U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority

Religion continues to be in decline in America due in no small part, in my view, to the hate and hypocrisy that define evangelicals and Christofascists as noted by a piece in LGBT Nation.  Add to that the sexual abuse scandals and sexual misconduct  - that are by no means limited to the Catholic Church as a piece in Vanity Fair about a Virginia Beach native son and Hillsong Church lays out - and the greed of the scamvanglists and it's easy to conclude that organized religion is the antithesis of what Christ purportedly preached. Indeed, rather than constituting good news, the Bible, especially the Old Testament, comprises a message of hate in the hands of the self-congratulatory modern day Pharisees.  A new Gallup survey discloses that for the first time less than a majority of Americans belong to or consider themselves affiliated with a church.  Even then, some membership numbers are likely inflated since in the case of the Catholic Church one is counted as a member until you formally have yourself removed from the membership rolls.   Here are highlights from Gallup:

Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.

U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21^st century.

As many Americans celebrate Easter and Passover this week, Gallup updates a 2019 analysis that examined the decline in church membership over the past 20 years.

Gallup asks Americans a battery of questions on their religious attitudes and practices twice each year. The following analysis of declines in church membership relies on three-year aggregates from 1998-2000 (when church membership averaged 69%), 2008-2010 (62%), and 2018-2020 (49%). The aggregates allow for reliable estimates by subgroup, with each three-year period consisting of data from more than 6,000 U.S. adults.

The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years.

Between 1998 and 2000, an average of 73% of religious Americans belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque. Over the past three years, the average has fallen to 60%.

Church membership is strongly correlated with age, as 66% of traditionalists -- U.S. adults born before 1946 -- belong to a church, compared with 58% of baby boomers, 50% of those in Generation X and 36% of millennials. The limited data Gallup has on church membership among the portion of Generation Z that has reached adulthood are so far showing church membership rates similar to those for millennials.

The decline in church membership, then, appears largely tied to population change, with those in older generations who were likely to be church members being replaced in the U.S. adult population with people in younger generations who are less likely to belong. The change has become increasingly apparent in recent decades because millennials and Gen Z are further apart from traditionalists in their church membership rates (about 30 points lower) than baby boomers and Generation X are (eight and 16 points, respectively). Also, each year the younger generations are making up an increasingly larger part of the entire U.S. adult population.

Still, population replacement doesn't fully explain the decline in church membership, as adults in the older generations have shown roughly double-digit decreases from two decades ago. Church membership is down even more, 15 points, in the past decade among millennials.

Among religious groups, the decline in membership is steeper among Catholics (down 18 points, from 76% to 58%) than Protestants (down nine points, from 73% to 64%).

While precise numbers of church closures are elusive, a conservative estimate is that thousands of U.S. churches are closing each year.

The ultimate irony is that far right Christians who would protect religion are killing it in America.  At some point, the Republican Party will also be faced with the fact that wrapping itself in religion will be increasingly repellant to a majority of Americans.