I was talking to my dad the other day about how the Southern Baptists always over-report their membership b/c if you're ever baptized in their church, you're on the books as a "member" for life.
In addition, the stats I've compiled on atheism, the new Paul and Zuckerman article and the recent Pew Poll reports are handy references.
A preview of statistics showing the evangelical slideHe does indeed. McCain has problems there, although people like Dobson will go wherever they still have control.
06/13/2008
The 25 percent of Americans who say they are evangelicals don’t go to church as evangelicals are expected to, don’t act as evangelicals are expected to, and don’t believe as evangelicals are expected to.
So are they evangelicals? No. Not in any way that would justify their dominance in national discussions of ethical and moral values.
Other Christians (67 percent of the population) outnumber traditionalist evangelicals (12.7) by more than five to one, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Study )
HOW MANY EVANGELICALS ARE THERE?
The most commonly heard statistic about evangelicals is that they are 25 percent of the country, one out of four Americans. That stat comes from what Americans say about their religious practice, which is notoriously unreliable.
In fact, traditionalist evangelicals are 7 percent of the population or 1 out of 14 Americans. Only 7 percent of self-identified evangelicals believe the most central tenets of so-called Bible-based belief and fewer than 7 percent are in church on a given Sunday.
A look at the National Association of Evangelicals and Southern Baptists, the two biggest evangelical groups, shows how inflated the commonly quoted figures are.
The NAE claims to have 30 million members. I counted. It actually has 7.6 million, at most, and perhaps half that actually attend church.
Southern Baptists claim to have 16 million members, but more than five million of those don’t live in the towns where their churches are located.
Five million are actually in church on average and about 4 million attend Sunday school/bible studies (which is how Baptist insiders gauge the health of a church.)
ARE THEY GROWING?
*The percentage of Americans who are evangelicals has been dropping since 1900 when they constituted 42 percent of the population.
*About a thousand evangelicals leave the faith every day.
*The proportion of young American adults who are evangelicals has declined from 22 percent in the 1970s to 20 percent in 2002.
*The percentage of young adult evangelicals who are Biblical literalists (about 55 percent) and has not increased since 1984.
*Most evangelical teens leave church after high school. Southern Baptists lose 88 percent. The Church of Christ loses up to 80 percent. Only 12 percent ever return. Other evangelicals estimate up to 94 percent leave within two years after finishing high school.
*In the country’s most successful churches, 1 out of 4 evangelicals is dissatisfied with the spiritual nourishment and growth provided in their churches. Many are considering leaving.
And that’s not the worst of it, the most dissatisfied are core members who give the most time and money to the church. Without them, the churches could not survive.
Southern Baptists are by far the largest evangelical denomination and the largest group of Protestants in the country. The following statistics came from them.
* Their rate of growth has been falling since the 1950s. (SBC researcher Thom Rainer has put out a graph that shows a diagonal line going straight down.) This means they haven’t resurged at all. They’ve grown but less each year. Try to sell that kind of performance on Wall Street.
* Southern Baptists say they more than 16 million members, but more than five million of them (some say 8 million) don’t live in the towns where their churches are located.
*Five million are actually in church on average I got those figures because they estimate that one out eight people in church is unsaved and about 4 million attend Sunday school/bible studies (which is how Baptist insiders gauge the health of a church.)
*Total baptisms have fallen for seven years out of eight. Last year they fell more than 5 percent.
*Half of the denomination’s 43,000 churches baptize 3 or fewer persons a year.
* Baptisms are falling in every age group except children under five.
*From 1980 to 2005, baptisms among the critical 18 to 34 age group fell 40 percent, from 100,000 to 60,000.
*Only 7 percent of those baptized have grown up without church or in a non-Christian family. At the same time, Americans who say they have no institutional affiliation is growing faster than any other spiritual group. (I have figures.) That means the pool that SBC is least able to tap is growing hugely.
*Total membership went down by 40,000 from 2006 to 2007.
*Members are less dedicated. In 1991, 85 percent of Southern Baptists attended worship and Sunday School. In 2006, the number was down to 68 percent.
* Southern Baptists are establishing churches at half the rate they did in the 1950s. That’s very bad news because a new church attracts new members at twice the rate a three-year-old church does and three times the rate of a 15-year-old church.
DO THEY ACT AS EVANGELICALS ARE THOUGHT TO ACT?
*From sexual behavior to abortion, from divorce to drug taking, the behavior of self-identified evangelicals is almost identical to the rest of the country.
DO THEY BELIEVE AS TRADITIONAL EVANGELICALS ARE THOUGHT TO BELIEVE?
When evangelical pollster George Barna asked nine questions of faith that characterize evangelical belief, he found that only 7 percent of the country qualified. When he went to cities, he couldn’t find one city where one out of four people were evangelicals.
The other 18 percent of Americans who are so often characterized as evangelicals are “self-identified” evangelicals. When pollsters ask them more than their religious affiliation, that number starts to drop. Because this is a very mixed group.
What does this mean politically?
It tells us why only 20 percent of self-identified evangelicals say they are members of the Religious Right. (Because it’s the truth.)
It tells us why James Dobson said he would sit out the election if McCain was the Republican nominee, and then when his bluff was called, decided that he would reconsider. (Because he isn’t the kingmaker he styles himself to be.)
It tells us why abortion is still legal and gay rights are being extended more each year. After more than 20 years of fighting these issues, Religious Right evangelicals haven’t been able to legislate their core issues. They can swing an election but they don’t have enough people to make unpopular laws.
It tells us that McCain must keep his 7 percent base awake and afraid enough to vote but he won’t court them too much for fear of alienating the rest of America, including the 18 percent evangelical swing vote that has been lumped with the Religious Right. Obama has a good chance at that swing vote, which is made up of nominal evangelicals, cultural conservatives and increasingly progressive “emergent church” evangelicals.
