Why American Church Membership Is Plummeting
Much of what we know—or think we know—about American religion is shaped by surveys and polls. The news media loves these polls, and so do many pastors. The latest instance is a Gallup poll showing that, for the first time in eight decades of polling on the issue, less than 50 percent of Americans “said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque.”
At first glance this would seem to confirm the trend toward religiously unaffiliated Americans, or the “nones.” …
But, as I have suggested before, we should take religion polls with a grain of salt. Recent polling questions about religious affiliation in the U.K. were phrased slightly differently, and produced data showing that either 50 percent of British people have “no religion,” or 25 percent. That’s a massive difference! …
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Has anyone considered that impact of the immigration surge under for Obama, for that might be negatively influencing the survey data? With huge numbers of immigrants from non-Christian countries, is there any wonder that the proportion of church-attending Americans has decreased, particularly with the passing of the seniors who have propped up the mainline churches over the past couple decades?