The Shift From the Nominal to the None

There was an interesting article in Christianity Today by Ed Stetzer titled “MissionTrends: 4 Trends for Churches to Consider.”

http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2014/may/look-back-and-look-ahead-for-church-in-america-4-trends-chr.html

In it, he examines four trends that I think speak clearly to the issues that were discussed on Monday night about the future of church attendance and why millions of Americans are leaving the church. The first trend is as follows:

1. The word “Christian” will become less used and more clear.

About 75% of the US population calls themselves “Christian,” but Stetzer divides this number up into three groups of approximately equal size (that is, 25% of the American population):

Cultural Christians – those who call themselves Christian because they are in America and therefore identify as Christian because that is the dominant religion of the country. They really have no connection to church.

Congregational Christians – those who don’t have a deep commitment to the faith but have some connection through family, religious rites such as baptism/marriage/funeral, or perhaps attendance on Christmas or Easter. There is a connection to church, but nothing close to a meaningful commitment to faith.

Convictional Christians – those that orient their lives around Christ and their faith is meaningful to them (and come from all denominations). They are involved in a church community in some meaningful way.

My take: Pew Research released the 75% number in a 2012 survey. I do not have the data for the split of the breakdown for the three types of Christians identified, and I don’t think Stetzer does either, but I would agree with his categories, and the exact numbers are probably not all that significant. The bigger point is that even though three quarters of Americans identify themselves as Christian, there is variance in what that means for each individual and there is significant difference in what being a Christian means to them.

The church certainly has room for everyone, but as we consider the future of the church it is best to consider most the convictional Christians, while leaving space for the other two categories. Perhaps there is outreach possibilities, but convictional Christians will form the foundation for the church going forward.

So what does this mean? This leads to his second trend cited by Stetzer, which is as follows:

2. The nominal will increasingly become nones.

Stetzer defines the first two groups listed above as nominal Christians, those who claim Christianity but don’t really have a strong bind to the church. In the upcoming years they will increasingly respond in surveys by stating that their faith is “none” instead of Christian. This trend has started showing up in younger generations and will continue going forward. The result will be that in future surveys it will seem like Christianity is falling in America, but the reality is that the nature of Christianity will not shift as significantly as the numbers may indicate, but rather people surveyed will identify themselves more accurately and paint a picture that has been the basic reality within the country since at least the 1960s (if not earlier).

My take:

I very much agree with the conclusion of Stetzer here. I think it is becoming more acceptable within the country to finally be honest about religious identification. While it was before my time, I suspect that there was stigma to say that you had no religious affiliation, no matter what you actually thought of Christianity or faith in general. This stigma is eroding, and is pretty much gone in the younger generations and in urban areas.

I did some research on these numbers for a sermon I gave last year and I found some interesting findings as it relates to younger generations. The first is that beliefs about life and death and heaven and hell are remarkable consistent. Basically, the youngest generations have the same beliefs here as any other generation. Also, the belief in God as an absolute certainty is more or less the same for the younger generation as it is for any other generation (with the exception of the oldest generation, which is slightly higher than any other). This strikes me as “good” news in the sense that on critical issues of God and life and death there really hasn’t been much change in America.

However, there is some less good news as it pertains to religious affiliation and church attendance. Each generation has become less affiliated by denomination or home church. This does not especially surprise me. The quick explanation is that each generation becomes more mobile and more hesitant to put down roots. Younger people are hesitant to commit to organizations at younger ages as they are still finding their way. I don’t see this trend reversing in future generations. The world has changed in this way.

The consequence of this is seen in church attendance. Since people are hesitant to affiliate with a denomination or home church, that has had an impact church attendance. For those that are affiliated, church attendance has remained constant across generations. Though it is possible, perhaps likely, that the drop in affiliation is the result of overall distancing from Christianity, it is still interesting that overall thoughts on God, life and death, heaven and hell, are basically unchanged.

So the challenge, as I see it, is to find out what is going on with all those people of younger generations that maintain similar fundamental beliefs as pervious generations, but are unwilling to affiliate with a church/denomination, and perhaps aren’t interested in Christianity in general.

In the last two trends Stetzer tackles this in a slightly different way. The trends are as follows:

3. Christians will increasingly change cultural tactics. And:

4. More robust churches will result from the death of nominalism.

His points are certainly worth reading but I am not going to examine them further in this post. I think it will take at least a generation or two before they come to fruition, and even then I am not so sure how much cultural tactics will change. I think the church has much to figure out about itself before it needs to worry about how it will reengage the culture.

I do think his fourth trend is very intriguing, and I hope he is correct and it is not merely wishful thinking. I think that is where the true opportunity lies, and it pretty much be the theme of my blog going forward.

BLOG NOTE: Even though this is just beginning, I am not sure when the next post will be. I leave for a mission trip to Grand Portage tonight returning on Monday. I will probably post a recap when I get back. Blessings.