The 8:1 Ratio
The Washington Times is taking a particularly bleak view of the Pew study of American religious practice that came out yesterday.
The title: "Catholic Tradition fading in the US"
The first sentence:
:"Evangelical Christianity has become the largest religious tradition in this country, supplanting Roman Catholicism, which is slowly bleeding members, according to a survey released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life."
I think the story really should have been titled "Mainline Protestant tradition fading in the US" - but I guess that's not a surprise anymore.
But this figure did startle me: In 1957, 66% of Americans were members of mainline Protestant churches. 50 years later, only 18% are part of mainline Protestantism. Now that's what you call a major fade!
"There is no question that the demographic balance has shifted in past few decades toward evangelical churches," said Greg Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. "They are now the mainline of American Protestantism."
The overall percentage of Catholics hasn't changed that much in recent years - but if we weren't losing so many members, we'd be growing dramatically and make up 33% of the country, not 23%!
So the real story is complicated:
In the US, religious affiliation is anything but steady state.
No single religious tradition enjoys the sort of hegemony that mainline Protestantism enjoyed 50 years ago.
Mainline Protestantism had collapsed into a death spiral.
Evangelical/Pentecostal Protestantism, which was practically a sect 50 years ago, has replaced it as the largest and most influential form of Christianity in the US.
Catholic numbers have remained relatively constant because their massive losses (1/3) have been offset by a significant number of converts and huge Hispanic immigration.
Catholic losses are supplying two groups: evangelicalism (almost 5% of US population are Catholics who have become evangelicals) and the non-practicing (5% of US population are Catholics are not affiliated with any religious tradition).
For every US evangelical/Pentecostal who becomes a Catholic (roughly 1.8 million), 8 American Catholics have gone in the other direction (roughly 14 -15 million). The 8:1 ratio.
The disproportion is even greater among Hispanics. 20% of Hispanic US Catholics become evangelicals or Pentecostals.
Those who consistently evangelize, "win" in a culture in which individuals tend to "re-choose" their religious affiliation as adults.
posted by Sherry W @ 6:27 AM
11 Comments
11 Comments:
I wrote something in a post below, but my question still remains: how can evangelicalism have a tradition, when they've gotten rid of liturgy, churches, theology, etc.?
Carole
Carole:
You sound completely mystified by the whole phenomena of non-sacramental Protestant Christianity. You may just have to accept that they 1) really exist and 2) are *really* not Catholic.
Evangelicals/Pentecostals are a hugely vibrant form of Christianity that is not united around a liturgy or sacraments - but around the evangelically proclaimed word and a strong emphasis upon a transforming encounter with Christ.
Theirs is fundamentally a communion of shared spiritual experience and mission rather than a communion centered around common sacraments and a single unified and visible ecclesial center.
Many evangelicals look at us and can't understand how we exist so the sense of puzzlement and mystery does cut both ways.
If sound "mystified," then so do some of your fellow evangelicals. There are a number of books written by evangelicals who raise exactly the same sort of questions I have about the lack of ecclesial identification, the emphasis on parachurch activities that characterize evangelicals, the lack of serious evangelical scholarship, etc.
Carole
Of course, they raise these questions - because they are important lacunae in the evangelical world - but that doesn't mean they don't believe evangelicalism exists!
They just think it is defective in these areas.
And of course, these are the questions of the intellectual elite, who do not occupy the same place in evangelicalism or have the same influence that intellectuals do in the Catholic tradition.
The great mass of evangelicals and the primary energy of evangelicalism is popular - and the majority of evangelicals are asking very different questions and are mostly unaware that these issues even exist.
I hate to plug my own blog here, but I wrote on How to talk to Evangelicals and I think you (Carol) might find it helpful. It's a short read.
Not that I expect that more than a handful of bishops will remember this survey by the time May rolls around...
nor that only a distinct minority of priests will even be aware of this survey...and even less will do anything about it...
But these sobering figures certainly point out the need for your apostolate and others like it. The US program-based Catholic Church doesn't work and it hasn't in a generation.
Evangelize or die.
I, for one, don't feel like dying right now.
FrMichael
This article leads to three questions :
- What is evangelization? (what must every one find in the Kerygma)
- How do you evangelize?
- Once a people is interested in Christ (or better touched), how do you teach him to help him to be a "living" christian?
I mean all that in the harsh conditions of our parishes where priests haven't time to do anything, and where lay people just know few things about their faith, including sometimes reincarnation, etc...
How to begin with ?
Cath: Help me with evangelism and discipleship and I'll help you with discipline and magisterium.
Prot: Fair enough, but why are you willing to do that?
Cath: evangelism/discipleship is about personal relationship, in whatever community of Christians; discipline/magisterium is corporate and will inevitably lead to the Catholic Church in the long term.
Can the results of a survey of 35,000 people be generalised to the population at large?
Sharon:
the whole value of a study like this is that it is carefully constructed to be reflective of the population as a whole.
35,000 is a huge number and much more likely to be generalizable than much smaller surveys?
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