A few months ago, I wrote an article about how Australia is no longer a majority Christian nation. Now, according to new research from Pew, the USA is not too far behind.
The USA has long been at the center of the evangelical church universe, enjoying majority status in the USA for as long as anyone can remember. In fact, in the early nineties, as many as 90% of Americans called themselves Christians. However, by 2020, that number had fallen to 64%.
At the same time, the number of people who call themselves either atheist, agnostic, or “religions nones” has almost doubled from 16% in 2007 to 30% in 2020. If this trend continues, over the next fifty years, “religious nones” will take Christianity’s place as the majority belief system — or rather non-belief system — in the USA.
The year that they predict that change to occur?
2070.
This scenario doesn’t even account for a potential acceleration of religious disaffiliation. There is every chance that the rate at which people walk away from the Christian faith could increase. Here’s what it looks like under four different scenarios:
Where did it all go wrong?
Of course, the Christian church continues to hope that revival is just around the corner. And look… there’s nothing wrong with hope.
But I wonder… at what point is the Christian church going to stop and ask, “Where did this all go wrong?” Why is it that the church is apparently in possession of the greatest story ever told — the hope for all of humanity — a life-transforming message, and yet, it is managing to drive more and more people out the door?
The way I see it, it can only come down to one of two reasons:
Either the church is delivering the wrong message, or it is doing such a poor job of delivering the right message that the message is completely lost. It’s probably a combination of both.
Both its message and its method are wrong.
The church needs to sort out its message
Regardless of what the church thinks, the message that a person is born sinful from birth and is destined for eternal conscious torment in a place called Hell without the intervention of God through Jesus Christ is NOT actually good news.
The message that the same God who created the universe and set the laws of the universe in motion somehow decided that the wages of sin (even the smallest of sins) had to be death is not good news.
The message that our sinfulness is so bad that it left God no choice but to brutalize, torture, and kill his son is not good news.
The message that God, who is apparently both all-loving and all-powerful, needs to satisfy his holiness by sending the majority of humankind to eternal conscious torment in hell is not good news. And the message that we have a free choice to accept this message and “be saved” is not good news either.
Why?
Well, let me ask you a question. Does the choice to accept this message really seem like much of a choice to you? I mean, I can get people to do a lot of things if I threaten them with death. If I point a gun at a person and say, “You have a choice to do what I ask, or I’ll kill you,” does that really constitute a choice? After all, if I threaten someone with death, I could get them to say whatever I want ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Heck, I might even get them to profess that they believe me to be God.
And if I pin a person face-down on the ground, hold their arms behind their back and dig my knees into their kidneys, I could probably force them to say they loved me if I promised to get off their back. But would they actually love me?
No.
Do you see what I am saying? As soon try to convince people to follow Jesus by bringing Hell into the equation, you are, in fact, taking away free choice by reducing it down to a non-choice.
You cannot create free lovers by force.
And since the church has used fear and shame and force and HELL to convince people to accept their message, they have not created lovers of God. They have created a system where people do and say the right things to avoid getting into trouble with God. It bears more similarity to a domestic abuse situation, where one partner does all they can to avoid getting hurt by their easily angered, violent, and irrational superior.
What would I say to someone if they were in an abusive relationship?
I’d tell them to get out.
So what is the real message of the Christian Faith? I’ll give you a hint: It has something to do with being more beloved of God than we could possibly imagine.
The church needs to sort out its method
Not only did the church’s message get mixed up with the ‘gospel’ of John Calvin, but at some point, the church stopped meeting the basic human needs that drew people to the church in the first place.
Community was replaced with tribalism.
Acceptance was replaced with adherence.
Faith was replaced with certainty.
Unity was replaced with uniformity.
Love was replaced with fear.
Authenticity was replaced with hypocrisy.
The church is not a place where I can go — just as I am — and safely bear my heart, with all its wounds and scars. In fact, in every sense, it feels like, in a church, you cannot be both fully known and fully loved. To be fully known would only invite rejection based on the invisible and unspoken expectations of performance-based religion — expectations that everyone is struggling to meet.
This perpetuates the very problem that harkens back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve felt they had to hide their nakedness from God. They believed that if God saw them fully, he would reject them outright.
As a result, many who attend churches pick up their fig leaves and cover their own shame and sense of not measuring up. Christians are forced to pretend, repress, deny, or become a hypocrite because nothing they do will ever be good enough. It is not so much that hypocrites join churches but that the evangelical church’s very structures encourage people to act and pretend.
At some point, many Christians — finally fed up with the sheer level of energy it takes to play this game — give up and leave the church for good. Often these are people of real inner integrity and spiritual intelligence who refuse to deny, repress, or pretend any longer. Do you blame them?
In a world where people are forced to perform and achieve in order to be received, most are looking for a place to be real. This is a genuine, spiritual need. The church could meet that need. It really could. But, not so long as acceptance in the church is dependent on having the right behavior and the right beliefs. How is that any different from the world?
But, can you imagine how good it would be to be in a place where there is nothing demanded of you and nothing you have to do? A place where you only need to be you. Sounds like a place of rest, a place of peace. Let the church be that!
The church, as a minority
I hold no fears about being a Christian amongst a secular majority. In fact, I think if the church falls apart, then we can create a mosaic out of all the shattered pieces — one that tells a new story… or perhaps retells the story that we lost.
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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
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There are no gods, ghosts or goblins. all religions turn into myths eventually. True freedom can only be achieved by eliminating all myths of religion. That will take a long time. Unfortunitly, I wont be here to enjoy that event.
white Christian people in the minority, that would truly be enlightening. my ancestors treatment of Indigenous people and the attempted elimination of their culture needs to be corrected but the white attitude is thats not my fault, i did nothing to them. why should i fix the Indians problems. I have a good life because they did not turn us away when we found this country. I cringe when people say immagrants coming here should accept and follow our culture, traditions and values, we didnt several hundred years ago, we should all be following Indigenous culture. Where wuold you be… Read more »