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Church planting actually increases number of churches, but less viable as self sustaining.
Weekly attendance at churches record drop.
Lowest number of baptisms since 1947.
Finally, more and more people are realizing that rational, secular, scientific, reasoning is reality, not belief in some old book written by desert dwelling, bronze aged, superstious goat herders.
Church planting actually increases number of churches, but less viable as self sustaining.
Weekly attendance at churches record drop.
Lowest number of baptisms since 1947.
Finally, more and more people are realizing that rational, secular, scientific, reasoning is reality, not belief in some old book written by desert dwelling, bronze aged, superstious goat herders.
If true, it only means fewer people are going to church. Doesn't mean they are becoming atheist. I have a very Godly friend who stopped coming to church only because he is a truck driver and his schedule makes it impossible to come on Sundays.
If true, it only means fewer people are going to church. Doesn't mean they are becoming atheist. I have a very Godly friend who stopped coming to church only because he is a truck driver and his schedule makes it impossible to come on Sundays.
I know an atheist guy who goes to church to keep his wife happy.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,922,771 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffbase40
If true, it only means fewer people are going to church. Doesn't mean they are becoming atheist. I have a very Godly friend who stopped coming to church only because he is a truck driver and his schedule makes it impossible to come on Sundays.
You do realize there is a difference between attending church, and being a church member?
The drop of 200,000 is the church members. And as you can see, the number of baptisms are down also. That means the sales funnel for a new members just does not exist.
Jeff, and others who are apologetics, you need to realize that the decline in church membership, attendance, and belief, is a precursor to more and more people accepting reality. As the report indicates, this is becoming more and more the way Millennials are looking at religion, and particularly the Christian religion.
Again as the report indicates, membership in the Southern Baptist Convention is getting older and older, and young people just have no interest in participating.
The decline in religiosity in the United States of America is real, and no matter how much apologists may want to deny it, is increasing.
Many of the members of our church are former Southern Baptists. Christians come into our faith generally in response to patterns of hatred or bigotry their Christian church commits against themselves or someone they love. These converts generally don't change their mind about God because of the corruption of their Christian churches. They either have much earlier concluded that Christian dogma is nonsense, but saw no specific reason to leave their Christian church, or they continue to hold their Christian beliefs and feel that they are not inconsistent with, but rather quite compatible with, syncretic religious practice fully amenable with reality-based (rather than Bible-based) religious perspective.
If true, it only means fewer people are going to church. Doesn't mean they are becoming atheist. I have a very Godly friend who stopped coming to church only because he is a truck driver and his schedule makes it impossible to come on Sundays.
Looks like they have lost another 200 k truck drivers.
Church planting actually increases number of churches, but less viable as self sustaining.
Weekly attendance at churches record drop.
Lowest number of baptisms since 1947.
Finally, more and more people are realizing that rational, secular, scientific, reasoning is reality, not belief in some old book written by desert dwelling, bronze aged, superstious goat herders.
It means people are:
1. Rejecting their teaching in favor of another.
2. Starting a church that will do what they want.
3. Filling their lives with other things that have become more important to them as what they were told/taught did not reach their heart.
4. Want a more secular church
5. Want a BIG church with lots of fun things and feel good sermons
6. Were pushed away by judgmental teachings
7. Got tired of immoral pastors
8. Got tired of paying more and more and getting less and less.
Now people who actually study the scientific evidence leave atheism and Evolutionary teachings in the dust where they belong.
If true, it only means fewer people are going to church. Doesn't mean they are becoming atheist. I have a very Godly friend who stopped coming to church only because he is a truck driver and his schedule makes it impossible to come on Sundays.
That is actually a rational response for a change, and I agree, in and of itself, all it means is people aren't attending and it doesn't mean they are rejecting their faith. There tends to and may or may not be an association between not attending and loss of belief -- or worse, really, indifference -- but I cannot assume based solely on cupper's summary post that this is so. Instead, I will see what the article has to say ... lessee here ... the SBC blames it on not enough evangelizing / proselytizing, and not enough training for new converts, but still thinks it's reversible. No way to know if this is putting on a brave face or if it's actually true. It feels like a misdiagnosis to me, though, because in essence it just says we need to continue doing what we were doing that produced these drops, only do more of it. That's seldom a formula for winning hearts and minds.
Another thing we don't know is if some of these people are just going to other Christian denominations, and which ones, and why. That would be an interesting study to do. I'd be astounded if many former SBC members aren't simply pursuing relatively liberal forms of Christianity or some personal riff on it. I'd be astounded if many are just becoming atheists, whether self-labeled or not. Some, doubtless, but not most, I would think. Not all in one go.
Many of the members of our church are former Southern Baptists. Christians come into our faith generally in response to patterns of hatred or bigotry their Christian church commits against themselves or someone they love. These converts generally don't change their mind about God because of the corruption of their Christian churches. They either have much earlier concluded that Christian dogma is nonsense, but saw no specific reason to leave their Christian church, or they continue to hold their Christian beliefs and feel that they are not inconsistent with, but rather quite compatible with, syncretic religious practice fully amenable with reality-based (rather than Bible-based) religious perspective.
The joke in this liberal enclave is that even the Baptists are liberal here. There are two Baptist churches ... one is affiliated with the ABA and openly advertises itself as "LGBT Friendly". The other has the word "Tabernacle" in its name and is likely the more conservative / conventional of the two, mentions no affiliations and no "welcoming" aspect, but I'm guessing would still be regarded as pretty namsy-pamsy by a true red-blooded Baptist of the South (SBC or not).
As such the UU church here is probably more liberal than average; I daresay a significant percentage of the membership are trained in non-violent resistance and have been arrested in protests at some point or other. In that society you are as likely to encounter a self-labeled atheist or pagan as you are someone hewing to an even vaguely Christian theism.
I doubt most SBC members could survive the transition to most UU churches without their heads exploding so I am guessing most would eventually land in the UU by way of some other mainstream denominational dalliance to give them a chance to decompress ;-)
The religiously unaffiliated is growing at a substantial rate, while most other comparably religious categories are declining. The only other category that is increasing are non-Christian faiths when taken in aggregate, and that's mostly attributable to a growth in Islam.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
As such the UU church here is probably more liberal than average; I daresay a significant percentage of the membership are trained in non-violent resistance and have been arrested in protests at some point or other. In that society you are as likely to encounter a self-labeled atheist or pagan as you are someone hewing to an even vaguely Christian theism.
I just came from living there for fifty years, and from what I've seen so far, if anything UUs up there are more conservative than down here. I mean that mostly in the lower-case 'c', non-political sense -- a generalized antipathy for change, especially with regard to technology, and all that means (including changes in the way people communicate with each other). The UUs here were quick to put up a #BlackLivesMatter banner.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
I doubt most SBC members could survive the transition to most UU churches without their heads exploding so I am guessing most would eventually land in the UU by way of some other mainstream denominational dalliance to give them a chance to decompress ;-)
It's just not the case. These specific people I know seem to have made that journey you're alluding to while remaining at their Southern Baptist churches. By the time they left those churches they've completed the journey.
Last edited by bUU; 07-13-2015 at 11:37 AM..
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