Losing my religion
Washington Post
Washington post wrote an article saying that 15 percent of Americans have no religion.
The survey reflects a key question that demographers, sociologists and political scientists have been asking in recent years: Who makes up this growing group of evangelicals? Forty-four percent of America’s 77 million Christian adults say they are born again or evangelical. Meanwhile, 18 percent of Catholics also chose that label, as did 40 percent of mainline Christians.
“If people call themselves ‘evangelical,’ it doesn’t tell you as much as you think it tells you about what kind of church they go to,” Silk said. “It deepens the conundrum about who evangelicals are.”
Who are you?
That’s quite surprising, since I thought it was much higher than that. It was noted that terms people call themselves are being more and more vague. People no longer want to be called protestant, but rather evangelical. Even vaguer still, non-denominational. And the number of non-religious or irreligious is up as well.
Labels
There is however two sides on the labeling within the Christian (especially protestant) community. In an effort to be more inclusive, people are labeling themselves evangelicals or non-denominational. This is true to an extent. This is a strategy churches are using in order to be “seeker-friendly” and as well as to show their inclusiveness by either overlooking or minimizing various doctrinal squabbles. This type of labeling is fluid and can applied to a much larger group of people.
However on the other extreme, some Christians seek to distinguish themselves doctrinally. They would rather choose a side rather than water down what they believe. This can be seen in the new Cavinistic movement. People then use labels like: reformed or bible-believing or calvinist or arminianist or liberal or conservative or charistmatic or pentacostal or whatever to further distinguish what they believe. This may look like politics, and in many instances very similar to the distinctions made by republicans and democratics but it is a reality since “meaning” seem to have this fluid nature to it.
Do a Survey
So when I see a survey saying that people would rather be called non-denominational or evangelical, I think that’s fine, but I also see the survey as lacking further insight on the growth or so-called evolution of the Christian religion. I think you need to go further like ask if they believe the bible is the word of God, whether they believe Jesus Christ as having lived, crucified and resurrected, and various other questions in order to get a better understanding of the Christian landscape. (This is a tip for you survey people.) The landscape is far from being static and yet, those things that do remain the same appear to be too “boring” for people to survey.
Data Samples
In terms of the survey sample data, I am also a little bit skeptical about the results. The article says that the sample is with 54,000 this past year and probably near the same amounts the previous two times they did the survey over the past two decades. Which means that I don’t know how they went about with the sampling process and who knows if it was a fair sampling of the population. Two largest churches in America (or mega-churches) can account for more than the 54,000 people they sampled. So it really depends on who they sampled and where they sampled. I think they would get better results if they actually looked at the Census data (I’m not sure if they asked about religion, but I’m sure they could and get the actual results).
And even within a church, not everyone who goes to church is a Christian, not everyone who goes is a believer in Jesus Christ… as my wife likes to say, “just because you go to McDonalds doesn’t make you a hamburger.” Correlation does not imply causation.
So if you really want to know about Evangelicalism or Christianity, I suggest you not read the washington post or even these surveys, but see for yourself what it truly is. Go to church :)
For the actual survey done click here.
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