At first, the numbers seem alarming, and there is an alarming element to it. Since the last time such a poll was taken in 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent. Yes, 70 percent is still an overwhelming majority, but an 8 percent drop in just seven years is pretty big.
So how does one account for those one-time devoted followers of Jesus Christ suddenly abandoning the Kingdom of God? One doesn't, because that's not what's really happened here. Check out these details in the story:
"Overall, there are more than four former Christians for every convert to Christianity," said Cooperman.
Although evangelicals are part of the decline, their slide has been less steep. They benefit from more people joining evangelical traditions, but they're hurt by generational change and by America's increased diversity.
According to the survey, white "born-again or evangelical" Protestants — closely watched for their political clout within the GOP — now account for 19% of American adults, down slightly from 21% in 2007.
Politicians should take note, said Mike Hout, a sociologist and demographer at New York University who is also a co-director of the General Social Survey.
"Traditionally, we thought religion was the mover and politics were the consequence," he said. Today, it's the opposite.
Many of today's formerly faithful left conservative evangelical or Catholic denominations because "they saw them align with a conservative political agenda and they don't want to be identified with that," Hout said.
That last paragraph is crucial to understanding what's happened here. There is a huge difference between someone who "identifies as a Christian" and someone who has really surrendered his or her life to Jesus Christ. If you identify as a Christian because that's where your parents took you to church as a kid, or because you occasionally pop into a service when you feel like it, then you will probably tell pollsters that you fit in the Christian category. That's influenced by culture as well. In 2008, it was less acceptable culturally to declare yourself an atheist or an agnostic than it is today. People felt more societal pressure to at least feign some connection to faith even if it wasn't a significant part of their life.
Since then, we've seen a significant change in the culture. People who are either indifferent or hostile toward faith are much more aggressive about saying so publicly. They sense that the cultural winds are at their backs - and they're right. So the lukewarm, weakly (or not at all) committed "Christian" of a decade ago no longer hesitates to say that he or she does not go to church and does not subscribe to any faith system.
One way you can tell is the bolded statement in the quoted passage above. If you stopped loving Jesus because you disagreed with the politics of others who love Jesus, then you never really loved Jesus in the first place. You don't walk out on God becauuse of what those lesser than God do - not if you're really committed to Him. I would say without a doubt that most of the 8 percent who went from Christian to non-Christian in this succession of surveys were nominal Christians only. The only thing that's really changed is that they no longer feel the need to pretend because they now believe it's culturally safe to admit the truth about themselves.
I hear this from secularists all the time: The politics/social attitudes of Christians drive me away from church. I call B.S. on that. You do what you want to do. If you're rejecting God, that's because you decided to reject God, not because of what someone else did. You made a choice. Own it, chief.
That doesn't mean there's nothing troubling here. The shift in the culture is a very troubling development. The people of the darkness have the upper hand as never before in this country, and in my opinion the people of the light are stumbling - at the moment - in the effort to figure out how to respond. We need to get it together, and quickly, if we hope to see a spiritual revival in America. And that starts by taking back cultural territory from the enemy in popular culture.
But I really don't think we've lost a lot when milquetoast Christians stop pretending they're what they really never were. I'd rather go into this battle with people who are sold out for God, and leave those behind who were only putting on a show for the sake of appearances. The enemy's already got those people anyway, and we don't need them in our ranks.
At first, the numbers seem alarming, and there is an alarming element to it. Since the last time such a poll was taken in 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent. Yes, 70 percent is still an overwhelming majority, but an 8 percent drop in just seven years is pretty big.
So how does one account for those one-time devoted followers of Jesus Christ suddenly abandoning the Kingdom of God? One doesn't, because that's not what's really happened here. Check out these details in the story:
