The Rise of the "Nones"

For the past several years I have told my students that the most interesting development in the religious landscape of the United States is "the rise of the nones," that is, the growing number of adult Americans who claim no religious affiliation. ("The Rise of the Nones" would make a good film title, no?) While "evangelical" Christianity has been maintaining relatively steady numbers over the past couple of decades, both Roman Catholicism and mainstream, "establishment" Protestantism are undergoing decline.

A new Pew report, based on a survey of 35,000 individuals, gives us the latest data for gaining some understanding of these trends. To read that report go here.

The paragraphs that caught my eye were these:

Between 2007 and 2014, the overall size of the U.S. adult population grew by about 18 million people, to nearly 245 million. But the share of adults who identify as Christians fell to just under 71%, or approximately 173 million Americans, a net decline of about 5 million.

This decline is larger than the combined margins of sampling error in the twin surveys conducted seven years apart. Using the margins of error to calculate a probable range of estimates, it appears that the number of Christian adults in the U.S. has shrunk by somewhere between 2.8 million and 7.8 million.

Those who identify themselves as "former Christians" now represent just over 19% of the US adult population.

There is one misleading paragraph in the report:

The new survey indicates that churches in the evangelical Protestant tradition – including the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God, Churches of Christ, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Presbyterian Church in America, other evangelical denominations and many nondenominational congregations – now have a total of about 62 million adult adherents. That is an increase of roughly 2 million since 2007, though once the margins of error are taken into account, it is possible that the number of evangelicals may have risen by as many as 5 million or remained essentially unchanged.

That paragraph gives the impression that the LCMS is within that "evangelical" camp (in the American sense of that term, not Luther's) whose numbers have plateaued or shown some increase. Yet a quick check of the LCMS's own statistical reports between 2006 and 2013 (the latest year for which statistics are available) reveals that in every one of those years the Synod had an overall net loss in baptized membership:

2007 -   2,383,084 baptized (representing a loss of 34,913 members in 2006)
2008 -   2,337,349 (a loss of 45,735 in 2007)
2009 -   2,312,111 (a loss of 25,238 in 2008)
2010 -   2,278,586 (a loss of 33,525 in 2009)
2011 -   2,231, 858 (a loss of 46,728 in 2010)
2012 -   2,196,788 (a loss of 35,070 in 2011)
2013 -   2,163,698 (a loss of 33,090 in 2012)

The reasons why Roman Catholicism and mainstream Protestantism are declining in membership in the U.S. may be tied to factors that are unique to these groups and their settings here. The reasons why the Southern Baptist Convention and the LCMS are in decline may be entirely due to other factors. I will leave it to the experts in the sociology of religion to sort out those differences and to debate among themselves the principal causes for these specific declines.

While such reports have to be painted with a broad brush, I suspect the causes for decline vary from one church body to the next. Many people "drop out" of religion for all sorts of reasons. (The report points initially to "generational replacement," i.e., older religiously-affiliated people are dying and being replaced by younger non-religiously-affiliated individuals, but that doesn't really explain why younger people are not participating in religious organizations.)

I have my own hunches, based on limited, anecdotal evidence that I've collected over the years from the dozens of so-called "religiously-unaffiliated" people that have shown up in my required theology courses.

Many of these "nones" were raised in Christian homes and settings, but now no longer consider themselves "Christian." Several have labeled themselves "recovering Christians." Some of these are adamantly against all religions, especially Christianity, for "intellectual" and experiential reasons: "I used to believe in God, but what I know from the sciences and the overwhelming reality of evil in the world--much of it perpetrated by religious people--discounts such belief today." Others of them want nothing to do with "organized religion," but might dabble now and then with "spiritual" matters: "I believe in God, but want nothing to do with organized churches. I got burned by religion... I consider myself 'spiritual' but not 'religious.'" "Lord, I believe! Save me from your people!"

Quite a few "nones" are just unsure if they are "Christian" any longer, since they almost never set foot in a Christian congregation and are unclear about what they really believe regarding God, Jesus, etc. "My wife is Buddhist and I occasionally follow her lead when it comes to meditation or what not, but I don't go to a temple or church..." Still other "nones" just don't give much thought to religious or even "spiritual" questions and issues. For these "nones," time and energy are best devoted elsewhere. "During the week I'm very busy with school and my career and social networks. When the weekend comes around, I want just to relax..." Or: "The weekends were made for [fill in the blank]..., not doing a bunch of stupid religious rituals to a deity who may not even exist..."

The reasons for LCMS decline are also varied and complex, but I will suggest five:

1) The LCMS is perceived/experienced as being "anti-intellectual," "anti-science." "I used to belong to the LCMS, but its position on six-day creationism is stupid and unsupportable, and so I left..." "I'm a Ph.D. in molecular biology and my pastor told me he would not commune me because I accept the theory of evolution, and so I joined a different church..." "Some LCMS doctrines are simply out of touch with basic scientific facts... I got tired of my pastor's ignorance and his bigotry against science..."

2) The LCMS is perceived/experienced as being "anti-women." "I grew up in the LCMS, but when I entered college I became dissatisfied with its position against women serving as pastors and in other leadership roles..." "The LCMS is discriminatory toward women and I'm opposed to that kind of behavior... I left the synod for an Evangelical church body that supports the equality of men and women and recognizes the spiritual gifts of women pastors..."

3) The LCMS is perceived/experienced as being "anti-LGBT." "I grew up in the LCMS and I'm gay. Over time I realized the LCMS was not a welcoming place for me..." "I'm not a lesbian, but I'm opposed to the kind of loveless words and actions toward gay and lesbian people that I have heard from LCMS pulpits and have witnessed in the LCMS over the years..."

4) The LCMS is perceived/experienced as being "judgmental" toward non-LCMS religious groups. "I was involved in two different LCMS congregations in Iowa and the pastors in both settings regularly preached sermons that were derogatory of other Christians. These pastors came off sounding like Pharisees... I got tired of their public bashing of others..." "I attended an LCMS congregation out in California for a while, but the pastor and many of the people there seemed most concerned to tell others what they were against (e.g., "liberals," gays, lesbians, Roe v. Wade, etc.) and to always pat themselves on the back for being 'the true church of the pure doctrine...' I didn't appreciate their loveless judgmentalism. There was no real Christian love in the place... I joined a non-denominational church as a result..."

5) The LCMS is perceived/experienced as being "the right-wing of the Republican Party at prayer." "I'm not a Republican and as such I didn't feel at home in that particular LCMS congregation..." "I don't agree with the politics of the past several LCMS presidents. On certain political issues, they don't speak for me. I left the LCMS largely for these reasons..."

There are undoubtedly other factors in play here, but for the time being I will continue to collect my own anecdotal evidence for why "the rise of the nones" is occurring. Perhaps this data will cause local pastors and congregations to do some serious self-examination, some sober soul-searching, some substantive reflection on the differences between motes and beams.

A Few Comments on Death and Resurrection

A younger LCMS pastor recently directed a question to me (in the context of a private internet group to which he and I belong): “When it comes to evolution and the Scriptures you never deal with the problem of death.  I am very interested and open to theistic evolution but you lose me when it comes to the issue of death.  How can it be reconciled with theistic evolution?  It just doesn’t jive in my mind.“

A few people thought my response was helpful, so I’m taking the liberty of sharing it here. (I’ve added some content that was not in the original post.)

Death is always with us. We cannot not deal with it. It comes up in expected and unexpected ways. It affects each of us individually and all of us in our various circles of family and friends and fellow believers. For those of us who serve as ministers of Christ in congregations, e.g., as pastors or interim pastors (as I did recently for several years), the reality of death and its effects are near the center of our vocation. In a sense, the essential content of the Christian faith as a whole is directed to the reality of death. We are called to shed light on this reality, to proclaim the judgment of God that is wrapped up with it, and to proclaim the good news of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. We are called to comfort those who mourn and to point to the Risen One as the basis of our hope, especially in the face of death.  We proclaim the death of the Lord Jesus as "the death of death." During Lent, the focus on our own mortal nature has been sharpened and intensified: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” We are mortally aware of our sins and our depraved condition. We are daily reminded of our need for Christ, his forgiveness, his new creation, and the salvation that he freely offers to us and the whole world.

And of course today, on Good Friday, our eyes are directed to the suffering, crucified Christ, even as we also anticipate the joy of Easter morning and the central apostolic proclamation: Christ is risen!

We look upon death differently because of Jesus Christ. We face our death in the sure and certain confidence that because Christ has died and has been raised from the dead, we too shall be raised—and even now may walk in the newness of that resurrected life. “You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead… If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God…” (Col. 2.12; 3.1ff.)

That NT teaching is the largest context for dealing with the reality of death and all other earthly realities. That "good news" is at the heart of every evangelical sermon; it is the promise that is attached to the means of grace; it is the center of the Scriptures; it is the basis for all Christian pastoral care (and not merely at funerals); it is the principal theme in all of my university courses in theology. That NT gospel keeps the heartbeat of faith pumping. It is what gets me out of bed in the morning, allows me to go about my vocation with a deep sense of purpose and frequent joy, and gives me a sense of peace when I fall asleep at night.

This being said, one has to note that the context given by Col. 2-3 and similar NT passages is not the only context for addressing the reality of death and the questions it raises. There are other contexts that need to be taken into account as well, at least if one is to probe these matters theologically (i.e., academically, in relation to the natural and human sciences, medical knowledge and ethics). For instance, many contemporary people whom we seek to reach with the gospel—including people who have heard that gospel and continue to hear it and receive it in faith—wonder about the nature of death as a human reality in light of the evidence of death in the plant and animal kingdoms in the long history of the planet. Such evidence indicates that creatures have been dying—and going extinct!—for millions and millions of years, long before the advent of the first human beings. What are we to make of this “hard” evidence?

There is no question that creatures of God were living and dying long before the emergence of the first human creatures. The evidence of these pre-human deaths in nature is as irrefutable as the fact that the earth is spinning on its axis and orbiting the sun (additional natural facts that God has chosen not to reveal in his Holy Scriptures!). As I tell my students, the evidence here is something on which you can stub your toe.

This evidence needs to be taken into account by educated Christians, especially pastors and theologians and others who seek to make sense of the Christian faith in light of contemporary knowledge and in contexts that include scientifically-informed people.

The way I do this is to take note of the fact that the Scriptures illuminate and address the reality of death in the most profound and promising of ways. To begin with, the Scriptures do not contain a single, monolithic understanding of “death.” There is instead a great variety of passages that address and illuminate the reality and threat of death (both “physical,” “bodily” death, and other, harsher kinds of “death,” e.g., alienation and separation from God, “spiritual death,” the “second death” mentioned in Rev. 20.6, 14). Any good Christian dogmatics text will indicate that the Scriptures do not have a monolithic presentation about "death." I have found Pannenberg's reflections on sin and death helpful in this regard (see his Systematic Theology, 2.231ff.).

For the sake of brevity, we may take note of two key emphases about “death” in the Scriptures. On the one hand, natural, physical death is understood to be an aspect of finite, creaturely existence, as an aspect of life itself. This emphasis is especially prominent in many OT passages. “Lord, teach us to number our days [teach us to remember that we have to die] that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90.12). Our lifespan is in the hands of God (Ps. 31.15). Our lives do not belong to ourselves; they are a gift of God. We are created for life, yet in the end, all humans die (Ps. 89.48f.; cf. Eccl. 2.16ff.) It is God who returns people to the dust (Ps. 90.3) So the psalmist prays to God for protection from an untimely death. “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Ps. 73.26). Those who are blessed by the Lord die “old and full of years” (Gen. 25.8; Jud. 8.32; 1 Chr. 29.28). When one comes to a ripe age, “full of days,” then it is time for death. If death comes then, a person has truly lived. “You shall come to your grave in ripe old age, as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor in its season” (Job 5.26). Commenting on this aspect of the OT’s teaching about death, Eberhard Juengel  remarks: “To be delivered from death means that one’s life is prolonged so that the number of one’s days may be fulfilled (Exod. 23.26). In the end, for Israel, the longed for future time of salvation in the new Jerusalem was pictured as a time when there would be no old man who had not fulfilled his days—that is, who was not ripe for death (see Isa. 65.20; Zech. 8.4). Death can therefore be something other than a curse” (E. Juengel, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery [Westminster, 1974], 76).

In other words, to be a creature, human or otherwise, is to be a finite, mortal being. Finite beings are not eternal. Death marks the end of every life. Every multiple-celled life must die. Physical, biological death is an aspect of our creaturely finitude that we share with all of God's other creatures, going all the way back to the very first simple, single-celled life forms. Creatures have an end. Karl Barth (d. 1968) was right when he wrote, "Finitude means mortality" (Church Dogmatics 3/2.625). The life we are given is an allotted time; it has limits, boundaries. “Death is intrinsically the end and limit of human life” (ibid., 588). “…[I]t also belongs to human nature, and is determined and ordered by God’s good creation and to that extent right and good, that man’s being in time should be finite and man himself mortal… Death is man’s step from existence into non-existence, as birth is his step from non-existence into existence. In itself, therefore, it is not unnatural but natural for human life to run its course to this terminus ad quem, to ebb and fade, and therefore to have this forward limit” (ibid., 632). We live our lives at present always under the shadow of death. “It then becomes clear that dying is the way of all the earth (1 Ki. 2.2)” (Juengel, Death, 67). (Even the Christian who takes the story of Adam and Eve in Gen 2-3 quite literalistically has to agree that “Adam” was subject to death from the very beginning of his being created. Adam/Eve were “mortal” creatures, even before they sinned, something Luther also acknowledged in his great commentary on Genesis.)

On the other hand, the Scriptures elsewhere reveal, especially in the NT, that human death is a judgment from God as a consequence of sin. “The wages of sin is death…” (Rom. 6.23). As a result of sin, God has subjected creation to futility. The world is fallen, corrupt, and suffering under the judgment of God. Here death is the sign of God’s judgment. Death has become an enemy, the “last enemy” (1 Cor. 15.26). Why? Because death brings us mortal sinners into the hands of Almighty God.

A careful study of the biblical words and Scripture passages relating to “death” helps to uncover the rich variety of meanings that these terms/passages convey for a fuller theological understanding of death. Many of these passages can be understood to fit within an understanding of the natural history of the world that includes the reality of death—the condition of creaturely finitude established by the Creator, the temporal character of all life, of death as the boundary of all life—long before the appearance of the first human beings.

BUT, and this is a big BUT: If physical death is merely talked about as a natural part of life, as merely something to be accepted as a part of the natural rhythm of this created order (though, to be sure, it is this, too), then a key biblical teaching is minimized or even lost. Barth, Tillich, Niebuhr and most other Protestant theologians are right to stress that there is a profound anxiety that overcomes one when one contemplates the reality of one’s death. Here the Pauline emphasis that connects “divine judgment” and “death” is spot on. We know that death is a threat not merely to our existence, but to our standing before God. Through death we enter into God’s perfect judgment. And that judgment is also then a kind of “separation” or “estrangement” from God, the source of our being. To paraphrase Tillich, when we are estranged from the ultimate power of our being, we are then determined by our finitude. We are given over to our natural fate (and all the other creaturely conditions that mark us and define us). We know then too well the truth of what we hear on every Ash Wed and at funeral services: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” We are under the domination of death and are driven by the anxiety of having to die. That leads to all sorts of other problems and sinful consequences, as we try to secure ourselves against the threat of death and against the sober reality of its being more than a mere inconvenience.

Our Christian hope, however, anticipates a new life beyond death and the divine judgment connected with it, a new life that has dawned for the first time in the multi-billion-year history of planet earth in Jesus of Nazareth. This new life has dawned in his death and resurrection from the dead—God’s decisive, final act in creation. Jesus alone makes this new life possible for all mortal sinners who put their trust in him. (I will leave open the question about whether or not the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the dawn of the new creation in him have positive implications for the future of God’s other creatures. I remain hopeful, in this regard, provided the new life of the dinosaurs means they no longer will eat meat...) God alone is able to bring us through death into new life through Jesus and the creating Holy Spirit. So Scripture also refers to death as liberation from this mortal life and as gain, so as to be with the risen Christ.

Set free from the curse of death, life’s end may therefore be understood more precisely as man’s natural death, as the end of that existence which he is by nature. It is not because of his nature but because of his guilt as a sinner that this natural death can become a curse. From the quite remarkable terminological fact that the New Testament makes a temporal distinction between the curse of death which threatens man’s existence and the true end of man’s life we can see that the end of man’s life does not have to be a curse: both Paul and John can say of believers that this death prior to life’s ending is something which for them is already past (Juengel, Death, 92).

The death of Jesus has inaugurated the death of death for us. Jesus has suffered the harshest, most damnable death of all, his suffering of God’s judgment upon all sins, so that we might receive life to the fullest.

So the death of which paleontologists, biologists, anthropologists, and other natural scientists speak, and which they analyze, needs to be set into that larger context to which the author of Colossians spoke (and speaks!). "Set your minds on things above, not on things that are on earth." There is here a more profound understanding of death than that which any natural scientist or medical doctor could offer, based on his/her scientific understandings of this old, fallen creation (as important as this latter knowledge is for our understanding of human beings and their place in the natural history of the world). The law and gospel of God offer a new interpretation of death, but not merely that. The gospel promises a great victory over death and the grave/ash urn/final resting place of human dust. “For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom. 14.9). That Easter promise makes all the difference for your finite, mortal, sinful dust. (For a profound reflection on precisely this point, see Bob Bertram’s classic, “Pardon My Dying: A Sequel to Ash Wednesday,” which is available at the online Crossings website. See also Ed Schroeder's essay, "Encountering the Last Enemy," which builds on reflections in Tod und Leben [Life and Death] by Ed's Doktorvater, Thielicke.)

Dying has been occurring in God’s creation since the beginning of the earliest life forms. At least for human beings, who uniquely bear the image of God and who are mortal sinners under the law of God, such “damned dying” (to quote Bertram) needs forgiving and it needs a resurrection.

Hence, the return to baptism again and again. While all creaturely life leads to death, Holy Baptism takes one from death to new life. According to the Gospel of John, the person who hears Jesus and believes the One who sent him, has eternal life; “he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (Jn. 5.24). Cf. the Colossians passage above, which makes the same point.

Hopefully, these informal comments give you a better idea of how I address the reality of death theologically in view of the physical evidence of death in the natural history of the world but especially in light of the gospel promise.

For the Record

Over the past several weeks a lot has been published online and in print about me and my teaching. The President of the LCMS and many of his supporters have criticized me on his Facebook page. Two districts of the LCMS have adopted resolutions that call upon me "to repent" of my supposed "false teaching." The national newspaper of the LCMS has published articles about these two district conventions and about a recent meeting of the LCMS Council of District Presidents in which my teaching was discussed. In two of these articles I am mentioned by name.

In light of these public actions and events, I would like to offer my own response, "for the record."

You may read that response here.

A Nice Chesterton Quote

Fundamental Theology

Earlier today I learned that my new book, Fundamental Theology (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark), is now available in North America. I'm hoping the book will be beneficial to individuals who want to explore basic, preliminary issues in Christian theology. After providing brief overviews of the history of Christianity and Christian theology, the book analyzes issues relating to the reality of God (e.g., atheism, philosophical theology), the nature of Christian faith, central themes in special revelation, the authority and interpretation of the Christian Bible, and the interface between Christian thinking about God and other forms of knowledge. 

Each of the fifteen chapters ends with several study questions that invite additional reflection. These questions could serve to open up discussion within a group setting. Each chapter also contains suggestions for further reading. The book includes both a glossary of terms and a glossary of names. Martin Marty has written the Afterword. 

Carl Braaten (retired professor of theology at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago) read an early draft of the book and was invited by the publisher to give his assessment. According to Braaten, the book "is destined to become a standard textbook both in college and seminary courses of theology. I know of no better compendium of Christian theology to introduce beginning students to the study of theology." 

While I wrote the book primarily for high-school graduates, college students, and seminarians, the book could be useful in a congregational setting as well, perhaps as the focus for an adult forum or discussion group. The issues addressed in the book and the questions raised are ones that ought to be of interest to anyone who wants to think more deeply about Christian faith.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Theology-A-Protestant-Perspective/dp/0567568334/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dpcod_2-p3ub19FAVPD_tt