They’ve been out there aggressively proselytizing for the last 20 years and now they’ve decided they need to put pressure on their members to evangelize harder…
The Southern Baptist Convention, which is launching a new national campaign to bring unbelievers to Jesus, is up against a major obstacle: motivating its own members to evangelize.
…but where have those efforts gotten them?
The nation has grown less religious in the last two decades, a new study shows, with a 10 percent drop in the number of people who call themselves Christians and increases in all 50 states among those who are not aligned with any faith.
Between 1990 and 2008, the percentage of Americans who identified themselves as Christian dropped from 86 percent to 76 percent, reports the new American Religious Identification Sur vey, a wide-ranging report released March 9.
The group that researchers call the “nones”—atheists, agnostics and other secularists—have almost doubled in that time period, from 8.2 percent to 15 percent.
but i wonder what kind of effect the recession will have on this trend. will more people turn to jesus in their time of trial and misery?
I don’t know if they have been proselytizing all that much. The fact that this Christians don’t want to accept is that we live in a secular society where it really is in bad taste to bring up religion as means to convert people. I suspect that very few in the congregations actually put themselves on the line by trying to get converts.
That’s why they like going to third world countries. Recruiting is easier because the people have tangible needs that can also be met by the evangelists.
If Jesus will give my a happy ending, I’ll consider coming to Christ.
@2, are you speaking from the secularist bubble that is Seattle? Because elsewhere in the country, people talk about religion all the time. My cousin was kicked out of her kids’ play group (politely, passive aggressively) because she didn’t go to church. This was in the South/Middle.
All in all, glad to see the non-religious numbers go up!
At least from the stats quoted here, there is an inconsistency. There was a 10 **percentage point** drop, not 10 percent. In fact, there was a 12 percent drop.
Religion and religious people certainly are not perfect but you won’t like the new world when the secular humanist finally take over. Didn’t work for the Soviet Union, or Germany in WW2 (we won’t use the ‘N’ word), or anywhere else and it is failing Europe.
@2: Oh, but they do proselytize. At my grandparents’ baptist church in Lynnhood, it’s called “soul winning.” This is done on a weekly basis, and is followed by a free dinner for the poor/elderly/infirm/heathens (with pie for dessert! not just some horrid jell-o salad). It’s probably pretty good tactic in tough times.
6, Do you know anything about world history?
I wonder if there’s any correlation between the near-complete coup in Christian circles by the stupid, the mean-spirited, and the retrograde, and this drop in their popularity?
@7: They have PIE? I’ll sell my soul to the baptists for pie!
Okay, that’s a joke. I used to go to the christian club in high school for free food, and it wasn’t worth the inanity.
@3,
Don’t you mean “coming ON christ?”
0 to Godwin in 6 posts.
I agree with you guys that there is some evangelism out there, I just doubt it’s widespread. I think the U.S. thinks it’s more religious than it actually is. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church I was encouraged to evangelize, but I can’t say that any of us really did. We had these youth nights where we would go out and try to get people involved with the Church. Very few volunteers showed up. This was in Sacramento, not Seattle.
A few years back I met a Vietnamese Christian who was visiting the U.S. for an operation. The first thing he said to me when he shook my hand was, “My name is blank. Are you a Christian?” I was struck with how American Christians just don’t do that. They know that there is a fine balance to be made with discussing religion with strangers.
Sure some do, but not many.
@6 So, non-religious = fascist. That’s a solid argument and exactly what I would expect from someone who believes that faith in a petulant, selfish and jealous omnipresent being is somehow making the world a better place. I mean, look at all those utopian theocracies in the Middle-East and Northern Africa.
@10, it’s awesome pie, if I say so myself… but I’m biased, because my Gran makes them.
That said, I feel you–I can’t subject myself to the sermons or the congregants without wanting to duct tape everyone’s mouth shut and forcing them to watch Nova or Nature or anything not found on TBN. It’s probably best for all concerned that I haven’t darkened their door in a decade.
@9 I think the case could be made.
Evolution takes time.
Clearly, we need to dispatch more wild-eyed true believers to shout the gospel at the youth of today as they pass by in the Quad on their way to classes. Once they see us out their waving our bibles and preaching the Word, they’re bound to come running.
Proselytizing, religious hand-outs and hard times have always gone hand-in-hand. How do you think half of Ireland ended up being Protestant?
11, Sploog for Jesus! Although I don’t know if I could get past his S&M fetish.
I want a Playstation 3! http://www.landoverbaptist.net/PS3.htm
I wonder how much of the drop in people identifying themselves as Christians is because they don’t want to be associated with pushy, narrow minded evangelicals?
Not included here is the statistical rise in non-Christian religions (e.g. Islam). A lot of this is due to immigration more than conversion.
It’s not that America is becoming significantly less religious, so much as it’s just becoming less Christian.
It’s religious diversity pushing into the near-monopoly of Christianity. Atheists, non-believers, and agnostics are just a minority group alongside other minority groups like, say, Hindu or Wiccan.
To me, any proselytizing by ANY religious group implicitly carries with it the message that our religion isn’t attractive enough to “sell itself”, it must be “marketed” to the unbelievers. It’s just another sales job.
If everybody thinks “Christian” = those annoying, in-your-face bigots who try to warp public policy to their conservative purposes, then no surprise people don’t want to identify with them.
22, From the second article:
If you look at broad trends of history for the past couple of millenia the most successful civilizations (able to provide for and protect their population; and grant, relative to their neighbors, more liberties) were those whose culture was based on religion over nonreligious, and Christian over nonChristian, and Protestant over Catholic.
The secular humanists as a national culture such as is developing in Europe and some areas of America is a recent phenomena; those societies are prosperous based on what they have inherited but declining and rapidly losing economic and cultural vigor.
The Socialist are capable of distributing wealth created by others but unable to sustain a model that produces at the level they consume.
Obama will tax the rich while he can, and borrow a couple of trillion a year while he can, but those are short term unsustainable measures that postpone decline (but make it more severe when it occurs)
26, Do you know anything about world history?
@26, it is precisely Christianity that is sapping our cultural vigor. Seen any Christian culture lately? Christianity is today mostly the last refuge of the terminally stupid and afraid. I’ll stick with the heathens myself, thank you very much. Some of us are pretty stupid, too, but our peaks are way higher. All the good Christians are dead. Except maybe for Alan Bennett.
@26 Wow, I’m not going to argue with ridiculous generalization and inaccurate statements concerning world history. Feel free to continue making it up as you go along. What I will point out is that people in the ancient world also believed the Earth was flat and the center of the universe, so you’re argument could have as plausibly been:
If you look at broad trends of history for the past couple of millennia the most successful civilizations (able to provide for and protect their population; and grant, relative to their neighbors, more liberties) were governed by ignorant, wide-eyed, almost-monkeys. Understanding the universe, even in a limited way, leads to the destruction of human civilization, the sands are running out and all that.
It is interesting that the Pax Romana coincided with and facilitated the spread of Christianity to the known world and the Renaissance with the Reformation of the apostate Church.
I’ve been through that Jesus crap. When I was a helpless child they tried to brainwash me into the Catholic Church. But even as a child I could see they were lies made by stupid people for stupid people. Religion, especially “Christianity”, is the opposite of truth, the perpetrator of violence and death, the world’s biggest problem, and the solution to nothing. History is chock full of examples of these very things. Fuck Christians and their vile religion!
Yay, we’re winning!
@22 You’re right. I can’t argue against a hard number like that. I’m suggesting that this topic is more complex than just Christians versus atheists.
People see different things, often what they want, in these numbers.
This same study was on one of the major news sites (CNN or FOX, I forget) and was reported in big loud declarations of “Number of Muslims in America Doubled!!!”
Then you look and see it went from 0.8% to 1.6% (or something like that – can’t find the numbers)…
I don’t believe atheism is on some rampant rise. I just suspect more people are willing to identify themselves as NOT Christian (compared to 1990).
Add to this mix the higher birthrates of immigrants when compared to, say, Southern Baptists… This same poll, taken in another ten years, may show a far more complex picture than just Christians versus Atheists.
You’re all heretics.
Luckily, the Flying Spaghetti Monster didn’t make you in his/her/its image.
While I think lower numbers of Christians indicates good things, I’d be more interested in polls that keep track, not of whether people consider themselves religious, but whether they:
a)have a faith that requires evangelism/proselytizing/cult indoctrination of others
b)believes as an essential part of their doctrine that everyone who doesn’t believe what they do is wrong and/or will burn in hell
c) promotes the oppression and persecution of any vulnerable minority group
Because I’d much rather see people stay Christian, but cut out the douchebaggery, than see them move into crazy-ass Scientology, gay-hating Ba’Hai, or the screaming asshole variety of atheism.
Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib! Muad’Dib!
@19:
Half of Ireland protestant? Please, on the information highway the numbers are just a few mouseclicks away. Educate yourself.