{"id":43073,"date":"2019-07-30T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T10:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=43073"},"modified":"2019-07-28T19:59:42","modified_gmt":"2019-07-28T23:59:42","slug":"the-myth-of-the-dying-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/07\/the-myth-of-the-dying-church\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Myth of the Dying Church”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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We keep hearing that Christianity\u2013particularly conservative, evangelical, orthodox Christianity\u2013is dying out.\u00a0 We are told that secularists, atheists, and \u201cnones\u201d are getting the upper hand in American religion, that young people are deserting traditional faiths, that the church is dying.\u00a0 None of that is true.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Quite the contrary.<\/p>\n

Glenn Stanton has written a new book entitled\u00a0\u00a0The Myth of the Dying Church: How Christianity Is Actually Thriving in America and the World.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 He cites an abundance of evidence from prominent objective scholars that punctures the myth of Christian decline and shows that \u201cintense religion\u201d\u2013as held by committed, believing, faith-filled Christians\u2013is not in decline at all.<\/p>\n

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What we are seeing is the decline of nominal Christianity,\u00a0<\/em>from mainline Protestants giving up on liberal theology to non-believers on church rolls quitting the pretense.\u00a0 Even among young people who leave the church, the overwhelming majority confess that they never really had a faith to begin with.\u00a0 Ironically, the effect of nominal believers leaving is to purify the church and make it stronger.<\/p>\n

And there is much more in the book, including a discussion of the rapid growth of Christianity around the world.<\/p>\n

Mr. Stanton summarizes some of the points he develops and supports at length in his book in an article he published for The Federalist.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>From No, Non-Believers Are Not Increasing in America:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Nones Aren\u2019t New at All<\/h2>\n

First, the \u201cnones\u201d are certainly not a new group of unbelievers exiting the pews of our nation\u2019s churches. They are merely a group who are identifying more accurately what they have always been, those without any real religious practice.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ed Stetzer, who holds the distinguished Billy Graham Chair of Church, Missions, and Evangelism at Wheaton College, has given one of the best clarifying explanations of the nones that I\u2019ve seen. In USA Today, he wrote that \u201cChristianity isn\u2019t collapsing, it\u2019s being clarified.\u201d. . .<\/p>\n

The United States Is Not Becoming More Secular<\/h2>\n

Second, the United States is not growing more secular. The Harvard\/Indiana University sociologists wanted to test the \u201csecularization thesis,\u201d the idea that modern life, cultural advancement, the abundance of material possessions, and the dominance of a scientific worldview inevitably translate into a culture where religion becomes increasingly irrelevant and relegated to the blue-hair pensioners and a few superstitious, anti-science hangers-on. . . .<\/p>\n

These two scholars\u2019 findings were clear and remarkably counterintuitive. In the introduction of their study, they let their readers know point blank:<\/p>\n

We show that rather than religion fading into irrelevance as the secularization thesis would suggest, intense religion\u2014strong affiliation, very frequent practice, literalism and evangelicalism\u2014is\u00a0persistent<\/em>, and in fact,\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0moderate religion is on the decline in the United States. . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Atheists Are Not More Numerous Than Theists<\/h2>\n

Third, not only are we\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0an increasingly secular nation, there is certainly not an atheism revival as the Daily Wire claimed. There are not more atheists in America than adherents of any other religion. Not anywhere close.<\/p>\n

Their mistake was assuming that those who report no particular faith are indeed atheists. That leap is as large as it is incorrect. Most nones are not strict or even convictional unbelievers per se. They are mostly drifters and non-joiners, even as about a third admit that faith is important to them.<\/p>\n

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