For decades, pollsters and pundits have tracked a steady decline among mainline Christian churches— Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Anglican, Lutheran and Methodist. In recent years, even America’s largest Protestant denomination— the Southern Baptist Convention— has seen declines in baptisms and membership.
This year, a Gallup poll found that only three in 10 Americans say they attend religious services every week (21%) or almost every week (9%), while 11% report attending about once a month. Most Americans say they seldom (56%) or never (25%) attend religious services.
According to the Pew Research Center, there are three exceptions to these numbers: Mormons (LDS), Pentecostals and Muslims do not seem to share in the general decline of religion in the United States.
What is the cause of this decline? The short answer is a lack of new converts.
As older members die or abandon their religious affiliation for various reasons, the number of new members dramatically declines. The longer answer concerns a general disaffection with religion due to political involvement— both internally and externally.
From the earliest days of the Christian movement, its central message has been forgiveness. John the Baptist came “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins(Mark 1:4).
Jesus certainly had forgiveness on his mind in many encounters with the sinners of his day. However, there is a critical disconnect between the meaning of sin in Jesus’s use of the term and how it is used today.
In Jesus’ day, the oppression by Rome caught his attention. His proclamation of the kingdom of God was a direct and not-too-subtle repudiation of the Roman claim to world domination. According to Jesus, those aligned with Rome were at odds with the kingdom of God.
But even closer to the people than Rome was the oppression by Judaism. The endless lists of purity rules excluded most people from having a standing with God, which was essential to standing in almost every other aspect of life.
Standing with God was essential to having access to “blessing.” Those who lived in poverty or faced illness were clearly not blessed by God. They were sinners.
In modern preaching, as with the early church represented by the Apostle Paul, the meaning of sin concerns behavior. The remedy for sin, then, is abandoning sinful behaviors so defined.
Eventually, Paul was interpreted by St. Augustine and Augustine by John Calvin. All of this led to a solution to the problem of sin interpreted as a simple confession of faith, followed by a determined effort with the help of the Holy Spirit, to renounce sin in our lives.
I would argue that this formula has not produced the sort of spiritual transformation Jesus was proclaiming. And the resulting “community of faith” created by this formula has been susceptible to racism and sexism. It has also led to an alarming amount of violence against sinners and those who reject the simple confession/ acceptance interpretation of the gospel.
Jesus offered something more than a two-step program to free us from our sinful behavior and the resulting consequences. He offered us a way to be truly human as God intended.
We need a new word for “sin,” a better word that reflects the chasm between the so-called “sinner” and the so-called “righteous.” The word needs to be shed of its association with behavior, as that is not what Jesus focused on.
We need a word that describes the artificial separation of humans from God by contrived dogmas and allows Jesus’s words to find access to the human spirit. I suggest the word “exile.”
The church is in decline because we are not preaching a message consistent with Jesus’ message. What people need to hear is that God accepts us as we are. We are not condemned by some arbitrary definition of God’s will, definitions dreamed up by people just as lost and broken as everyone else.
In both word and action, we need to hear that God has not rejected us because of who we are. We have not been exiled to some lonely separation from God. Instead, we are being eagerly pursued by God, who loves us all and wants us saved.
That’s the magic word– “saved.” The fear of torment after death has been held over us for centuries as the main thing God wants to solve for us. But the word in the Bible translated as “salvation” is also translated as “healing.”
Life has broken, alienated and bruised us. It has wrecked our hearts and our spirits. It has sent us into exile.
God wants to heal us from that brokenness and bring us out of exile. Following Jesus – not rites and rituals or proper confessions of faith – leads to that healing.
Christian denominations and churches are in decline because they preach a distorted message of Jesus. The misery their distortion creates has many broken people looking for hope and finding only arcane answers to pressing questions about the meaning of life.
This has opened the door to the political exploitation of Christian exile. The political solution asserts that exile can be overcome by having “saved” people gain control of the government, economy and human behavior.
In the American political solution, there is a renewal of racism. There is a doubling down on sexism and the rejection of LGBTQ+ persons as not worthy of God’s acceptance.
The poor will always be with us, we are told and efforts to relieve their poverty endanger our American way of life. Eliminate or neutralize them and the golden age of the past will reappear.
The political solution creates a hybrid faith that mixes the Bible and the teaching of Jesus with nationalism. It seeks a return to racial superiority and economic survival of the fittest. It is all driven by a sense of entitlement by those who are “saved.”
Never mind that their interpretation of Jesus’ ideas has been diluted with fantasies of empire and craving for power. These fantasies create more exiles than they free.
We should not be surprised that the church is in decline.
A retired Baptist preacher living in Alabama. Over 35 years, he served churches in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. In support of his pastoral work, Evans published five books including “First and Second Corinthians: Immersion Bible Studies” (Abingdon Press (2011).
