In my years of serving as a pastor to students and their families, I’ve heard the following question phrased in a few different ways: Should I force my child to go to church if they don’t want to? In the…
God and a woman
In Sisters and Saints: Women in American Religion, Harvard religion professor Ann Braude writes: An old saying among members of African American churches can be applied to most religious groups in the United States: “Women are the backbone of the…
Attending church — even liberal ones — makes Americans more conservative, Ryan Burge shows
Regular attendance at church — almost any church, even the liberal ones — makes people more conservative, Ryan Burge, an analyst of religion and politics, reported. In a recent post on his Substack column, “Graphs About Religion,” Burge demonstrated the…
Finding the gospel amid a ‘churchgoing bust’
In a recent Atlantic essay titled “The True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust,” columnist Derek Thompson writes that “more Americans today have ‘converted’ out of religion than have converted to all forms of Christianity, Judaism and Islam combined. No faith’s…
America’s changing culture means there’s not much of a rush to the cafeteria for Sunday lunch
The old joke about the Baptists trying to beat the Methodists to the cafeteria for Sunday lunch seems stale these days. You might more easily find a remaining cafeteria in some towns than a plurality of people who actually attend…
Iowa and the zombie myth about white evangelical support for Trump
Heading into the Iowa caucuses, the Republican presidential candidate standings looked to be as frozen as the snow-covered ground. The last results from the storied Iowa Poll, conducted by J. Ann Selzer from Jan. 7 to 12, showed Donald Trump with…
Americans think more highly of their religious practice than those looking from afar see
Most of the world doesn’t consider the United States to be nearly as religious as many Americans do, new research shows. According to data from Pew Research Center, 41% of U.S. adults describe faith as essential to them while only…
What’s really happening with the ‘never attenders’ and what does Donald Trump have to do with it?
I haven’t attended church in almost four years and can’t imagine going back. I don’t share this lightly. I was so dedicated to the church that I structured my entire career spanning two decades cleaning restrooms and floors in order to have…
27% of Americans are still watching religious services online
While church attendance in America has declined slightly over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, how people attend religious services appears to have stabilized, according to Pew Research Center. “As the coronavirus pandemic winds down, about a quarter of Americans…