(Page 3 of 4)
Tough future for evangelicals, numbers reveal
More from Jim Hinch
Christianity fading? Numbers are mixedWestminster pastor takes his ministry to reality TVO.C. pastors lobby GOP friends on touchy issue
At first glance, Dickerson's critics seem to have a point.
Measuring evangelicalism is notoriously difficult, since differently worded polls yield vastly different results, ranging from 40 percent of Americans identified as evangelical to fewer than 10 percent.
Nevertheless, no matter how the question is asked, no survey shows a dramatic drop in evangelicals. All major polls – Gallup, General Social Survey, Pew Research Center – show the number of self-identified evangelicals holding steady over time.
So, all's well, right?
No. A closer look at the numbers reveals ominous trends.
First, it doesn't matter whether people self-identify as evangelical if they don't go to church. Because if they don't go to church, churches' income and reason for existing vanish.
By that measure, evangelicalism is in trouble. According to David Olson, pastor and author of “The American Church in Crisis,” very few people who say they're evangelical actually to go to church.
In 2007, when Olson counted up church attendance data, just 9 percent of Americans were in an evangelical church on any given Sunday.
That same year, a Baylor University study found that, of those who claimed to be evangelical, fewer than a third reported talking to a non-believer about their faith in the previous month. Witnessing for Christ is a hallmark of evangelical belief.
The forecast is even worse for younger Christians. Stetzer acknowledged to me that his own research shows that “70 percent of young adults who attend church in high school drop out (of the church) at some point.”
Stetzer said the data might not be as dire as they appear because no one has determined how many of those departing young people eventually return. He cited research showing that evangelicals are among the most effective religious groups at transmitting parents' faith to children.
Yet, if fewer than 10 percent of Americans are active evangelical churchgoers, how many are transmitting that faith? And surveys consistently show rising rates of secularism among young people.
In other words, at this particular moment, evangelicalism is holding its own. But a demographic cliff is approaching.
Dickerson said evangelicals have been slow to acknowledge the forces working against them in part because evangelical culture, like much of secular America, measures success numerically.
“Exceptional pastors tend to hang out with other exceptional pastors, and they talk and hear about what's happening in their churches. … They don't understand they're in the top few percent of the national evangelical church,” Dickerson said.