Stuck or Unstuck? (Part 1)
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New data, same headlines. The surveys and studies always seem to repeat the same refrain: Church attendance is in decline. Religious participation is phasing out of American life.
Except… our data shows the opposite. In our most recent edition of The Unstuck Church Report, the average year-over-year attendance increase was 17% across churches of all sizes. There’s clearly something different about the churches engaging with our surveys.
In this series, we’re going try to explain what’s so different about unstuck churches, and give you some practical ways to make sense of the things contributing to church growth or decline.
TRENDS FROM PEW RESEARCH CENTER
We have our own data and observations from the work we do that we will share in the next two episodes, but we wanted to start out with an exploration of recent data and trends from an authority on religion in American life. So we invited Alan Cooperman from Pew Research Center to join me for a conversation about the broader trends happening in the U.S.
- Data on those who don’t identify with religion
- Disengagement among the unaffiliated
- Engaging the gospel mission in a hyper-political context
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More Episodes in This Series
- Why Some Churches Are NOT In Decline – Episode 361
- More Things Unstuck Churches Have in Common – Episode 362
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Transcript
Sean:
Welcome to The Unstuck Church Podcast, where each week we are exploring what it means to be an unstuck church. New data, same headlines. The surveys and studies always seem to repeat the same refrain. Church attendance is in decline. Religious participation is phasing out in American life; except our data shows the opposite. On this week’s podcast, Tony and Amy begin a new series on the differences between stuck and unstuck churches with a conversation with Alan Cooperman, director of Religion Research at the Pew Research Center. Before we get into today’s episode, I want to tell you about an upcoming opportunity we have, specifically for senior and lead pastors. Our newest senior pastor cohort kicks off October 15th through 17th, and registration for it closes on August 15th. During the year long cohort, you’ll connect with senior pastors from eight to 12, like-minded churches to explore the critical responsibilities that senior pastors own in larger growing churches, and to actively participate and learn from each other. To learn more and register, just go to theunstuckgroup.com/seniorpastor. Now, before we get into this week’s episode, here’s Tony with this week’s podcast sponsor.
Tony:
The Six Types of Working Genius is the fastest way to increase productivity and morale on your team. This 10 minute assessment gives you a custom report about why certain work frustrates you while other work energizes you. When you do it with your team, you’ll immediately understand how to better leverage each other’s geniuses. You’ll see better decisions, higher retention, and productivity without burnout. So get started at workinggenius.com and use code unstuckwg, that’s U-N-S-T-U-C-K-W-G for 20% off.
Amy:
Well, hey Tony, I’m excited to kick off this new series today. You know, it seems like there’s always this new data coming out that leads to the same kind of headlines related to church world, right? Church attendance is in decline. Religious participations phasing out in the American life. It usually just sounds so hopeless, but we’ve shared this. Our data actually shows the opposite of all of that. In fact, our most recent edition of the Unstuck Church Report, it actually showed that year over year attendance was increasing, I think the average of like 17% across churches of all sizes. And so that just tells us, right, that there’s something different. There’s something unique about the churches that we’re connecting with. And we’re not talking about dozens of churches. We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of churches. There’s something clearly different about the churches that are engaging with us and engaging with our surveys.
Tony:
Yeah, that’s right, Amy. So in this series, we’re going to try to explain what’s so different about unstuck churches and maybe give you some practical ways to make sense of things contributing to church growth or in some instances and lots of instances, if the data’s accurate. And I believe it is a lot of decline that’s also happening in churches right now. We have our own data and observations from the work that we do, and we will share in the next two episodes what some of that looks like. But we wanted to start out with an exploration of recent data and trends from an authority on religion and American life. And so I reached out to Alan Cooperman, he’s from the Pew Research Center, and I asked him to join me for a conversation about the broader trends that are happening across the US. Here’s a little bit of background about Alan. He’s the Director of Religion research at Pew Research Center, and he’s an expert on religion’s role in US politics specifically. Unfortunately, in today’s conversation, we didn’t have a chance to get into that. Amy, you know, I love the church. I love our mission, but I also am very interested in US politics. And needless to say, there’s been a lot to consider in recent weeks around that. But before joining the Pew Research Center, Alan was a national reporter and editor at the Washington Post, and then a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press and US News and World Report. And Amy, I thought this interview with Alan was fascinating because it really does provide a solid base for what the data is saying and what it can’t tell us also about American religious life. In fact, we spend a majority of the interview discussing the nones. These are the people who do not identify as being affiliated with any major religion. And Amy, this is an important conversation because these are the people that most churches are really focused on reaching. So with that, here’s my conversation with Alan Cooperman.
Well, Alan, a lot’s been written about the group of people that’s commonly referred to as the nones. These are those folks that are religiously unaffiliated, not connected to church, not connected to faith. And first of all, maybe to help us understand how you engage this research, who are the nones and how are they defined in your research?
Alan:
Oh, Tony, thank you for asking. That’s such an important and basic question. You know, we ask separate questions about how people identify themselves religiously, what they believe, what they do, and what communities, if any, they belong to. We could put all those things together in a variety of ways. But what, when we talk about the unaffiliated, that comes out of a question about how people identify themselves. And so our basic question on religious identity goes something like this. What’s your present religion, if any? Are you Catholic, protestant, Orthodox, Christian as in Greek or Russian, Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, something else, or nothing in particular? And when I went through that list, I particularly, as you noted, like inflicted on atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. Those are the three categories that we then lump together as religiously unaffiliated or sometimes called the nones. There actually is no, none of the above, possibility in our surveys. But that’s kind of the notion here.
Tony:
And am I correct, that in the last research I saw was from a few months ago, well, what was the percentage of nones based on your most recent research?
Alan:
In 2023, we found about 28% of Americans didn’t identify with any religious group that is they identified as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. And let me just emphasize one thing. ’cause I sometimes hear this from church leaders. They sometimes worry that we’re conflating non-denominational Christians somehow in that number. And let me just reassure you that that’s not the case. If someone says they’re just a Christian, I’m a CS Lewis Mere Christian, or they say, I’m just a follower of Jesus, or and then they don’t get put in the nones if they give us any answer, no matter how vague, they get put into a religious category. Honestly, if someone says he’s even something sort of crazy, I’m a flying spaghetti meatball, whatever, we don’t call them a none. You only get put in the unaffiliated category if you tell us your atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. And so, again, that number, the latest number we have is about 28% in the US.
Tony:
And am I correct, Alan, that it sounds like anyways in your latest research that maybe the rise of the nones in the US could be coming to an end? Am I, did I read that correctly?
Alan:
Could be. You know, I think we always need to approach these data with a dose of humility. None of us have a crystal ball. I think over the last five years we’ve gotten three readings right around 28%. I’m talking about kind of annual readings and one or two readings a little bit higher than that. So I think there is one way of looking at, you sort of imagine a line in your mind of these numbers over the last 15 or 20 years. And the line’s generally been going up, but the last five years, it’s sort of been bouncing around a little bit at, around this same level of 28 or 30%. So one way of looking at that would be to say, well, it’s leveling off. And that might be, but you know, it could also be that in the future it will continue kind of to rise, or I guess it could fall.
I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t make prognostications, but I do look at kind of internal dynamics of the data. I don’t see any reason to think that we’re, that that number’s about to start falling. I’m not saying it won’t ever fall, but it isn’t about to start falling now. And my suspicion is that it’s leveled off, but it might continue to grow. And I can explain why I think that might be the case. But again, I don’t, I’m not saying I know this for sure. We’re gonna have to watch.
Tony:
Yeah, we’re not, yeah. So it’s good to acknowledge that. I mean, I’m not necessarily seeing this as good news, but I would say in previous years as I’ve looked at this research, it’s been alarming at the increase that’s been happening. So to see at least a pause that’s, I guess encouraging, but what might be contributing to that leveling off? Do you have a sense of why that might be happening?
Alan:
Yeah, I do. So the little tricky thing to remember is that there are people moving into and out of all religious groups at the kind of there, there’s movement into and out of groups. So there are people who are raised, who are not raised with no religion, who go on to take a religion, convert if you will. They’re also people who were raised with a religion who in later life say they have no religion who move in the other direction. And both things are happening at the same time. You have also generational replacement. So you’ve got an older generation that by and large is much more religious than younger folks, and that older generation is dying off, and younger generations are coming of age and they’re coming of age less religious than their elders did when they were young.
So yes, there is an issue of people get, tend to become a little more religious as they get older, but also the younger generations are starting out much less religious than the older generations did. Now, the thing, the thing that to to, to try to make help people visualize this, kinda imagine two, two buckets of water. And, but one bucket is a Christian bucket. And that bucket, let’s say a few years back, say as of 2014, that bucket had about 70% of all the water in it. And then there’s another bucket, and we’ll call that the unaffiliated. And as of 2014, that bucket had about 22% of all the water in it. Now, if half of the people who are unaffiliated, who are raised unaffiliated go on to take on a religion, so if we like, took half the water out of the unaffiliated bucket and moved it over to the Christian bucket, think, think about that impact.
Now also think about what if half the people who were raised Christian became unaffiliated, and you take half of a much bigger amount of water and move it over to the smaller bucket. So the reality is that the retention rates, if the retention rates are, are equal, but one bucket starts out much bigger, then half of the Christians becoming unaffiliated increases the size of the unaffiliated population a lot, and half of the unaffiliated becoming Christian doesn’t make that much difference in the size of the Christian bucket. Now in reality, of course, the retention rates are not equal. And the the interesting thing was that way back when in say 2007, 2010, in our data, actually the retention rates of the unaffiliated were worse than, than the retention rate of Christians. That is the share of unaffiliated people who went on to take a religion was actually higher than the share of Christians who left Christianity and became unaffiliated.
That’s no longer the case. Now, in our data, actually the, the retention rate of the unaffiliated has been, if you will, improving from, I hate to use these normative terms, but increasing, but their, their retention rate, larger share of people raised unaffiliated, stay unaffiliated. And the retention rate of, of Christians and of religious people in general has been declining. So you’ve got now a larger share. The unaffiliated bucket has increased in size. A smaller amount of it is moving over to the Christian bucket. The Christian bucket is decreased in size, but an increasing amount of it is moving over into the unaffiliated bucket. So these, these changes together, are what result then in these final numbers that we get and, and are part of what the plateauing is. It’s partly has to do with the, the unaffiliated buckets now, a lot bigger than it used to be.
So, so there’s more movement. And if you can imagine a kind of stability at some point in the future, imagine if you had the two buckets roughly equal. If the share of Christians comes down to, continues to decline in the United States, and the unaffiliated continue to rise at a certain point, you could reach a, a stability, it’s also possible that with, let’s say a, if the retention rate were, were of, of the unaffiliated continues to get stronger and the retention rate of Christians continues to decline, then you could have actually reverse where you could actually have more unaffiliated than Christians. But at some point, I would expect something like equilibrium to take hold at least for a period of time. I mean, there’s lots of ways kind of mathematically that that can happen again, because you’ve got these two things going on the size of the two buckets and the retention rates of the two.
Tony:
So, probably no surprise, since this is the Unstuck Church podcast, but primarily it’s pastors and church leaders that are listening into today’s conversation. And as we’re talking about these nones, people that are unaffiliated, I think the folks that are listening might be interested in knowing, interested how that group of people perceives religion and perceives the church. Could, can you help us get some sense of that from the research you’ve done, Alan?
Alan:
The unaffiliated, as a whole, are not anti-religious. They are, I would say by a number of indicators, a little more skeptical about religion than people who identify with religious groups are, but that’s kind of to be expected. I think what some people might not realize is that many of the unaffiliated actually say fairly positive things about religion’s role in society. Now to like, to put some numbers around this, 43% of the unaffiliated in a survey we did not that long ago, said that religion does more harm than good. While 14% said religion does more good than harm. And then you have a big chunk, you know, another 41% or so we say religion does equal amounts of harm and good. If you look at the general public, the, the numbers are sort of reversed. 40% of US adults say religion does more good than harm.
And 21% says religion does more harm than good, and the remainder says it does equal amounts. But, so basically you’ve got, think of it this way, two or three times more of the unaffiliated say, religion does more harm than good, than says it does more good than harm. And in the general public, it’s the reverse. People are twice as likely to say religion does more good than harm. But again, you know, there’s, it’s complicated. You get a big chunk in both groups in the general public and the unaffiliated says, does equal amounts. And, and again, this is a very sort of broad kind of measure, trying to get a sense of just people’s kind of gut feelings about religion. If you ask questions like, and we do, does, does religion give people meaning and purpose in their lives?
Well, the unaffiliated are less likely than people who are affiliated with religion to say it does. But it’s not like none of them do. And many say that it does give people meaning and purpose. Many of the unaffiliated on the other sort of flip side of the coin will say that religion causes intolerance and division in society, and they’re more likely to say that than religious people are. Though, by the way, more than half of the general public says religion causes intolerance and division in society. So I, I think the overall picture best I could sum it up, is to say that yes, not unexpectedly, people who don’t identify with any religion are, are a little more skeptical about religion. But to think that they’re all, you know, angry, the, the, the kind of image of angry atheists is, is really not right.
The biggest share of the unaffiliated are the nothing in particulars. And the thing about them is that the nothing in particulars really look different from atheists and agnostics. So roughly two thirds of the unaffiliated are the nothing in particular crowd. And that’s a crowd in some ways, way to think of it, is that’s a group that’s saying religion is not significant to me. It doesn’t, it’s not important in my life. I don’t pay much attention to it. I don’t have time for it. Not necessarily negative about it. A atheists and, and to some extent agnostics tend to actually know a lot about religion and to have strong feelings about it, and to be much more negative about, about religion’s role in society. The nothing in particular is basically many of them disengaged, from, from organized everything, not just from religion, but they’re less likely to volunteer, they’re less likely to vote.
And actually that’s I think maybe what people sometimes miss and should, including religious leaders, worry about. One of the things to think about is whether this is a group, it’s not that they are disengaged because they’re not religious. It may be that they’re not religious because they’re disengaged. Disengaged from, and that’s a worrisome thing in our society. It’s a low information group as a whole and I don’t want to castigate, I’m not trying to demonize or something nones, but because again, they’re actually a large portion of the population. You know, 30% or 28, 30% of Americans are in this category. But the nothing in particulars look very different from the atheist and agnostics.
Tony:
Yeah. So there’s a level, it sounds like, with a large percentage, you said about two thirds of that group. It’s more of an spiritual indifference, it sounds like, than anything else.
Alan:
Yeah. And they may not even be spiritually indifferent so much as they may be indifferent to organizations or even have a little bit of an allergy to all sorts of organizations and institutions almost by definition this is an unorganized group. It’s not just unchurched, it’s uninstitutional. So, and but that also gets into the sort of the politics of it, which is really kind of interesting because the unaffiliated, as I’m sure most of your listeners recognize, tend to lean democratic, almost in sort of rough proportion, as say white evangelical Protestants lean Republican. And this is the unaffiliated or kind of at the opposite end of the political spectrum, but roughly an equal size to to now to evangelical Protestants. But the unaffiliated, one of the things about them is that they don’t tend to vote at high rates yet. They don’t tend to volunteer. They didn’t tend to vote. And they’re sort of hard to mobilize. So if you would think about them as a potential political group, or they might have that potential, but almost by definition they don’t have any organizational glue. And that makes it hard to identify them and reach them.
Tony:
Yes. And speaking of reaching them, I mean, again, that’s primarily what our listeners are considering, is there any way for us to engage these folks? And so with that perception, Alan, and namely that folks may see religion offering more harm than good, is there any common ground either in areas of spirituality or morality that actually might offer an initial connection point with people in this group?
Alan:
Sure. I think, as I noted, right at the outset, that when we measure these things, we measure beliefs and practices separately from identities. And unaffiliated is an identity. These are people who, it’s a kind of a negative identity, if you will. But these are people who say they don’t identify with any religious group. That doesn’t mean they don’t have any beliefs and practices. In fact, the majority of them say they do believe in God or a higher power. Now, to be sure, most of the unaffiliated who do believe in God or a higher power say they don’t believe in the kind of God of the Bible. So they tend to believe in some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe. And obviously kind of what that image is could vary enormously from person to person.
But it’s not right to think that they have no spiritual resonance or bones in their body. Many of them do. They tend though not to go to religious services. So that is a clear thing. It’s not that the nones are spiritual seekers who are flitting from this group to that group, trying them out, but just haven’t found one that fits right. That’s not where most of them are. Most of them are not engaged with religious organizations. As we said, they tend to be a little bit more cynical or negative or skeptical about the role of religion in society, but not kind of overwhelmingly so. I think that there’s plenty of common ground in that sense. You know, most Americans now say they don’t think that people need to believe in God to be a moral person. Actually that’s a kind of a reversal over the last 20 some years. ‘Cause 20 some years ago, we used to find that a majority of Americans said, yes, you need to believe in God to be a moral person. And the United States looked very different from, say, western Europe on that measure. Today, the United States looks a lot like Western Europe, across Western Europe and the United States. It’s roughly 60 to 70% of people who say you can be moral even if you don’t believe in God. And that includes religious people who say that though they’re less, though non-religious people are obviously much more likely to say that than religious people.
Tony:
So thus far in our conversation, we’ve been talking about the rise of the nones. It was interesting though. I saw a report from Pew in January. It indicated Americans are actually more likely to say that their spirituality has grown rather than declined. And that was surprising given the decline in attendance in churches that we’re reading about, particularly mainline churches, what they’re experiencing. So is there any sense, Alan, of why that’s happening? Why there are more Americans that are saying their spirituality has actually grown?
Alan:
So again, Tony, a dose of humility in addressing these data? I wanna say I wish I really knew what’s happening. I can tell you what we found, but I’m not exactly sure what it means. So what we found is when we ask people over the course of your life, would you say that you’ve become more spiritual or less spiritual, or sometimes more spiritual, sometimes less spiritual, you know, so like some, like I’ve had a spiritual, high spiritual period, a low spiritual period, and we asked a parallel question about becoming more religious over the course of your life, have you become more religious or have you become less religious, or sometimes more and sometimes less. And what we find is that Americans are much more likely to say they become more spiritual than to say they become less spiritual. So just to put a number around that, 41% of US adults surveyed, say they’ve become more spiritual over the course of their lives, their lives.
And just 13% say they become less spiritual over the course of their lives. And then of course, you get this group that says that, that to you know, about half by the way, say they’ve either had some of both or, or no change. Now when you ask about becoming more religious or less religious, it’s sort of the reverse. A third of Americans say they become less religious over the course of their lives, just a quarter say they become more religious. And then again, the remainder say some of both or no change. So there’s kind of two ways to look at this. These are self reports. And it’s kind of a broad set of questions, and it could be that what people are indicating, maybe one possibility is that they’re saying that religion, which is a word that for many people, connotes organizational activity has declined in their lives.
But spirituality, which again, means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but maybe at least connotes some attachment to higher hire powers something bigger or maybe looking deeply within oneself, but not necessarily with an organization, or an institution or a clergy member, attached to it. That that is increased in their lives. So that’s one way of sort of really thinking about it. Let’s put it this way, taking it at face value. But there’s another way of thinking about it. And I think it’s important just to raise this, and that may be that all this is really measuring is the social desirability of these terms. And the term religion used to be a very positively viewed thing. People wanted to be seen as religious in America, religion is such a deep part of the American fabric, and long has been that to ask, if you ask people if they were religious, they wanted to say yes.
Now, for a variety of reasons, I’m not the expert to know exactly what, but scandals and social change, now perhaps religion, the term religion carries more baggage. So I’m not telling your folks anything. I’m just trying to refer what everybody sort of maybe senses while the term spirituality, if anything, has just positive associations or mostly positive associations and less negative associations. So it could be that all we’re really capturing with this question of cynic could say, well, how do you know that the only thing you’re finding out here is that the word religion is less appealing than it used to be? And so people say, well, I’m not as religious as I used to be, but the word spiritual is more appealing than it used to be, or more appealing than religion. So a lot of people say they’ve become more spiritual, and I’m not in a position to say definitively, which of those things is the case.
I mean, we have been measuring religious beliefs and practices and identities, and broadly speaking in the general public, those things have all been ticking down for a couple of decades. Pretty much every measure measures of sort of generic spirituality or spiritual things, unattached to religion, we’ve been measuring some of those things, but we’re trying to do more and more, and we’re measuring new things all the time. And, but partly ’cause they’re new measures, we don’t really have good trends on all these things. So like belief in reincarnation or astrology and things like, we’ve got long trends on that. We’ve been measuring that for many years. I could tell you those things are pretty stable. They’re not like soaring. It’s not like suddenly you’ve got lots more astrologers or lots more people who believe in reincarnation than they used to. But things like belief in the power of crystals or belief that there are spirits in parts of nature like rivers and mountains and trees.
Those are things we’ve started to measure only recently. And so I don’t know what that those numbers were 20 years ago. So I can’t tell you really honestly, if you said to me, well, our spiritual beliefs and practices on the increase, you know, I can only say that about the relatively small number of things that we’ve measured consistently over time and know the small number of things we measured consistently over time. There’s not some dramatic increase in spirituality, but people could say, well, you’ve been measuring the wrong things or not all of the right things or you know. And so, again, humility, don’t really know. It is possible that some spiritual beliefs and practices are on the rise while traditional religion is an institution of religions on the decline that is possible. But I can’t prove that because I don’t have the measures of the spirituality.
And, you know, and again, most things are in decline. Now, by what? One other thing you said at the beginning, Tony, sorry to jump in, but I almost anticipating your question.
Tony:
Yeah, that’s okay.
Alan:
You noted that from a lot of the churches you work with, they’re not seeing a decline. They’re seeing plenty of health, and that is consonant with our data. Because, you know, when you look at people who are religiously affiliated, people who have, who identify with a religious group, we don’t see, or we haven’t until, you know, in our data so far, we haven’t seen declines in practice and in belief among those groups. So, you know, if you look at Christians in the United States, peoples who continue to identify as Christian, yes, it’s a declining share of the overall population, but among Christians, there’s no decline in belief or practice.
Tony:
Right.
Alan:
You could well also imagine an another situation where you could say, well, but if the share of Christians is declining, then maybe you’re getting a purer, but more vibrant church, a remnant church, if you will. And that group actually ought to be more engaged because they’re losing the, you know, you’ve sort of sloughed off the people who were never all that engaged, but that isn’t happening either. So we don’t, it’s not as though the people who continue to identify as Christian are dramatically, notably more believing, faithful, practicing, you know, no, it’s, the numbers there, are bouncing around a little bit. But I would not say there’s decline. I’d also not say there’s like some really notable increase. I think between our 2007 and 2014 religious landscape surveys on some things like engagement with church groups. There was some increase. So, you know, there can be measures of, there could be healthiness within this declining population effect. There is a lot of health and stability within this declining population.
Tony:
Alright, Alan, as we wrap up the conversation, I wanna take advantage of having you on the interview today, because I know you have long history of studying this intersection of religion and politics. And here we are in another political season. It seems like they’re continuous actually all the time now. But are you seeing any new trends that church leaders need to consider as they’re engaging in their mission, their gospel mission in a hyper political context?
Alan:
When I follow re look at trends in religion and politics, I am always struck by how much stability there is rather than change, particularly in the leanings, the general disposition leaning voter intentions of political groups, that those things haven’t really shifted that not dramatically, they move around a little bit with each election, but the big picture was pretty clear. With, for example, white Christians being generally Republican leaning, African American and Hispanic Christians being more democratic leaning, the unaffiliated strongly democratic, white, evangelical, Protestant, strongly republican, those kinds of patterns are all pretty consistent in this election. But there are a few things that are interesting that I think your folks should know about. You know, one is that eight in 10 Americans now tell us that they think that religion is losing influence in American society.
And that’s as high a number as we’ve ever gotten. I mean, we’ve had 78% in some readings in the past, but 80% is that’s as high or higher than ever before. Now most people, what’s kind of interesting within that 80%, we ask a follow-up question. We say, and is that a good thing or a bad thing? And so 59% of the public overall says religion is declining. But that’s a bad thing is declining in its influence, but that’s a bad thing. Or it’s increasing and that’s a good thing. So you get a majority who it’s a, it’s like this one, this one measure has this kind of two sides of it that I find fascinating where people think religion’s declining influence, but they don’t think that’s a good thing. They think that’s a bad thing.
So that means they’re taking a sort of pro religion position implicitly. And so I think that’s important. I’m not, I don’t wanna preach on it, but I think it’s important for pastors and clergy to recognize, you know, another element that’s kind of interesting is the degree to which everybody seems to feel on all sides of these issues of religion and politics. Kinda like everyone seems to feel they’re aggrieved and everyone seems to feel they’re losing. So the people on the left say people on the right have gone too far in pushing religion, you know, in public life, et cetera. People on the right, say the atheist and secular folks have gone too far in pushing religion out of public life and out of the public schools and that kind of thing.
And increasing chairs of Americans say that their religious beliefs make them feel like a minority, which I think is really, that’s also really interesting. Like, I’m not sure what the center is, but fewer and fewer people identify with the center of American life. I mean, I think it won’t be surprising for you to know that the vast majority of American Jews and American Muslims say they think of themselves as a minority, and so do 44% of atheists. But the kind of thing that’s maybe interesting that your folks may not realize is that now many Christians say they feel their religious beliefs make them a minority in the U.S. So, and that includes 38% of Hispanic Protestants, 37% of white Protestants, and a quarter each of Catholics and black Protestants say they feel like a minority because of their religious beliefs.
So, you know, the nones feel they’re a minority religious. People feel they’re a minority. Christians feel they’re a minority. Jews feel, they, Muslims feel they’re a minority. We also get a sizable and rising share that’s now about half of American adults who say that they feel there’s conflict between their own religious beliefs and mainstream American culture. And that when we last asked that question back in 2020, it was 42%. Now it’s 48%. So there’s a kind of whether it’s actual polarization going on, there’s an increasing sense. I think that people have that all across the spectrum, that they’re under pressure, that they’re a minority, that their views are in conflict with the mainstream, et cetera. And what’s paradoxical about that is it’s true for religious people and it’s true for non-religious people.
Amy:
Wow. Tony, that was a fascinating conversation. I think there’s so much in there for church leaders to ponder.
Tony:
Yeah. And I loved how he explained what it really means to be part of the nones, including the atheist, the agnostics, or the people that claim nothing in particular. And I think that nothing in particular label that he unpacked is really crucial. Many churches are still operating as if everyone who is unreligious is antagonistic to religion, or at the very least holds negative views of Christ and the church. And the research doesn’t really support that. One of the things that I’m going to continue thinking on after the conversation as well is this whole concept of the people who identify as nothing in particular, being disengaged from any organization in general. So it’s not just the church. They’re just disengaged from every organization. And he talked about how they are less likely to volunteer or to vote or to be a member of something. I mean, they’re just generally disengaged from any kind of institution. And these are the things church leaders need to be seriously thinking about as they consider their ministry strategies. We need to better understand the people that we’re trying to reach. So if you nerd out about data like I do, I recommend subscribing to Pew’s Religion and Public Life Newsletter, and you can find that at pewresearch.org.
Amy:
Yeah. Lots of things to consider there. So, Tony, any final thoughts before we wrap up today’s conversation?
Tony:
Well, I’d just like to say thank you again for listening to the Unstuck Church podcast and for sharing it with friends and ministry. You know, Amy, with every piece of content that we put out and every consulting engagement that we develop our priority, it’s about helping churches help people meet and follow Jesus. Because of that, we support pastors. We support people like you as you grow healthy churches by guiding you through experiences that align the vision of what you sense the church should be with strategies, a healthy team and action focus so that you can actually see that vision become reality. And if we can help your church expand your reach, please let us know. You can start a conversation at theunstuckgroup.com/start. If you haven’t already, take your staff team through the six types of working genius. You’ll better understand how to use each other’s gifts to get more done. We actually have some people on the Unstuck Team who have been certified in Working Genius, and they can help you maximize it on your team. You can get started with the assessment at workinggenius.com and use code unstuckwg, that’s U-N-S-T-U-C-K-W-G, for 20% off.
Sean:
Well, thanks for joining us on this week’s podcast. At The Unstuck Group, our goal is to help pastors grow healthy churches by guiding them to align vision, strategy, team and action. In everything we do, our priority is to help churches, help people meet and follow Jesus. If there’s any way we can serve you and your church today, reach out to us at theunstuckgroup.com. Next week, we’re back with a brand new episode. So until then, have a great week.
