The End of Christian America?

A while back Newsweek came out with a very interesting article on Christian culture. The article was full of statistics pointing to an apparent solid fact that the Christian influence in our general culture is in decline. The story quote R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his concern over one sentence out of the whole report.

"But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking."

The historic foundation of religious culture in our country has been cracking for a long time, but the crack is not just limited to our country. When sin came into the world in the garden, the crack began and continues until the Lord returns. There is a shift taking place away from order and structure, but that shift has been taking place since the beginning of time. As I read this article, my sense is that our country is struggling with the same things it has always struggled with, but with one exception... we now know about it. There is so much information available about every topic that we can now know trends and shifts while they are taking place. This article gives us almost too much information. For example,

"According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans."

I am currently engaged in doctoral studies at the University of Alabama and have also done work at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and I will tell you, if I learned one thing it was this: you can make numbers dance. You can make numbers say exactly what you want them to say, if you choose. Now, I am not saying that this article does that, but there is a risk of that anytime you take a survey and promote it as a representation of the general population. And, this article does take surveys and apply them to the general culture and population.

So, a word of caution, don't always believe what you read. This article contains the following statement, "Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)" But, I will tell you this: even though the statement reflects a tone of absolute... it is not. It is a general statement. God is still on His throne and in control.

I am reading Nehemiah these days and, to be totally honest, it reads a lot like today. And, we all know how that ends! God is still the same yesterday and today. May we glorify Him! Blessings!