Mayfly Meanderings on the Book—The American Religious Landscape: Part Two

Topics: Decline of Christianity. Rise of Non-Denominationalism. Evangelical Trends.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

The American Religious Landscape—Part Two on Meanderings Three, Four, and Five

This is the second of a new series entitled Mayfly Meanderings. It refers to reflections on books, manuscripts, presentations, research, articles and other information and knowledge which I find interesting. I hope these lead to greater wisdom for you and me both.

Read Part One HERE on more than survey research and the limits of survey research.

(Note: The meanderings on this book will involve multiple posts as I like to keep these posts to 700 or so words. Look for these MM’s regularly until I have finished posting on this book.)

Book: Ryan P. Burge. The American Religious Landscape: Facts, Trends, and the Future. New York: Oxford University Press, 2025. See this book HERE.

MM Three—The Decline of Christianity: The macro-trend of the decline of Christianity in America should be a wakeup call for all Christians. Its implication for Christian ministry in America fits the category of statements my long-term ministry colleague Glenn Akins called, “We ain’t hurtin’ them none” statements.

What his statement means in this situation is that all our efforts at fulfilling the Great Commission in the Spirit of the Great Commandment are not making progress in transforming our culture to make it more Christlike and compassionate.

Here is the quote from this book: “Fifty years ago, nearly 90% of all adults identified with a Christian tradition. Today, that share has dropped to just over 60%.” [17]

This is what led me to post on Facebook when I was reading this book the following statement: “A Provocative Proposition! I have just started reading a book on religion in America. I began with the last chapter on the future of religion in America. Reading it leads me to say the following: ‘We ought to fire all congregational pastors and staff ministers, commission them as missionaries, and send them out into the community or somewhere else in the world as missionaries.’”

We need to switch our focus from church growth to Kingdom growth. Growing churches in not transforming our culture in the manner of Jesus by impacting the spiritual lives of an increasing percentage of our society.

MM Four—The Rise of Non-Denominationalism: The rise of non-denominationalism is a well-accepted fact throughout American Christianity. Research suggests these congregations currently number above 22 million in membership. If they were a clearly identified denomination, they would be the largest Protestant denomination by far. Southern Baptists, the former largest, would be a distant second. (See MM Five)

Here is a caution from this book: Non-denominational congregations are “made up of islands of informal church networks that rarely communicate and are reluctant to coordinate with one another. This will likely lead to a disjointed and, at times, chaotic future of evangelicalism.” [38]

I also see another issue. In addition to nondenominational congregations—some in loose networks with other congregations—I also see various denominations in the evangelical world who have embraced a similar faith, form, and practice to what I call Generic Evangelical Protestantism (GEP). They have moved outside of their founding cultural captivity to reach a diversity of people groups, and have given up, changed, or compromised some of their convictions to make them appealing to a broader group of people.

One is example is a denominational movement founded more than a century ago for whom pacifism was a hallmark founding conviction. Then they began reaching military families and veterans in the last 50 years. Within the last ten years they have changed their core faith statement to remove pacifism as a conviction as it had become offensive in some of their congregations. They are moving toward becoming a GEP.

MM Five—Evangelical Trends: The leading evangelical denomination—Southern Baptists—has declined from over 16 million total members to under 13 million. This still allows them to claim they are the largest formally organized evangelical Protestant denomination in the world.

However, their continued decline is very likely. Among the reasons are the increase in the average age of Southern Baptists as they are not reaching and/or keeping enough younger members. They are losing as many congregations each year as they are gaining. They continue to move to the right ideologically and find ways to disfellowship from congregations. They are helping the category of non-denominational to continue growing.

In a recent year they launched around 1000 congregations or campuses of existing congregations and lost from affiliation almost the same number either by death or leaving the denomination. To grow from their current affiliation number of around 50,000 congregations, they must launch at least 1500 congregations or campuses per year.

They are unlikely to do this due to their shift over the last several decades from local congregations launching congregations to church planters launching congregations—which is a parachurch model. Also, their North American Mission Board is seeking to control the launching of new congregations rather than empowering grassroots movements. This inevitably puts a cap on the number of new congregations launched annually.

Here are a few factoids from the book:

· Looking at the large evangelical Protestant category, is it important to point out that “evangelicals indicate a level of religious activity that is incredibly robust.” [43]

· Evangelicals have a high view of the Bible as authentic scripture. “This unique view of the Bible sets evangelicals apart from other Christian traditions and the general public.” [44]

· In references on pages 31 and 40, Ryan shares that evangelicals have been consistently a little more than 20 percent of the American population, and around 75 to 80 percent white.

Next: MM Six on Mainline Trends. MM Seven on High Expectations vs. Low Expectations.

OR . . .