This is one of those “convergence of thoughts” posts were several things coalesce in your thinking and you realize the significant common thread running through them. What was probably the catalyst for this was the report that the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released last week titled “ U.S. Religions Landscape Survey.” I’ll return to specifics of that survey in a minute, but in that report I saw nothing that I did not already know from my experience and anecdotal evidence; it just quantifies the observations.
The bottom line is that the report says, among other things, what we already know about mainline Protestant denominations: the members are getting older and the denominations are getting smaller. Not a surprise to anyone following the PC(USA) membership trends which saw a 1.4% decrease in the number of churches between 2003 and 2006 and a 5.7% decrease in membership in the same time period. The one year decline for 2005-2006 was 2.0% for the PC(USA). Over the same three-year time period the PCA reported a 5.7% growth in the number of churches and a 4.2% increase in membership. (Note that I chose the PCA and not the EPC so there is not an argument to be made that those gains are mostly departing PC(USA) members and churches.) Similarly for the United Methodists, the title of a Christian Post article yesterday pretty much says it all: No Future for Methodists Unless Change Occurs, Say Leaders.
For the PC(USA) (and, while I did not dig up the statistics, the “mainline” Presbyterian branches in other countries as well), one observation is that we do not retain our young people. That is supported by the Pew Forum study.
First, another academic survey which again quantifies in today’s college students what I saw happen among my peers at a state university 25 years ago. The Pew Forum has a Q&A on their site with Alexander W. Astin, the director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA on “ Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose“. As they define it, college students become less “religious” (they stop going to church) and more “spiritual” (things like “attaining inner harmony”) between their freshman and junior years. There is also a measure of their political thinking and the students tend to become more “liberal” in their thinking. (Note that the Pew Forum Q&A does not include confidence intervals but if it is like most national surveys it is about +/-4% which actually renders some of the statistical differences for politics on the Pew page as indistinguishable.) (Digression: If you want an interesting discussion of differing impacts of “progressive” and “conservative” faculty on college campuses check out an article by Harrison Scott Key from World on the Web.) I’m still doing some thinking about the UCLA study’s categories and classifications, but they support what many of us recognized over the last couple of decades, if not longer. [I will note that my day job is in academania so I have a front row seat to this. I was in a group recently where two students were having a discussion over whose form of yoga was better.]
If I had to summarize the Pew Forum study in one line it would be that today American churches, religion, and spirituality have become a commodity with individuals looking for consumer satisfaction and not brand loyalty. And no, I’m not the first to say that.
As background, for the total population they found that 78.4% of Americans self-identified as Christians breaking down to 51.3% Protestant, 23.8% Catholic, and the balance of 3.3% other Christian including Eastern Orthodox and two groups not everyone would group with the Christians, Latter Day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The next largest group was “Unaffiliated” comprising 16.1% of the population but within that group, in addition to the atheists and the agnostics there is what you might call the “apathetic,” although the study calls them “nothing in particular.” Now apathetic is not quite right because part of the “nothing in particular” are “secular unaffiliated” who would be the apathetic, but there is also a “religious unaffiliated” who do say religion plays a significant part in their lives, but apparently not organized religions groups. If you care about particular states, regions, ethnic groups, or other demographics the report is extensive and the web site easy to drill down through to get some very detailed information.
One other interesting detail is that among the Evangelical Protestants the second largest group is Nondenominational. Baptists are the largest group among Evangelical Protestants with 41% of the group and then Nondenominational and Pentecostals are tied for second with 13% of the group for each. For the record, Evangelical Presbyterians, led by the PCA, are 3% of the group.
I should mention that in the survey there is a third Protestant tradition tracked, that being the “Historically Black Protestant Church.” However, since Presbyterianism comes in at 0% in this tradition I won’t be regularly referring to it.
One more little detail: Since the individuals in the survey self-identify their religious affiliation I am curious about the “Mainline Presbyterian” breakdown. While 1.1% of respondents were PC(USA), <0.3% identified themselves as “Other Presbyterian in the Mainline Tradition” and 0.7% as “Presbyterian in the Mainline Tradition, not further specified.” So if you are Presbyterian in the Mainline Tradition, but not PC(USA), what are you? Ex patriot Church of Scotland, PC Ireland or some other global Presbyterian branch? Another American Presbyterian who thinks they are mainline? Someone who has left the PC(USA) but still identifies with the mainline church, whether or not attending elsewhere, or someone who won’t admit to being in the PC(USA)? According to the narrative of the study these were individuals who identified themselves as Presbyterian but no further, and who said they were not “born-again or evangelical.” And what about PC(USA) members who identified themselves as “Evangelical?”
With that overview, let me turn to one small piece of the Pew study, specifically the religious landscape with young adults and migration patterns away from the denomination of their upbringing. The study finds that 62% of Americans over age 70 identify themselves as Protestant while only 43% of those in the 18-29 age bracket do. As for Unaffiliated, it is claimed by 25% of the 18-29 age group while claimed by only 8% of the over 70 group. And in each of these groups the age distribution, while not strictly linear, does increase or decrease consistently. The survey also looked at shifting religious affiliations by comparing the tradition an individual was raised in versus where they are now. (Note that multiple changes or changes back to the original are not seen.) The biggest changes are seen in the Unaffiliated group with 7.3% of the population being raised unaffiliated but 16.1% claiming it now. And most of that gain was in the “Nothing in particular” cat
egory. The second largest gains were seen in the Nondenominational Protestant category with 1.5% raised in that tradition but 4.5% currently identifying with it. Within those currently self-identifying as Protestants, 18% of Evangelical Protestants were raised outside Protestantism and 31% switched from another Protestant family while for those in Mainline Protestantism it is similar with 16% from outside and 30% from another Protestant family. That leave 51% and 54% respectively who are currently in the tradition they were raised in.
Now that is a bunch of numbers, but breaking that last one down by denominations the Baptists have the best retention rate at 60% with no change while Presbyterians have one of the worst with only a 40% retention rate. Of those that were raised Presbyterian and changed roughly equal numbers, about 15% went to each of other Evangelical Protestant denominations, other Mainline Protestant denominations, and No Religion.
I will point out that some of these numbers about migration apply to individuals across the age spectrum. But considering the UCLA study, the fact that Unaffiliated is strongest among the 18-29 age group, and my qualitative observation of college and college age being the time that young people now lose touch with the church, I would argue that while these trends are not specific, they are at least representative if not dominant in the college age group.
With each of my three children, there is a clear attraction to the energy, vitality, and relationships that certain other churches in town have. All three, while growing up at home and faithfully attending and serving at our Presbyterian church, also regularly attend the youth group at another church. (And there are two different “other” churches between the three of them.) These other churches have thriving youth programs that attract, hold, and educate the kids. They are not attracted by the theology, they are attracted by the energy and the relationships. These two other churches are not Presbyterian, but I have seen nothing that a Presbyterian church could not do. In fact from reading his blog, I think Mark Smith’s church does do things like this with their youth. But from what I have seen it takes work. Not just work by the Youth Director, not just work by the Youth Team, but work by the whole church. The whole church? Yes, because some of us “frozen chosen” have to be ready to sometimes have worship music that might include a drum set and electric guitars. Yes, because some of us need to get off our duffs and be ready to help out with youth events like Mark does. Not only can a small youth team not do it alone, but if we want to empower the younger generation of our members (note, not the “future of the church” or the “next generation”, they are with us today) we need to show them that they are valued by the broad community and have a place in our worship and the life of the community. And I think we can do that without compromising our Reformed faith and traditions (I’ll have to think more about how some of this might interact with the “ regulative principle of worship“). [I think I just outlined an upcoming moderatorial sermon.]
[Please forgive me if I seem hypocritical by making these suggestions and yet my own kids also attend other church youth groups. I would point out that 1) they are still engaged in our church and its youth group and 2) My wife, and I to a lesser degree, have been active with youth events and the youth team. But we are not above looking at what makes other youth programs successful and it takes the time and the efforts of a lot of people to change the climate and educate the faith community.]
A final piece of anecdotal evidence: Over the last week I have been part of two interesting conversations with two young men. The first had just finished high school and was starting at a local community college. He grew up in the Baptist church and from what we adults could piece together he was now in rebellion against a strict upbringing. He could clearly and succinctly exposit his religious views and they were clearly theistic and non-Christian. Here, I thought, was a college student headed for the Unaffiliated, but I hope that in the near future he is able to work out some of his uncertainties with the help of an understanding and non-judgmental faith community. The second conversation was with our son who requested that we have him excused from the last few minutes of his school day so he could attend the memorial service for a member of our church. While it was a wonderful and faithful gentleman who had gone to be with the Lord, he was not a close friend so my wife and I were initially skeptical that all our son wanted was an excuse to get out of one of his least-favorite classes. But as we talked with him we realized that he was serious about wanting to be part of the faith community that gathered to remember this saint and so we pulled him from school for the worship service. It demonstrated for me that something had clicked for my son about being community in the church.
Within the PC(USA) this spring it will be interesting to see if the denomination can get and hold the attention of young adults. One driving force is the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow and his standing for election as Moderator of the General Assembly with a Web 2.0 campaign. Yes, the other three candidates, Rev. Bill Teng, Rev. Carl Mazza, Elder Roger Shoemaker, all have web sites and Mr. Mazza is blogging. But Bruce’s web site is updated frequently and has the Web 2.0 bells and whistles like DOPPLR, Facebook, yelp. From one of his posts it is apparent that questions are being raised about this modern style and whether that is an appropriate way to run a campaign. For the Moderator election I’m not sure how much of that will help him; it is my experience that few commissioners are in the demographic that appreciates Web 2.0 or that it would influence their vote. But taking a long view, it should be the hope of those who care about the future of the PC(USA) that Bruce simply doing that will attract and hold the attention of the younger generation of PC(USA) members and leaders. Or maybe wake some of the rest of us up to what we need to be thinking about.
As I work through my GA 101 series I am thinking about how Reformed Theology, Presbyterian polity and Web 2.0 intersect, inform each other, and maybe conflict. From a traditional Reformed approach, does an on-line community gathered together in the “virtual” world differ from the covenant community gathered together in the “real” world? Can you have a true Reformed “Second Life” church? (That is not Second Life as in The Church Triumphant but as in “The Church Virtual.”) So I plan to revisit this piece of Reformed theology in detail in my concluding installment of the GA 101 series: Reformed theology and Presbyterian polity for the future — The Church Virtual?
But for now I have written enough and probably glazed over a bunch of eyes with all the statistics. The take-away is that the numbers continue to not look good for the PC(USA) in the long run and we need to think about how our community, within the bounds of our Reformed faith, needs to adjust.