Chris Lange, FISM News

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Declining faith in the U.S. has been the subject of a multitude of reports, surveys, and news articles in recent months. One particularly alarming manifestation of the so-called post-Christian era is the fact that roughly 40 million Americans have stopped going to church over the past 25 years.

“That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history,” Jake Meador, editor in chief of “Mere Orthodoxy,” wrote in an article recently published by The Atlantic.

Meador said that this change is not just bad news for the church, but for society as a whole.

“Participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life, higher financial generosity, and more stable families—all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency,” Meador said. 

While several theories have emerged as to the cause of this unprecedented phenomenon, there is a dearth of scientific research supporting any proffered causes. It is for this reason that Gospel Coalition authors Jim Davis and Michael Graham commissioned renowned sociologists Dr. Ryan Burge and Dr. Paul Djupe to undertake a comprehensive study of “dechurching” in America. Davis, Graham and Burge share their findings in the forthcoming book “The Great Dechurching.”  

“We are currently experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in U.S. history,” an excerpt from the book summary reads. “It is greater than the First and Second Great Awakening and every revival in our country combined but in the opposite direction.”

It is perhaps unsurprising that the sex abuse and corruption scandals that have rocked the evangelical community – also well-documented by the media – have played a role in growing disillusionment with the church. But the Gospel Coalition research team found that the dechurching phenomenon is far more complex. They drew their conclusions from an in-depth analysis of data drawn from a trio of surveys of 1,000 individuals, with100 data points per person surveyed. These data points included “demographics, size, core concerns, church off-ramps, historical roots, and the gravity of what is at stake.”

Graham explained that the term “dechurched” refers to individuals who regularly attended church in the past but indicated on the survey that they now attend less than one time per year during a May 10, 2023, installment of The Gospel Coalition’s “As In Heaven” podcast hosted by Davis.

The team identified six dechurched profiles from the data, including four different dechurched evangelical groups as well as mainline and Catholic dechurched profiles. 

Cultural Christians

More than half of the entire group of dechurched evangelicals surveyed fell into the category of “cultural Christians.” Graham explained that this group is predominantly male and white, with high marriage rates, education, and income. This group also leaned left on the political spectrum. Its members were labeled as “cultural Christians” because they scored the lowest of any group on Christian orthodoxy. For example, only 1% of this group said that they believed the statement: “Jesus is the Son of God” and just 22% agreed that “the Bible is the literal word of God.”

“So the group decided to leave the church for reasons primarily of inconvenience, because they moved, because their friends weren’t going, or because they wanted greater sexual freedom,” Graham said.  “Yet surprisingly, more than half of this group expressed a willingness to come back.”

Mainstream Evangelicals

One point that sets the second group, “mainstream evangelicals,” apart is that there is little difference between this dechurched group and people who still go to church, according to Burge. Dechurched mainstream evangelical respondents were primarily female and white, with varying income and marriage rates and high orthodoxy scores. Members of this dechurched group left because church became “inconvenient” or because they had a negative experience with the church or a fellow member or members. 

“And here’s a really interesting statistic about this group. 100% of this group said they were willing to return to an evangelical church,” Burge said, adding that many even feel that God is “nudging” them to do so.

Ex-vangelicals

The third group, “ex-vangelicals,” are so named because 0% of them are willing to return to an evangelical church. The group is largely made up of white, middle-aged women with below-average marriage, education, employment, and income rates.

According to Graham, ex-vangelicals feel that “they have been left by the wayside.” He noted that dechurched individuals in this group are “deeply allergic to misogyny, deeply allergic to partisan politics.”

At the same time, the group scored high on Christian orthodoxy. In fact, 97% of this group believe that Jesus is the Son of God. The vast majority of the group identifies as independents, in terms of politics. Graham said that ex-vangelicals are “are done with this type of expression of the Christian faith,” though many are open to a “different” kind of church – one “that cares about justice and compassion for vulnerable people.”

BIPOC 

The fourth group of dechurched evangelicals identified in the study is the “BIPOC” group. The acronym stands for black, indigenous, and persons of color. There were no white survey respondents in this group, which was overwhelmingly male.

Graham clarified that the group does not represent BIPOC groups as a whole, given that the group sampled “willfully chose, for an extended period of their life, to attend a white evangelical church” on a regular basis. The BIPOC survey group had the highest income and education levels among all of the groups, with many having earned graduate degrees and PhDs. They scored 58% on the orthodoxy scale. These individuals are centrist-left, in terms of political issues, and are deeply mistrustful of U.S. institutions like the criminal justice system. 

Graham explained that the average age of this group today is 51 and that the average age when they left the church was 27. The BIPOC survey group began leaving the church in the late 1990s, making them one of the first groups to dechurch.

Mainlines and Roman Catholics

The fifth and sixth groups – mainlines and Roman Catholics that dechurched – are in their mid-fifties today. Both groups were extremely engaged in the church in the early 1990s but began drifting away from the church toward the end of the decade. Mainline dechurchers were identified as overwhelmingly female, while the genders of dechurched Catholics were evenly split. Income, education, and employment were slightly below average for both groups and retirement rates were high. 

“Both groups looked very similar to ex-vangelicals in the extent to which they were allergic to racism, misogyny and Christian nationalism,” Graham said. Both, for example, scored low on orthodoxy and had a “low” opinion of the Bible. They also are center-left in terms of politics. 

“The biggest reasons for these groups dechurching  were things like moving, inconvenience, political disagreements, other priorities, clergy scandal and their faith just not working,” Graham added. 

The Dechurched Decade

“Something happened in life in the 1990s” Burge said. “That’s a really key moment, I think, in American…social and religious history. We saw that the share of young people who identify as Christians dropped 14 points between 1991 and 1998, which is the fastest and shortest period of time drop we’ve seen in the last 50 years.” 

Graham is in the process of digging deeper into the socioeconomic, cultural, and political events that shaped the 1990s and how they relate to The Great Dechurching. 

Encouraging Data 

The Gospel Coalition researchers hope that their findings will serve as a valuable tool to believers and pastors to better understand and address the needs of individuals who have left the church.

“The single most encouraging thing about this entire research is that well over half the people that we surveyed are willing to actively return to church today. And many of those people actually believe that they will,” Graham recently told ChurchLeaders. He added that the data shows that there are many dechurched people “who just need a little bit of a nudge to return to church.”