Confidence in Churches at All Time Low
Not sure what to think or say about this report. from Gallup. What are your thoughts?? Click on the link to read the whole article.
PRINCETON, NJ — Forty-four percent of Americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in “the church or organized religion” today, just below the low points Gallup has found in recent years, including 45% in 2002 and 46% in 2007. This follows a long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in religion since the 1970s. . . . While various sex abuse scandals involving U.S. clerics have likely played a role in Americans’ growing skepticism about the church and organized religion, the decline in confidence does not necessarily indicate a decline in Americans’ personal attachment to religion. The percentage of Americans saying religion is very important in their lives has held fairly steady since the mid-1970s, after dropping sharply from 1952 levels.
One thing I believe has changed over the past few decades has been the rise of a militant anti-Christianity, particularly in the popular media and academia. This anti-Christianity is not the same as atheism, since it rarely (if ever) targets belief in Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Wiccan, etc. to the same extent it does Christianity. A distinguishing feature of this anti-Christianity is that it is profoundly anti-intellectual, since it normally does not try to make its case through reason and argument. Instead, it seeks to drive Christians and Christianity from public and private institutions through mockery, scorn, and (on occasion) intimidation.
Given this ubiquitous anti-Christianity and the undeniable scandals in the church (such as the child abuse in the Catholic Church) it’s not surprising that confidence in churches has declined.
The graph is interesting because there is a single moment when it really plummeted. There was a slow decline before, and a slow decline after, but there is a precipitous, 15-point drop from 2001 to 2002. There is no mystery to what this is. This is when the Episcopal Church decided to bless homosexuality and the other main-line churches either joined in (UCC) or failed to condemn its move (UMC, ELCA, PCUSA, RCA). The gradual decline mirrored the general drift away from the Church and Christianity in an increasingly secular society. The sudden drop was Christians who could no longer trust their pastors. The index had actually been recovering for about 12 years from a previous low in 1989.