Worldwide slightly more than 1 in 10 Christians live in the United States. As of 2015, there were 2,276,250,000 Christians with 248,148,00 (or 10.9%) residing in the United States. Perspective While a higher percentage of people in some other large nations are Christian (e.g., 88.5% in Brazil), the United States is home to more Christians than any other nation. More than 3 out of 4 Americans (76.9%) are Christian. So What? Yesterday much of the focus on American Read More …
Trends
Current Issues & Church (#1780)
According to a recent Public Religion Research Institute survey of adults who attend religious services at least once or twice a month, most people never hear clergy speak about current issues from the pulpit. More specifically, the percentage who have heard clergy speak about a given current issue is Immigration: 32%Homosexuality: 42%Abortion: 45% So What? Something is wrong when the church is silent about current issues. People should not be able to regularly attend worship Read More …
Majority of UCC Congregations Worship 50 or Fewer (#1778)
The percentage of all congregations in the United Church of Christ with average worship attendance of 50 people or less has been increasing since 2000. During that time the percentage nearly doubled from a little more than 1 in 4 congregations (27.8%) to 1 in 2 (50.9%). During the same time period, the largest congregations in the United Church of Christ (average worship attendance of 400+) declined from 1 in 50 (1.9%) to 1 in 200 (0.6%). So What? The dual trends within the Read More …
Spiritually Vital Congregations (#1776)
Is spiritual vitality the same across denominations and even religions or does it look differently within each of these contexts? Common Ground According to the Faith Communities Today American Congregations 2018 report titled Vital Congregations, there is significant overlap in what makes a faith community a spiritually vital congregation. Authored by Linda Bobbitt, creator and manager of the Congregational Vitality Project, this new research builds on the Faith Read More …
Public Perception – Clergy Ethics at All-Time Low (#1770)
Eight years ago I wrote about how clergy fared in an annual Gallup survey on the American public's views of the honesty and ethical standards of a variety of occupations. In 2010, I noted that "clergy ranked 7th among the professions surveyed. Just over half (53%) of all respondents rated the honesty and ethics of clergy as high or very high." From the start of the poll in the 1970s till 2010 the percentage of those rating clergy honesty and ethics as Read More …
Top 10 Posts of All Time (#1769)
I started So What Faith back in 2009, and added Google analytics to the site in 2013. Based on data gathered from 2013 to present the top all time posts are Pastoral Prayer - Love (2014) Prayers of the People - Youth Sunday (2009) 12 Marks of Convergence Christianity (2012) My Visit to Next Level Church (2012) Valentine's Expectations (2013) Leaders Clear Obstacles (2015) Pulpit Plagiarism (2014) Review of Not a Fan (2011) Theology on Tap (2011) The Immigrants Creed Read More …
Top 5 Posts of 2018 (#1768)
2018 has been a year of new beginnings for me. The year began with my family moving into a new home. As the year progressed other major changes followed including two that appear in this year's list of top blog posts (selected based on total number of views this calendar year): Top 10 Books of 2018 (December) Book Recommendations - May 2018 (May) Now Open (March) Book Recommendations - July 2018 (July) My Year of Social Enterprise (July) So What? This year's list Read More …
Who Finds Meaning in Religion? (#1765)
What makes for a meaningful, fulfilling or satisfying life? In an attempt to answer this question, Pew Research Center conducted two surveys late last year. The first survey utilized open ended questions while the second leveraged forced-choice questions using a list of 15 possible sources. Family First In the open-ended survey nearly 7 out of 10 respondents (69%) mentioned family. This finding was consistent with the closed-ended survey result of those claiming that Read More …
6 Decades of Decline in the United Church of Christ (#1761)
The United Church of Christ (UCC) was formed in 1957 as the result of the union of two Protestant denominations: the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches. In 1957 the UCC included 8,283 congregations with 2,193,593 members. Every decade since the formation has featured a decline in both total congregations and total members (statistical data sourced from the Fall 2018 edition of United Church of Christ: A Statistical Profile) Declining Read More …
More and More Clergywomen (#1760)
"State of Clergywomen in the US: A Statistical Update," published earlier this month, finds that clergywomen continue have grown from 2.3% of all clergy in the United States in 1960 to 20.7% in 2016. Such growth, however, has not been equal across all traditions. Top Traditions The denominations with the greatest percentage of clergywomen are Unitarian Universalist - 57% United Church of Christ - 50% Disciples of Christ - 40% Episcopal - 37% Evangelical Lutheran Read More …