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 …
Trends
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 …
What Students Think of Me (#1755)
A few weeks ago I shared some reflections on my life as an adjunct professor. Since writing that post, I've spent some time looking back over the last eight years. Student Evaluations In higher education, students are usually afforded the opportunity to evaluate their professors. In my case as an adjunct professor at Hodges University, my students were provided an opportunity to complete an optional online questionnaire near the end of the semester. These anonymous Read More …
7 New American Religious Types (#1753)
A few days ago the Pew Research Center published The Religious Typology: A New Way to Categorize Americans by Religion. For those not inclined to read the full 99 page report, Pew also provides an in-depth blog post that effectively communicates the main elements of the research. Research Basics Started in 2014, "The American Trends Panel (ATP), created by Pew Research Center, is a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults" who "participate via monthly Read More …
Changing Jobs For the 20th Time (#1748)
People change jobs. 1979 Frequent job changes are common today, but holding many jobs over the course of one's adult lifetime has actually been common for quite some time. While a snapshot of any given point in time is helpful, a longitudinal consideration of a given cohort across time paints a more complete picture of job changes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, which is a survey of nearly 10,000 men and Read More …
Celebrating 9 Years of So What Faith (#1744)
Earlier this week Facebook memories showed me that five years ago that day I had posted the following Marking a milestone - did you know that I have now written a blog post at least once a day for the last 1,000 days? So What Faith In June 2009, I launched this blog with the goal of writing about matters of faith that mattered to me. I assumed that this would be of interest to those in the congregation I served, and perhaps others. Stats and More Stats Over the last nine years, Read More …
America the Unique: Daily Prayer (#1741)
The Age Gap in Religion Around the World (Pew Research Center, June 2018) is packed with enough data to keep anyone interested in religious trends busy reading and pondering for quite some time. This new data supports the common claim that younger generations are less religious than elder both globally and in the United States. Of the 96 pages one captured my attention in a way the others did not. Page 21 (screenshot at right) offers a full page graphic showing the association Read More …