By The Rev. Dr. Carl Grosse
Last week, a few of you shared with me news about a recent Pew Research study of Christianity in the United States. Called The Religious Landscape Survey, what stood out in most articles and comments was some data that seemed to indicate the decline that started in the sixties appeared to be leveling off or even reversing. Since the data world is near and dear to me I looked into it.
I’ll try to keep this short, so the table below provides that data everyone’s whooping it up about.
| Birth Cohort | Monthly Attendance | Believe in God | Identify as Christian |
| 1940s+ | 49% | 64% | 80% |
| 1950s | 38% | 64% | 75% |
| 1960s | 34% | 63% | 73% |
| 1970s | 34% | 58% | 63% |
| 1980s | 28% | 48% | 53% |
| 1990s | 24% | 42% | 46% |
| 2000-2006 | 25% | 38% | 46% |
The bolded percentage is what gets people excited. But looking at the data in the other columns, I wonder what’s going on. If 18-24 year olds aren’t going to church because they believe in God or identify as Christian, why are they? Also, this is a very small aggregate number compared to other age cohorts and they have less money to give. Finally, why do far more people overall call themselves Christian (especially among older age brackets) than profess to believe in God with certainty?
These are fascinating statistics, and to me they suggest church has focused more on promoting a cultural Christianity, which has less value as you go down the age brackets. I don’t know that I have clear answers for this situation, if there’s anything to it. But I think we can be talking about it.