I guess I have 2 thoughts: 1. I was a very faithful Catholic until Paul VI promulgated his encyclical on birth control. It was preached from the pulpit and a lot of folks were outraged. I never went back. 2. the Catholic church (maybe apart from Bishop Fulton Sheen and a few others) doesn't have good preachers. The sermons are lousy and the preacher often has difficulty keeping people focused on the Message. I think many Protestant preachers are so much better in this regard and attendance is supported as a result.
This is a hard one to grasp with Jewish lenses. A few surprises. The decline among both Protestants and Catholics seems a smooth curve. It misses serious inflection points that correlate with scandals or other events that might cause a surge in attrition.
The school data also gives results that are not intuitive. At one time parochial schools had tuition within the reach of working families, as Sisters got small stipends. As the faculty shifted to higher paid lay teachers, enrollment dropped amid rising costs, the expectation might be that the families most committed to instilling Catholic values would absorb the expense. There seems a gap in data that suggests identity brings retention and commitment to burdensome tuition does not.
The crossover lines suggest that the Christian religions do not really require much behavioral expression to stay within the tent. While the crossover curves that Ryan pointed out are where lapsed member crosses weekly attender, there is a similarly interesting set of curves above that. Those are the retained by seldom worship which have a distinct rise in recent years, and they are very highly placed on the graphs. So identity is self-declared but acting on that identity less so.
Our Jewish framework has some tantalizing parallels and differences. Ryan's original post on this had us at high retention, with perhaps voluntary escape a little harder now as random individuals get taunted or threatened. Day School is often looked at as a panacea. The Christian data suggests it may not be. And we just had our three Holy Days when everyone shows up in their new duds, that very top part of the curves of seldom attend.
Agreed that few Christian groups require "behavioral expression to stay within the tent". Comparing those that do with those that don't leads to some interesting results. I'm curious if the Jewish and Christian groups that do expect behavioral expression have more in common with each-other than they do with other subgroups in their same tradition that don't.
I do think that high-tuition religious education can sometimes conflate two important sub-factors: commitment to the tradition and wealth. However, in an era of vouchers they might be less conflated than they would otherwise.
there is some early data on vouchers. I know the Jewish impact, less familiarity with the Christian outcomes. In the two highly populated states that allow this, TX and FL, the vast majority of the vouchers have gone to families with current enrollment in parochial, Christian, or Jewish Day Schools. Enrollment of new students has been underwhelming thus far. This does not surprise me, as new families will still be left with a high tuition to pay from personal resources when the public schools they currently attend are free.
For the Orthodox Jews, who use Day Schools as a matter of course, it has changed migration of young families. The tuition rates are far lower outside metro NY where most live, then vouchers discount the fees further. As a result there has been migration in substatial numbers to Florida's Atlantic Coast, where a large Orthodox community with institutions already existed and to Austin and Houston where the institutions and businesses are less developed.
Evangelical/Non-denominational preaching is generally much better than Mainline or Catholic preaching, in my experience.
It gets at the issues people are dealing with in their own lives, while retaining a strong basis in the Bible (which takes it out of the "self-help" secular realm). You leave with new insights for your own life, insights which you are unlikely to get anywhere else. I know the cliche view is that Evangelical preaching is all about right-wing politics and/or fire and brimstone. But that has not been my experiencd.
Maybe the reason Protestants have higher retention has mostly to do with what adults get out of attending church, rather than childhood experiences.
Your point about this not being an apples to apples comparison is recognized and appreciated. If you'll forgive an automotive analogy, if a person sells their Dodge Ram and buys a Ford F150 the North American auto industry records a sale. However, Stellanis has lost a customer and Ford has gained one -- and at that level the distinction matters.
Fascinating. It is articles like these that keep me coming back! You cut through the fog. Thanks for all the heavy lifting.
Question: Do all "Evangelicals" view themselves as "Protestants?" Obviously they are, due to the fact that the Evangelical movement is a Protestant phenomenon, but do such folks see themselves as such? The reason I ask, is that in my nondenominational Christian experience (note the intentional avoidance of the word Evangelical) many of my fellow church members see Christianity as thus: Catholics, Protestants (meaning Mainline), and nondenominational or "Bible Christians" -- think, 'Why do you have so many Bibles?" They frequently did not identify as Evangelicals, who are something "other."
Probably an impossible question to answer, but it goes to demonstrate how the meaning of words change over time. And these changes are important.
"Evangelical" was initially created as a political label in the 70s and it's played out that way. Burge has done a lot of work showing how people that adopt it tend to prioritize politics over faith.
If you want to use it in a religious context, it shouldn't be compared directly with "Catholic" or "Orthodox" which are genuinely religious labels. "Nondenominational" and "Bible Christian" are better.
I appreciate your comment. In my evangelical experience, many did not consider Catholics to be Christian. When my Methodist background father switched to the Nazarene church, he found himself defending Catholic Christianity (odd since both Methodist and Nazarenes flow from the Wesleyan tree.
Interesting. I assume this is U.S. data. Does this hold true in other countries? Also, what is the effect of partner religion? Are certain religions more likely to intermarry than others?
I don't know the answer to your question about other countries, but some other data I've seen on Peru and Israel suggests that there might be something unique happening in those two places around this topic.
I love the framing of "retention crisis". That's the best way I've heard to characterize religion's problem in the west today. Times when religions grew have always been associated with high birth and retention rates.
You mentioned the Amish, and it's an apt comparison. All the evidence points to tech adoption as the driving force in retention rates.
Examples:
- LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists had high growth and retention rates till the internet arrived and they didn't address it.
- Amish, Old Order Mennonites, Hutterites, Bruderhof, Haredim, Hasidim all still have high growth and retention rates. They did address the internet.
I would push back on the end conclusion that there's no value in comparison between different Protestant denominations and Catholicism and also Orthodoxy. I think the comment on personal experience is potentially telling. Generally, in the US you are seeing a move away from institutions broadly but with some individualized connections. I would not be surprised if the data showed more liturgically minded Protestant denominations and those that are more creedal generally doing similar to Catholicism and less liturgical, less creedal denominations doing better. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Protestant retention was higher in large amount due to shifting from liturgical and creedal churches into non liturgical and non creedal churches.
Basically, I would be curious if Lutheranism or Episcopalism, for example, would look similar to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. And if what the data is showing instead isn't a difference between Catholicism and Protestantism but maybe the decline of institutional life in the United States.
Also on my mind, as I write, this is the Highland Park dispute. Obviously there has been some mishandling there but the local leadership does now seem to believe that their future is better, not just out of the United Methodist Church and in to another methodist denomination, but as an independent church in general.
In Chinese culture, there's fierce loyalty to your family and the nation, with little loyalty to institutions in-between.
In the US, we've historically been less loyal in general than Chinese culture (more individualistic). That said, we have had a variety of loyalties which have sometimes included church traditions and sports teams.
But I do think the levels we assign our loyalty to are changing. Family loyalty is up (see Joe Heinrich's work). It would stand to reason that loyalty to a local congregation could increase when loyalty to a denomination could decrease. I've seen that anecdotally myself.
Isn't it all about relevance? "My conclusion is: the strongest childhood predictor is not simply attending services or religious school. What matters most is whether religion feels personally important."
If people understood variation and its impact on daily life, they would most likely see why religion matters in their personal life, career, community, and government. An introduction at: https://successthroughquality.com/
But .... "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill
I guess I have 2 thoughts: 1. I was a very faithful Catholic until Paul VI promulgated his encyclical on birth control. It was preached from the pulpit and a lot of folks were outraged. I never went back. 2. the Catholic church (maybe apart from Bishop Fulton Sheen and a few others) doesn't have good preachers. The sermons are lousy and the preacher often has difficulty keeping people focused on the Message. I think many Protestant preachers are so much better in this regard and attendance is supported as a result.
This is a hard one to grasp with Jewish lenses. A few surprises. The decline among both Protestants and Catholics seems a smooth curve. It misses serious inflection points that correlate with scandals or other events that might cause a surge in attrition.
The school data also gives results that are not intuitive. At one time parochial schools had tuition within the reach of working families, as Sisters got small stipends. As the faculty shifted to higher paid lay teachers, enrollment dropped amid rising costs, the expectation might be that the families most committed to instilling Catholic values would absorb the expense. There seems a gap in data that suggests identity brings retention and commitment to burdensome tuition does not.
The crossover lines suggest that the Christian religions do not really require much behavioral expression to stay within the tent. While the crossover curves that Ryan pointed out are where lapsed member crosses weekly attender, there is a similarly interesting set of curves above that. Those are the retained by seldom worship which have a distinct rise in recent years, and they are very highly placed on the graphs. So identity is self-declared but acting on that identity less so.
Our Jewish framework has some tantalizing parallels and differences. Ryan's original post on this had us at high retention, with perhaps voluntary escape a little harder now as random individuals get taunted or threatened. Day School is often looked at as a panacea. The Christian data suggests it may not be. And we just had our three Holy Days when everyone shows up in their new duds, that very top part of the curves of seldom attend.
What interesting insights thanks!
Agreed that few Christian groups require "behavioral expression to stay within the tent". Comparing those that do with those that don't leads to some interesting results. I'm curious if the Jewish and Christian groups that do expect behavioral expression have more in common with each-other than they do with other subgroups in their same tradition that don't.
I do think that high-tuition religious education can sometimes conflate two important sub-factors: commitment to the tradition and wealth. However, in an era of vouchers they might be less conflated than they would otherwise.
there is some early data on vouchers. I know the Jewish impact, less familiarity with the Christian outcomes. In the two highly populated states that allow this, TX and FL, the vast majority of the vouchers have gone to families with current enrollment in parochial, Christian, or Jewish Day Schools. Enrollment of new students has been underwhelming thus far. This does not surprise me, as new families will still be left with a high tuition to pay from personal resources when the public schools they currently attend are free.
For the Orthodox Jews, who use Day Schools as a matter of course, it has changed migration of young families. The tuition rates are far lower outside metro NY where most live, then vouchers discount the fees further. As a result there has been migration in substatial numbers to Florida's Atlantic Coast, where a large Orthodox community with institutions already existed and to Austin and Houston where the institutions and businesses are less developed.
Politician's words to the contrary, vouchers in Texas were never about helping kids with less means get into any type of private school.
Evangelical/Non-denominational preaching is generally much better than Mainline or Catholic preaching, in my experience.
It gets at the issues people are dealing with in their own lives, while retaining a strong basis in the Bible (which takes it out of the "self-help" secular realm). You leave with new insights for your own life, insights which you are unlikely to get anywhere else. I know the cliche view is that Evangelical preaching is all about right-wing politics and/or fire and brimstone. But that has not been my experiencd.
Maybe the reason Protestants have higher retention has mostly to do with what adults get out of attending church, rather than childhood experiences.
An excellent post with fascinating insights.
Your point about this not being an apples to apples comparison is recognized and appreciated. If you'll forgive an automotive analogy, if a person sells their Dodge Ram and buys a Ford F150 the North American auto industry records a sale. However, Stellanis has lost a customer and Ford has gained one -- and at that level the distinction matters.
Fascinating. It is articles like these that keep me coming back! You cut through the fog. Thanks for all the heavy lifting.
Question: Do all "Evangelicals" view themselves as "Protestants?" Obviously they are, due to the fact that the Evangelical movement is a Protestant phenomenon, but do such folks see themselves as such? The reason I ask, is that in my nondenominational Christian experience (note the intentional avoidance of the word Evangelical) many of my fellow church members see Christianity as thus: Catholics, Protestants (meaning Mainline), and nondenominational or "Bible Christians" -- think, 'Why do you have so many Bibles?" They frequently did not identify as Evangelicals, who are something "other."
Probably an impossible question to answer, but it goes to demonstrate how the meaning of words change over time. And these changes are important.
"Evangelical" was initially created as a political label in the 70s and it's played out that way. Burge has done a lot of work showing how people that adopt it tend to prioritize politics over faith.
If you want to use it in a religious context, it shouldn't be compared directly with "Catholic" or "Orthodox" which are genuinely religious labels. "Nondenominational" and "Bible Christian" are better.
I appreciate your comment. In my evangelical experience, many did not consider Catholics to be Christian. When my Methodist background father switched to the Nazarene church, he found himself defending Catholic Christianity (odd since both Methodist and Nazarenes flow from the Wesleyan tree.
Interesting. I assume this is U.S. data. Does this hold true in other countries? Also, what is the effect of partner religion? Are certain religions more likely to intermarry than others?
I don't know the answer to your question about other countries, but some other data I've seen on Peru and Israel suggests that there might be something unique happening in those two places around this topic.
Yeah, Israel/Judaism is a special case because religion and nationality/culture are so intertwined.
I love the framing of "retention crisis". That's the best way I've heard to characterize religion's problem in the west today. Times when religions grew have always been associated with high birth and retention rates.
You mentioned the Amish, and it's an apt comparison. All the evidence points to tech adoption as the driving force in retention rates.
Examples:
- LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists had high growth and retention rates till the internet arrived and they didn't address it.
- Amish, Old Order Mennonites, Hutterites, Bruderhof, Haredim, Hasidim all still have high growth and retention rates. They did address the internet.
I would push back on the end conclusion that there's no value in comparison between different Protestant denominations and Catholicism and also Orthodoxy. I think the comment on personal experience is potentially telling. Generally, in the US you are seeing a move away from institutions broadly but with some individualized connections. I would not be surprised if the data showed more liturgically minded Protestant denominations and those that are more creedal generally doing similar to Catholicism and less liturgical, less creedal denominations doing better. I also wouldn't be surprised if the Protestant retention was higher in large amount due to shifting from liturgical and creedal churches into non liturgical and non creedal churches.
Basically, I would be curious if Lutheranism or Episcopalism, for example, would look similar to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. And if what the data is showing instead isn't a difference between Catholicism and Protestantism but maybe the decline of institutional life in the United States.
Also on my mind, as I write, this is the Highland Park dispute. Obviously there has been some mishandling there but the local leadership does now seem to believe that their future is better, not just out of the United Methodist Church and in to another methodist denomination, but as an independent church in general.
In Chinese culture, there's fierce loyalty to your family and the nation, with little loyalty to institutions in-between.
In the US, we've historically been less loyal in general than Chinese culture (more individualistic). That said, we have had a variety of loyalties which have sometimes included church traditions and sports teams.
But I do think the levels we assign our loyalty to are changing. Family loyalty is up (see Joe Heinrich's work). It would stand to reason that loyalty to a local congregation could increase when loyalty to a denomination could decrease. I've seen that anecdotally myself.
Isn't it all about relevance? "My conclusion is: the strongest childhood predictor is not simply attending services or religious school. What matters most is whether religion feels personally important."
If people understood variation and its impact on daily life, they would most likely see why religion matters in their personal life, career, community, and government. An introduction at: https://successthroughquality.com/
But .... "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Winston Churchill