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…
A week at Chautauqua has me pondering the future of the Protestant Mainline
I was fussing over a jigsaw puzzle when somebody turned on the Biden-Trump debate. As the combatants droned on in the background, my attention remained firmly fixed on the task before me. It was all birds and foliage. A thousand…
Some evangelicals changed their minds on abortion bans after Roe was overturned
The largest decline in support for fully banning abortion after the U.S. Supreme overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 was among evangelicals, political scientist Ryan Burge said in a recent “Graphs About Religion” report. The Substack post combines statistics from…
Making sense of denominational decline and church shifting
Evangelical Protestantism continues to be a growing force in American Christianity, as Mainline Protestant denominations continue to decline, but where are these converts coming from? There is very little data showing where Christians go when they convert away from a…
For fastest-growing churches in America, it’s location, location, location
If you want to have a fast-growing church, there are 47 counties in America that fit the ideal criteria for success, according to an empirical analysis by Ryan Burge. Successful church plants today most often meet these four criteria, Burge…
Ryan Burge explains ‘casual dechurching’
The majority of Americans leaving the church do so for rather humdrum reasons, sociologist of religion Ryan Burge said during a recent episode of the “CBF Podcast.” This phenomenon is known as “casual dechurching” and is typically overlooked because it’s…
Templeton Foundation funds first-of-its-kind research into the religious ‘nones’
A team of scholars is launching a new research project aimed at learning about religiously unaffiliated Americans, including how they find meaning in life and when and why they stopped being religious. Funded by a three-year, $339,000 grant from the…
What Ron DeSantis and the TheoBros share in common
The headline in The Atlantic declared: “The Cost of Ron DeSantis’ Ideological Purity.” That got my attention, because “ideological purity” is big theme among religious conservatives these days — especially among that group we sometimes call the TheoBros. Those are…
Focus on the Family falsely says only liberal churches are declining
Quiet quitting. Conscious uncoupling. The great dechurching. The “dones.” These are the terms coined to describe today’s historic downturn in church affiliation, including evangelical congregations. “More than one in 10 Americans — around 40 million of us — stopped attending…