Since the American religious landscape is always changing, it is important to note current demographic data. The following image is from the Public Religion Research Institute and Brookings based on data captured last summer. So What? According to this survey of just over 2,000 people religious progressives are more racially diverse than any other group, and are more than twice as successful in attracting the affiliation of America's youngest adults: the Millennials. On the other end Read More …
religious
Sermon: Look Again (#1280)
Sermon Text: Matthew 2:13-23 Sermon Excerpt Everyone loves Christmas, or do they? Just in time for Christmas this year the Pew Research Center released information about how we view the holiday. According to their latest survey, 92% of Americans celebrate Christmas, but there is considerable diversity when it comes to the basis of such celebrations: just over half (51%) celebrate it as more of a religious holiday, around a third (32%) celebrate it as more of a cultural Read More …
Christmas: Cultural or Religious? (#1276)
Just in time for Christmas, the Pew Research Center released information about how Americans view the holiday. While 92% of Americans celebrate Christmas, there is considerable diversity when it comes to the basis of such celebrations: 51% - more of a religious holiday, 32% - more of a cultural holiday, and 9% - both/other (which includes those who celebrate but did not comment on whether they felt it was more religious or cultural). So What? Notably there is a generational divide. Read More …
Learning from the Unaffiliated (#0908)
Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly recently featured Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity After Religion (my review), about the religious implications of the rise of the religiously unaffiliated. While there is diversity within the growing group of religiously unaffiliated, Butler Bass claims, " . . . an awful lot of people who are in the unaffiliated categories - people who are spiritual but not religious or people who consider themselves to maybe to be Read More …
Future Church – More Jesus-Centered (#0702)
Church v.2020 - Ten Changes: #6 More Jesus-Centered – Less Focused on Tradition When compared with the American church of 2012, the future church (v.2020) will be more Jesus-centered and less focused on tradition. This shift offers considerable hope for renewal within the church and growth from those who find its new emphasis appealing. While past efforts have tended toward extremes (e.g., Restoration movements on the right and the Jesus Seminar on the left) new quests will be Read More …
Spiritual or Religious or Both (#0488)
Bruce Reyes Chow is a consultant who served as founding pastor of Mission Bay Community Church, until May of this year, and was the former moderator of the General Assembly of the 2.3 million member PCUSA. He recently blogged about the importance of being both spiritual and religious. In the post, he notes that the number of people who think of themselves as spiritual but not religious continues to grow as has been captured by research, including that done by Read More …
The Most Religious Universities (#0468)
John Blake recently wrote a post for the CNN Belief blog about the results of the latest Princeton Review survey of college students. Specifically, he focused on how schools fared with respect to how their students answered a question about just how religious other students on campus are. Students responded to the question using a Likert (1 to 5) scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The top 5 schools with the "most religious students" are Brigham Young Read More …