Babyboomer Unbelief
Will the last Presbyterian please turn out the lights?
The Presbyterian Church USA is hemorrhaging.
According to the number crunchers at denominational headquarters, membership loss for the denomination in 2005 was estimated at sixty-five thousand, followed by an eighty-five thousand projected loss in 2006.
The projected 2006 loss would represent a single-year decline of 3.7 percent, the highest percentage loss in the denomination’s 216-year history.
In Shifting the Deckchairs in Newark and Spong’s legacy I suggested a causal relationship between “secularizing” the Gospel and the decline of the Church in the West.
More evidence of the relationship between theological doubt and church decline. . .
Researchers Dean Hoge, Benton Johnson, and Donald Luidens, conducted a major research project in the 90’s directed at churches affiliated with mainline Protestant denominations. Their findings are published in, “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers” (Dean R. Hoge, Benton Johnson, Donald A. Luidens)
These researchers argue that the most important factor making churches strong is “the presence of a compelling teaching concerning the ultimate purpose and destiny of humankind.”
The authors are clear: “Our findings show that belief is the single best predictor of church participation, but it is orthodox Christian belief, and not the tenets of lay liberalism, that impels people to be involved in church.”
The defining feature of lay liberalism is “the rejection of the claim that Christianity, or any other faith, is the only true religion. Lay liberals have no compelling truth, no ‘good news,’ to proclaim, and few of them share the views that they do have with their friends and acquaintances.”
Paul asserted, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” That, more than anything else, explains why churches that believe and teach the Gospel are healthy, growing and planting new churches, and why those who have abandoned the Gospel are dying.
Final thought: “lay liberalism” is not just a babyboomer phenomenon. It’s alive and well in the next generation.
Sources:
Albert Mohler: Why Conservative Churches are Growing?
Mark Driscoll: Those Bloody Presbyterians
