A new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found out more than one-quarter of Americans now identify as atheists, agnostics, or “unaffiliated.” This is the highest level of nonreligious in the poll’s history. Interestingly, two-thirds of the nonbelievers said they were brought up in a religious household.
We live in a time when digital IDs, digital currency, globalism, the threat of forced lockdowns, financial insecurity, and the global rejection of Israel are all real and daily threats to the world population. We live in a time when the general public is concerned about their future, their children’s future, and what our world will look like in a few years. We live in a day where biblical literacy is at an all-time low.
Now, put all that together and what do you get? We get the need for the Church! We need to share God’s word, His message of truth and hope, with a world that desperately needs deliverance, forgiveness, and hope. The Church has the answer to chaos. The Church has the light to shun the darkness and help people navigate daily headlines that seem to be getting crazier and more hopeless each day.
But, where is the Church?
Looking back, a 1937 Gallup poll revealed that seven in ten Americans said they belonged to a church. That percentage held for fifty years into the 1980s. Then suddenly, in the 1990s, the number of people who suddenly stopped going to church exploded to an estimated 40 million people. At the time that was one in eight Americans, or 12% of those who did attend a weekly church service. People just stopped regularly attending church. The 1990s saw the largest change in church attendance in American history. That trend continued to where in 2021, for the first time since records were kept, membership in houses of worship fell below a majority.
Here is a fascinating fact: along with the decline in church attendance, our country also saw a decline in marriage. As marriage and family began to morph into an unbiblical structure, the foundation of our society began to feel and suffer from the aftershocks.
The Public Policy Research Institute
The Public Policy Research Institute, known as PPRI, is a policy research group at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. It found that for those Americans who do still attend church, the most important features of church involvement are experiencing a community and instilling values in their children. That’s interesting because this same report said the United States is in a rather sharp decline in face-to-face socializing.
For example, young people, who are fleeing religion faster than older Americans, have also seen the largest decline in socializing. Teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 have reduced their socializing with peers by more than three hours a week. Studies also show that no period of time has been recorded when that generation has spent more time on their own.
Not Religious as an American Identity
“Not religious” has become an American identity. Well into the twentieth century, nine out of ten Americans said they believed in God and belonged to an organized religion, with the majority being Christian. That number held steady, even through the sexual revolution of the 60s, the hippy movement of the 70s, and the “greed is good” period in the 80s. However, more recent research confirms that in the past 25 years, over 40 million Americans have stopped attending church. That represents the largest change in church attendance in American history.
Telling Books
Bowling Alone
About twenty years ago, I read a book called Bowling Alone. This book explained how social connections were breaking down; everything from book clubs to bowling leagues was on a drastic decline. This falling apart of social connections, which included attending church, was causing issues on multiple levels. The interesting aspect of this research was the result of such deep social disconnections. The damage caused by this new trend was causing physical and emotional harm to the individual. We weren’t created to be alone; we are called to be involved in community.
The Anxious Generation
A book just published this spring called The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. A psychologist wrote this book, and it explains how in the early 2010s, the mental health of adolescents began to plunge. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide began to rise sharply.
This leads to the obvious question, Why? Interestingly, the author explains the epidemic of teen mental illness has been seen in many countries, so it is not just an American problem.
In The Anxious Generation, the author explains how in the 1980’s, the “play-based childhood” began to decline and, in the early 2010s, was replaced by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood.” In thirty years, childhood transitions from physically spending time with peers to being isolated and connecting with peers via social media and technology.
The author believes social media damages girls more than it does boys, but the other side of the coin reveals boys have been withdrawing in more significant numbers than girls from the real world into the virtual world. This research claims the switch from reality to virtual is having disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.
Dechurched
Another recent book, entitled Dechurched, which was written by pastors, confirms the mass exodus taking place out of churches. These pastors explain this departure from the faith is greater than the proclamation of faith established in the First and Second Great Awakening combined.
The authors of Dechurched do have an opinion as to why we are seeing such a drastic decline in church attendance, involvement, and commitment. Their explanation of why people have left churches is built around a question they ask: “What if the problem isn’t that churches are asking too much of their members, but not enough?”
Even Nonreligious Americans Are Less Engaged
The Pew Research Center has also reported that Americans who have forsaken houses of worship are less likely to volunteer, less likely to feel satisfied with their community and their social life, and more likely to say they feel lonely. Those who have removed the church from their calendars seem to have found no alternative to building a sense of community.
The CDC
The CDC has reported an increase in anxiety and depression in the general population. The CDC has not linked this growth to the absence of faith, but their findings do match up with surveys and research that connect the lack of faith and worship to an increase in anxiety and depression.
It seems that as America’s churches are becoming increasingly depopulated as Americans have embraced a new relationship with technology, mainly the smartphone. The effects of this change have negative results in multiple areas of our lives. A common theme is more anxiety, isolation, depression, less generosity, and less concern for one’s spiritual future. All of this happens when the Church needs to be the life vest to a drowning world.
Making friends as an adult can be easy in a community. Without God, finding meaning in the world can also be hard. It has taken decades for Americans to lose religion. I hope people don’t need much longer to understand what we have lost.
Maranatha, Lord Jesus!
