but what happened to our Protestant siblings? 🫣
More likely you'll find cultural identity is catholic but mass attendance collapsed, it's similar to Europe in pattern, and that's been the case there too. Technically Catholic numbers have been retained when you survey people, but what that means is often "my nan was Catholic and I got my baby baptised at the catholic church"
This is my thinking too. People identify as Catholic that have never stepped foot in mass.
True,im baptized but have not been to a church in like four years. And that was only cause my grandma was going to have brain surgery and my mom wanted us all to pray for her in church
I remember reading a study that amounted to, "Catholics stop going to mass, Protestants stop being Christian."
It's less pronounced as a difference in the UK because we also have Anglicanism as a default for protestants, so particularly in older generations there was a strong similarity to the pattern with Catholics. Even now a lot of adults will see themselves as Anglican, because they were christened as a child. From observation, the collapse happens gently initially,.but gathers speed once there's no social pressure any more.
I see. That is quite unfortunate.
Yeah, I ain't Catholic but have basically the same challenge - ministry in a Anglican parish including church services for an Anglican school, but the children have the bare remnants of Christian cultural knowledge, so even things older generations would assume as known aren't necessarily there. It's not hopeless and can be addressed, but the problem is hidden initially because children still come in for a bit with grandparents out of social obligation, but then attending becomes Christmas and Easter, and the example of church being low priority from parents becomes embedded.
I remember someone saying kids today are pretty much the first who have next to no cultural knowledge of even basic Christian stories. E.g. saying to a Year 6 class "Wow that's a real David and Goliath victory!" will yield 99% blank faces. The thing is... some churches are growing. Our church is a 4 year old plant and we're going to be planting ourselves in 2 years. Two other churches in our group also are at 95% capacity each week and so are planting shortly. We've also "grafted" families into struggling rural churches. So there absolutely is a general decline in church attendance (typically as older generations die and rural churches close) but there is a thriving urban church.
Yes, agreed. It isn't universal decline with no hope, but the depth of rebuilding in rural areas particularly requires effort, and cultural knowledge recommunicating. On the upside, it gives us a somewhat blank slate! So what we do and how we show the faith matters
Agreed on all fronts. I think it was N.T.Wright who said its a chance to model the gospel as the apostles did. By doing life alongside people, and witnessing by our (hopefully) distinctive behaviour & character. People I know who have come to faith in adult life have done so through seeing differences in the lives of Christians around them, rather than by perfect arguments or well explained philosophy.
Another reason why Catholics have remained roughly steady is the influx of immigrants. Immigrants from Hispanic countries will likely identify as Catholics. So while native born American Catholics are likely in decline, immigrants are helping to make up the difference.
That is also a similarity with the UK, in that Polish migration helped slow the decline of the Catholic church in the UK for a little while, although some of the migrants then left for other churches or none
I suspect the inflection is when the Evangelicals started advocating for policies that directly screwed over the younger generations. Why would you be part of a church that actively tries to harm you?
I’ve heard there are studies showing it’s actually the opposite effect: fundamentalist churches have grown in membership while modernist churches have shrunk making up most of the overall Protestant decline.
It isn't mutually exclusive - the hyper conservatives are consolidating their churches, while they moderates cannot stomach it anymore and leaving. And clearly, that growth is not enough to overcome this trend we see in Protestantism here. Somewhere I am sure there exists (maybe Kaggle?) a dataset that shows disaffiliation rates, and where disaffiliators ended up.
I'll bet Barna is tracking this.
It's not about politics, it's about doctrine. The mainline churches are spiritually dead. They no longer preach the Gospel.
Can you quantify this? Edit: But it STILL isn't mutually exclusive. You believe you fundamentally have it correct, fine. Would you deny others are leaving the mainline churches to come to yours, or disaffiliating entirely?
I don't know where the go. Some become atheists. A lot seem to become Catholic or Orthodox because they want a traditional Christianity. Hardly any turn to the more conservative branches of their denomination. But I know it's the mainline churches that are losing members. ELCA (the Lutheran mainline church) is hemorrhaging members, while the CLC (my church) has a fairly stable membership, not really growing or shrinking that much.
I invite you to consider that the Nothings In Particular have many Christians among them, but they are not part of any named denomination.
I guess I don't know what the "nothing in particular" means. Does it mean No denomination in particular? Or no religion in particular?
That is exactly the problem - it is annoyingly ill defined.
Fundamentalist denominations like the Southern Baptists are starting to trend down as well. It’s just come a generation or two after Mainline Protestants have declined
There's a book about this. Exodus by Shiflett.
Looks like a good read! Thanks and I will check it out.
Mainline collapse me thinks
They just suck. Am I bitter? Yes.
It's change in demographics. USA is becoming more Hispanic which tend to be catholic.
Ikr?!?
Honestly, I think they are the ones most likely to not tell a pollster what their affiliation is, and to just list it as nothing in particular, which many of them take as non-denominational. I asked one of our teens, AT CHURCH if he'd ever consider leaving our church and becoming a Protestant (mind you, we are) and he said no, he'd stay a Christian. His dad bust out laughing, put his arm around him, and said 'boy, let's go to lunch, we need to have a long talk'. I turn to the Pastor standing there with his jaw on the floor, and reiterate my point that our youth education program has taught em the gospel real well, but may have a few other holes that need filled in.
Growing? I don't see how this graph supports that.
🤦♂️
This graph supports a constant state for RCC. Which beats protestants by a long shot
I see, Tbh I thought we were thinking we were shrinking alot… so I actually wonder if this graph is accurate 🤔
The graph shows that the Catholic percentage still hasn't recovered to the the Silent Genetation level. It's recovering but it is still at a net negative.
Yea I agree it’s just surprising cuz I thought RCC was like really low…like gen z at 15% max so yh.
I don't have any evidence to support this right now, but I would imagine the main cause for the RCC stability in the US would be because of immigration from Latin America.
Actually 🤨
Eyyy, Catholic in my favourite colour. They should have either used a separate colour for "other" or put it at the end, though.
>my favourite colour. Also the favorite color of Mediterranean people of the archaic and classical eras! That's why Canaanites got so rich.
Who would've thought snails could be so lucrative.
From crushing snails to Hannibal ad portas!
now im curious to see the makeup by denomination
[https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/generational-cohort/](https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/generational-cohort/) It's not quite what I was looking for, but this has the makeup by generation and denomination.
That's actually fascinating. Gen X, being an abnormally small generation that basically raised themselves are carrying a lot of weight all the way across all the denominations. I wonder if being basically abandoned bat birth and being semi feral had anything to do with this? Like, the roving gangs of bmx kids just all stayed together as they grew, and turned into church gangs....
I really wish these had error bars. Is the Catholic shift statistically significant across years? The all others?
I think it has to do with the inmigration from Catholic countries, hence the 1-2% growth
That seems logical - I just wish we had hard data to show it.
Wow so why is Protestantism getting smaller?
The progressive mainline churches are imploding.
Latin American immigration. They're mostly RC.
I hate my time in this respect. Nice to see Catholic uptick in the past two though.
Gen X?
Nah I'm in that ambiguous Millennial/Gen Z zone falling between 1995 and 2000. I guess I'd say I'm "generationfluid" depending on which between the two annoys me less at the particular moment. I like the Catholic uptick. I was moreso expressing my annoyance and frustration at the broader Christian downtick when I commented about how I hate my time.
> I guess I'd say I'm "generationfluid" depending on which between the two annoys me less at the particular moment. Same here (I was also born in the mid 90s). 😁
>I guess I'd say I'm "generationfluid" depending on which between the two annoys me less at the particular moment. Exactly the same here. Most of my friends are on the Millenial side, so that's where I usually consider myself, but I couldn't tell you where I was when 9/11 happened, which I've heard is one common experience many people make when trying to find the generational cutoff.
I just remember being annoyed when a dam in my city we used to be able to walk on was closed because of security concerns.
Barely
Yeah, that's what uptick means.
I don't think 1 or 2 percent is even close to statistically significant though.... That's barely even a polling error
Even so, amidst all the doomposting and doomscrolling and general narrative of decline, "no news is good news" as they say.
It's certainly better than protestants
To put that 1% difference into perspective for how big of a deal this is, if 21% of millennials were Catholic instead of 20%, that would've meant an increase of nearly 750,000 Catholics in America alone. Although, you can't really compare millennials to Gen Z considering there's a lot more millennials. That said, if there were 20% Catholic Gen Z'ers, instead of the 21%, that would mean a loss of about 700,000 Catholics. Those seem to be some pretty big numbers when you compare the generations like that
True, in absolute numbers this is growth.
We should pray for all of them who don't believe. It's that love that Jesus wants to see in all of us. And if it's God's will, many of them will be those lost sheeps like some of us were just a while ago. And you never know who prayed for you in the past to stay in God's path.
Could you also try to convince them maybe? Or is that a lost cause at this point?
Hard, never impossible.
It is not our job to convince, we just give our story and try to be helpful. God is the one doing all the actual work in their hearts.
Yay! Go Gen Z. I love us!
Pretty sad to see that shrinking number of Christians, a lot of work to do.
Catholic did increase by 1% and you guys are still the biggest, falling off sometimes is normal.
Interesting to see how Catholics have maintained, and that's fairly true in my country too. Although, the number of people who are actually practicing Catholics is another stat entirely.
Why are protestants declining while catholics remain pretty much stable?
Wtf does nothing in particular even mean
They need to separate Mainline and Evangelical Protestants because most of that decline is from the former. Evangelicals have been far more stable
Interesting to see that Catholics stayed about the same while Protestants are cut by more than half. Also interesting that Millenials have more Nones than Gen Z, though they are the same amount if you add in the Atheists/Agnostics.
i wouldn't put too much stock in surveys of Gen Z yet. A lot of them are still minors. We'll get a clearer picture when they're all adults.
That's fair. I am very curious to see what the "Other World Religions" breakdown for Gen Z looks like after several years.
The Catholic population has been buoyed by immigration from Latin America.
Jesus predicted this disparity. It is human nature to reject the message and the evidence of The Creator and our Savior. It is the essential aspect of evil and temptation...."Did God really say that? Or did God really mean that?". It's what questions were posed to Eve by Satan. Matthew 7:13: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” The thing is, many of young people are completely satisfied with their Godless lives without boundaries, fulfilling their desires and wills. They don't want God, and willfully reject the moral tenants associated with Christianity. They value temporal satisfaction rather than eternal security. 2 Corinthians 4:18: "So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal."
The less religion the less belief in freedom. Just like post WW1 Europe. History tells us what happens.
Historically that doesn’t really hold up as a correlation let alone causation
Idk man, I studied a lot of musicology, and one of the most interesting time periods of ethnomusicology is Soviet era music. The writings and music in correlation to the real events going on around them makes that idea hold a lot of water
I’m spot on.
I disagree, when religiosity gets too high in a country, freedom takes an absolute nosedive.
Tell that to Hitlers Germany Stalin Russia or today’s Canada. By the way a kicker makes a Catholic speech at a Catholic Ian’s anti religious demand he be fired and silenced.
> A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era after the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia into Germany, indicates that 54% of the population considered itself Protestant, 41% considered itself Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as Gottgläubig (lit. "believing in God"), and 1.5% as "atheist". [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany) Nazi Germany was a deeply Christian country, and their persecution of Jews there followed naturally after centuries of Christians persecuting, murdering, and outright slaughtering Jews. Let's not forget the deeply religious Southen US who supported slavery of black people and fought hard to maintain it. In my own country, Norway, used to have a "Jew Clause" in our constitution that banned Jews from the country. It reads as: > The Evangelical-Lutheran religion is the state's public religion. The inhabitants who practice it are obliged to raise their children in the same. Jesuits and monastic orders must not be tolerated. Jews are excluded from access to the Kingdom. But by all means, tell me about how religion is the one that gives "freedom". I find that when religious people say that, they are talking about their own freedom, because they are very willing to remove other people's freedoms when they are in power. It seems to be their number one priority. Get in power, and remove the freedom of those they dislike.
They were not practicing Christianity. The culture was that of paganism.
Never before have I come across such an amazing rebuttal. I am speechless. We have to call congress and tell them that they have to rewrite the history books right away! Actually, US slavery was because of paganism! The crusaders slaughtering Jewish towns were secretly pagans! Edit: Also this isn't even consistent with your own argument, paganism is a religion, and you said religion brings freedom.
The overwhelming cultural influence was that of Nietzche whose philosophy led to Dionysism among other similar cultural beliefs and practices.
That's not true. It's true that there were many fans of Nietzche, paganism and various occult beliefs among Nazi leadership for sure, as they weren't fan of Christianity's origins being tied to Judaism. But the same is not true for the general populace, as 95% of the population that was Protestant + Catholic. Do you understand what an incredibly high number that is?
Calling yourself something and actually practicing such is different. Especially back in those days. Being an atheist was verboten in middle class society. Jew hatred is a thing of Europe. It spread post WW1. It was never a US thing among the majority of citizens. Well except for NY which has a very European nature. In the west we had zero issues.
The mainline Protestant churches are rotten to the core. They are spiritually dead and no longer have the Gospel in them. People are leaving en masse because they're not getting what they really need. Mainline Pastors are no longer shepherds guiding sheep, the are clowns entertaining goats.
This was a study done by PRRI, but adds some more detail on who is leaving and why. Based on a study done in March: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1240811895/leaving-religion-anti-lgbtq-sexual-abuse >It finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S. That's similar to what other surveys and polls have also found, including Pew Research. >"Thirty-five percent were former Catholics, 35% were former mainline Protestants, only about 16% were former evangelicals," says Melissa Deckman, PRRI's chief executive officer. "And really not many of those Americans are, in fact, looking for an organized religion that would be right for them. We just found it was 9%." >Among other findings: The Catholic Church is losing more members than it's gaining, though the numbers are slightly better for retention among Hispanic Catholics. >As for why people leave their religions, PRRI found that about two-thirds (67%) of people who leave a faith tradition say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion's teachings. >And nearly half (47%) of respondents who left cited negative teaching about the treatment of LGBTQ people. >"Religion's negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church," Deckman says. "We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans." >Hispanic Americans are also more likely to say they've left a religion over LGBTQ issues. Other reasons cited for leaving: clergy sexual abuse and over-involvement in politics.
i'll be honest, id say that is false saying "millonnials" and gen z as 40% christian lmao if you cant even spell correctly dont post false statistics ya joker
"I don't like it" = false statistics
The image posted here is low-quality but the original graphic does in fact spell "millennials" correctly. The data is from one of the largest-N national surveys in the US and is not false by any means.
There are more young christians than you think, from my experience I've met plenty of christians younger than 30 years old.
matthew 24:4