Despite Surveys, Christianity Isn’t Going Away Anytime Soon

Easter Sunday found our family on the shores of Lake Moultrie, about 15 miles outside of Charleston, S.C. Thanks to the ever-helpful Greta (our Garmin), we were able to locate Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church for Easter Sunday services. Had it not been for the wonders of global positioning technology, we would never have found the tiny mission parish in Bonneau, S.C. (pop. 354).

Our visiting family of seven swelled the congregation by more than 10 percent. But what the lovely, diminutive church lacked in size, it made up for in faith and love. After mass, Fr. Ed, the celebrant, asked where we were from, what church we attended, and the size of our parish.

The priest smiled when my husband told him that St. Bridget's has about 8,000 parishioners -- the entire state of South Carolina has fewer than 200,000 Catholics (about 4 percent of its population). Actually, the Catholic population in South Carolina has been growing steadily -- thanks to Hispanic immigrants and retiring Catholics from Northern climes.

But Christianity overall in the United States apparently is not faring so well. According to Trinity College's American Religious Identification Survey 2008 (ARIS) that was released last month, the numbers of Americans calling themselves Christian has dropped more than 11 percentage points in one generation.

The biggest loss has been among non-Catholic formal religions such as Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists. The faithful seem to be abandoning these traditional religions for non-denominational community churches that tend to focus on the Bible and Scripture alone. Many are abandoning structured religion for their own version of spirituality. Those who belong to non-denominational churches tend to think of themselves simply as followers of Christ. They often consider themselves freed of the rules and constraints of traditional religion. Some focus so much on love and forgiveness, one wonders if they have discarded those tiresome old concepts of sin and atonement.

The survey also noted that more and more people seem to be making up their own version of what God is or are following one of the growing new-age religions. The number of people claiming to be Wiccan or pagan, or even belonging to a religion of their own making, has jumped from .8 percent to more than 1.2 percent.

The biggest gain of any group in the survey is in the percentage of people who now profess no religious affiliation at all -- that number has jumped from 8.2 percent in 2001 to 15 percent in 2008. The "Nones," as the ARIS survey refers to them, now outnumber every denomination except Catholics and Baptists. (One notable statistic that is not being played up is that although the number of Catholics in the U.S. dropped from 26.5 percent of the population in 1990 to 24.5 percent in 2001, it has since trended back upward to 25.1 percent in 2008.)

The media, of course, have been having a feeding frenzy over this survey. Newspapers, magazines, and television have all been quick to adopt the phrase "post-Christian America." Religious conservatives are bemoaning the attacks on Christianity -- and in their defense, there were plenty of stories and programs that questioned Christianity preceding Easter week this year.

Newsweek's April 14 cover read, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." The Discovery Channel ran a documentary that aired on Palm Sunday, entitled, "Who Was Jesus?' The program referred to Christ as someone who likely existed. John's baptism of Jesus is referred to as an incongruity. In a Discovery News interview, the program's co-host, Professor Rachel Havrelock says, "The wording of the baptism accounts reveals embarrassment. Why should a son of God have to be baptized, since he should have been born without sin? It appears that John the Baptist was involved in creating another movement at around the same time as Jesus."

On Holy Saturday, National Public Radio ran an interview with Rowan LeCompte, the artist who designed the stained glass in Washington's National Cathedral. Listeners were treated to LeCompte's dismissal of the existence of Hell, and his belief and worship of kindness rather than a deity.

All of this is distressing. But contrary to what is being paraded in headlines, Christianity is not going away any time soon. While the percentage of the U.S. faithful may have dropped 11 points, that still means that 76 percent of Americans are professed Christians.

Europe has been referred to as a post-Christian continent for years now. Yet, following the terrible earthquake in Italy this month, pictures posted on the Internet showed distraught people in prayer. Many images of destroyed homes showed crucifixes still hanging on the walls, and a funeral mass held on Good Friday in L'Aquila drew 10,000 mourners.

Christianity can be a very tenacious thing. And perhaps the ranks could use some purging. For the majority of Christians today, life is easy -- and following the tenets of our faith demands comparatively little sacrifice. But it wasn't always so.

When Christianity first came upon the scene in the years following Christ's death, the Roman government permitted the insignificant little religion to exist and paid it scarce attention. Yet, by 64 A.D., Nero had tired of the new movement and acted to rid the empire of it. The emperor grew to detest Christians and often tortured them for his own amusement.

Believers were crucified, burned alive, or fed to lions for sport. Armies of martyrs gave their lives for Christianity. Of the 12 apostles, only one (John) died a peaceful death -- the others all met with horrible ends. But the more the Romans tried to quell the flame, the more rapidly it spread.

So, take heart. If 300 years of persecution were unable to silence the Good News that a simple carpenter from Galilee promised, it's doubtful that a survey and a handful of snarky commentators will have much impact either.

Contact Robin Beres at (804) 649-6305 or .