Excellent, excellent, excellent. These conclusions speak back to a lot of falsehoods perpetuated among regular churchgoers.
Also, the decline in moderate presence in worship may correspond with some small-scale studies that find more people are equating political ideology with congregational "theology," though I'd argue that's a false definition. Most accepted Christian theology doesn't apply well to any current ideology.
Likewise, the shift away from evangelicalism by women is something that's been noticed in small studies since at least the 1980s. Unfortunately, most become non-affiliated, the majority don't look for a healthier spiritual community.
The nuance that many miss in women's shift away from evangelicalism is that now they are about the same as men - whereas they used to outnumber them.
It's also interesting that 6% more men were nones than women in 2018 and now it is 7% more - not statistically significant, but showing that it is still the men that are dropping out of religion more than women.
I'm a little confused at how graphs 2 and 3 relate. Aren't 30-45 year olds millennials? If so, why does one show a 6-point swing but the other shows 0?
Great catch! The difference is that the 30-44 age bracket is a revolving door.
In 2018, that group contained a lot of Gen Xers (who are more religious). By 2024, they aged out and were replaced by Millennials (who are less religious).
So, the age group got more secular because the people inside it changed. The Millennial line stayed flat because the actual people in that generation haven't changed their minds.
While having fifty years of longitudinal data allows social scientists to discern trends, the real challenge to historians who review this data is to determine how the reported outcome came about. The GSS does not seem to do that very well, or maybe it does in some of its other questions, but modern analysts like Ryan seem to look more at correlations and intersections, which he presents exceptionally clearly.
How it got that way also matters. Having followed my Jewish world roughly that same interval, with a parallel outcome, we also had leadership in place every step of the way telling us how to invest in our future to get a more favorable Jewish institutional attachment than the one we achieved. This continues today, with my email overflowing with too numerous to count appeals on Giving Tuesday telling me how my shekels keep our sacred cows robust into the future.
The GSS does not determine whether we have leadership generated attrition, though perhaps some of the high profile religious scandals do. Did we lose our current Millennial Jews in Hebrew School? Did attending summer camp create adults willing to pay $2K every year to maintain their synagogue membership, while those who did other things in the summer become our Jewish nones? Were we done in by the Ivy Admissions Committees?
We can see worship frequency trends over time. Unfortunately, while the data is longitudinal, unlike the Harvard Graduate survey that started in 1938, the people of 1984 were not the same people of 2024, though statistically each era was representative.
What's missing, and what we are sold every Giving Tuesday, is that how we raise our kids determines our outcomes. The GSS gives outcome. Maybe within it there are questions to allow comparison with how Boomers or Millennials were socialized into their religions that will give the same validity of correlation as their political orientations seem to.
How are churches no different than the children of Israel, you know, when they were attracted to idols and wandered away from God? The last words Jesus is recorded as saying, 40 days after the crucifixion, talk about the Holy Spirit that he was giving his followers, and it had POWER. Where is that power today? Paul talked about that power in us through Spiritual Gifts. These special abilities to glorify God and edify people around us are POWER. Ignore tongues for now, concentrate on Leadership, Wisdom, Evangelism, Teaching, Prayer, Knowledge, Discernment, and Administration, to name a few. A byproduct of this church is growth! Why? It's what Jesus gave us to be a beacon for Him. Churches need to wake up to this POWER and help their people discover the POWERFUL Spiritual Gifts Jesus bestowed on each of us.
Perhaps too early to be looking in 2024 data for an answer to what was today described as "Across the U.S., Orthodox church pews are overflowing with energetic newcomers..." (NYT - archive link > https://archive.ph/O07zB)
Seems to align with the uptick in Millennial / Other Faith, but I don't know where Orthodoxy fits. It's a fair guess that some generational groups are looking for stability and spirituality in something - anything.
Anecdotally, a lot of UU congregations have experienced a “Trump bump” from folks looking for community. I think we’re too small of a group to show up in large surveys like this, but it’s another anecdotal point that this may also be happening on the liberal side. I also remember seeing an article about a Quaker meeting seeing an influx in new attendees recently.
I wonder if the deaths caused by covid might be impacting the percentages. If the mortality is not evenly distributed striking some groups more than others could that account for some of the shift?
Excellent, excellent, excellent. These conclusions speak back to a lot of falsehoods perpetuated among regular churchgoers.
Also, the decline in moderate presence in worship may correspond with some small-scale studies that find more people are equating political ideology with congregational "theology," though I'd argue that's a false definition. Most accepted Christian theology doesn't apply well to any current ideology.
Likewise, the shift away from evangelicalism by women is something that's been noticed in small studies since at least the 1980s. Unfortunately, most become non-affiliated, the majority don't look for a healthier spiritual community.
The nuance that many miss in women's shift away from evangelicalism is that now they are about the same as men - whereas they used to outnumber them.
It's also interesting that 6% more men were nones than women in 2018 and now it is 7% more - not statistically significant, but showing that it is still the men that are dropping out of religion more than women.
I'm a little confused at how graphs 2 and 3 relate. Aren't 30-45 year olds millennials? If so, why does one show a 6-point swing but the other shows 0?
Great catch! The difference is that the 30-44 age bracket is a revolving door.
In 2018, that group contained a lot of Gen Xers (who are more religious). By 2024, they aged out and were replaced by Millennials (who are less religious).
So, the age group got more secular because the people inside it changed. The Millennial line stayed flat because the actual people in that generation haven't changed their minds.
While having fifty years of longitudinal data allows social scientists to discern trends, the real challenge to historians who review this data is to determine how the reported outcome came about. The GSS does not seem to do that very well, or maybe it does in some of its other questions, but modern analysts like Ryan seem to look more at correlations and intersections, which he presents exceptionally clearly.
How it got that way also matters. Having followed my Jewish world roughly that same interval, with a parallel outcome, we also had leadership in place every step of the way telling us how to invest in our future to get a more favorable Jewish institutional attachment than the one we achieved. This continues today, with my email overflowing with too numerous to count appeals on Giving Tuesday telling me how my shekels keep our sacred cows robust into the future.
The GSS does not determine whether we have leadership generated attrition, though perhaps some of the high profile religious scandals do. Did we lose our current Millennial Jews in Hebrew School? Did attending summer camp create adults willing to pay $2K every year to maintain their synagogue membership, while those who did other things in the summer become our Jewish nones? Were we done in by the Ivy Admissions Committees?
We can see worship frequency trends over time. Unfortunately, while the data is longitudinal, unlike the Harvard Graduate survey that started in 1938, the people of 1984 were not the same people of 2024, though statistically each era was representative.
What's missing, and what we are sold every Giving Tuesday, is that how we raise our kids determines our outcomes. The GSS gives outcome. Maybe within it there are questions to allow comparison with how Boomers or Millennials were socialized into their religions that will give the same validity of correlation as their political orientations seem to.
If I just had a huge panel survey that tracked people over 20 years or so, I could explain a lot more.
The only problem? That project would cost $10M. If not more.
How are churches no different than the children of Israel, you know, when they were attracted to idols and wandered away from God? The last words Jesus is recorded as saying, 40 days after the crucifixion, talk about the Holy Spirit that he was giving his followers, and it had POWER. Where is that power today? Paul talked about that power in us through Spiritual Gifts. These special abilities to glorify God and edify people around us are POWER. Ignore tongues for now, concentrate on Leadership, Wisdom, Evangelism, Teaching, Prayer, Knowledge, Discernment, and Administration, to name a few. A byproduct of this church is growth! Why? It's what Jesus gave us to be a beacon for Him. Churches need to wake up to this POWER and help their people discover the POWERFUL Spiritual Gifts Jesus bestowed on each of us.
Perhaps too early to be looking in 2024 data for an answer to what was today described as "Across the U.S., Orthodox church pews are overflowing with energetic newcomers..." (NYT - archive link > https://archive.ph/O07zB)
Seems to align with the uptick in Millennial / Other Faith, but I don't know where Orthodoxy fits. It's a fair guess that some generational groups are looking for stability and spirituality in something - anything.
Anecdotally, a lot of UU congregations have experienced a “Trump bump” from folks looking for community. I think we’re too small of a group to show up in large surveys like this, but it’s another anecdotal point that this may also be happening on the liberal side. I also remember seeing an article about a Quaker meeting seeing an influx in new attendees recently.
I wonder if the deaths caused by covid might be impacting the percentages. If the mortality is not evenly distributed striking some groups more than others could that account for some of the shift?