Americans' confidence in religion has been declining for decades. According to the latest Gallup poll, religious confidence has reached an all-time low. So What? Comparing the responses from 1975 to those of 2012 offers a sense of the significance of the shift: % of Americans with “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in “the church or organized religion" Then: 68% Now: 44% Rank on the list of 16 organizations included in the poll Then: #1 Now: #4 Read More …
Trends
Saving Liberal Christianity (#0797)
Earlier this week, my post "Can Christianity Be Saved" considered Ross Douthat’s July 14, 2102, New York Times editorial “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?,” and Diana Butler Bass's reply later that same day on the Huffington Post. During the course of the week I returned to the topic in online and in person conversations. The most encouraging part of the dialogue was the shared understanding about three interelated matters: There is a real Read More …
Continuing Decline in Church Construction (#0782)
The following image illustrates the dramatic decline in total religious construction spending in the United States since 2002. So What? The amount spent on construction has trended downward for the last decade. While a slowdown during a recession is expected, this is something far more significant. This year's religious construction expenditures are on pace to be less than 50% of what was spent in 2002. Many church budgets are flat or declining and many have halted all Read More …
A Holy Bible or Kindle? (#0781)
Thanks largely to the work of the Gideons International, travelers normally find a copy of the Bible in their hotel rooms. The Hotel Indigo Newcastle, one of InterContinental Hotel Group's boutique-style Hotel Indigo locations, recently announced a new approach: Kindle. More specifically, "all 148 rooms at the Hotel Indigo will contain a Kindle e-reader pre-loaded with a copy of the Bible . . . Guests are also permitted to download a copy of any other religious Read More …
Goodbye Facebook – Hello Twitter (#0775)
People's social media usage habits while working are changing. According to the latest research by Palo Alto Networks, during the last six months (November 2011 to May 2012) the percentage of time workers spent on social networking sites shifted: Facebook: down 17% (from 54% to 37%) Twitter: up 10% (from 11% to 21%) Tumblr: up 9% (from 1% to 10%) So What? In only six months, the percentage of time people spent using Twitter at work doubled and the percentage of time they spent Read More …
What’s Killing Us? (#0773)
This past weekend I encountered a blog post that shared the leading causes of death in 1900 and in 2010 according to a recent piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. In 1900, five causes of death claimed at least 100 people per every 100,000: pneumonia or influenza: 202.2 tuberculosis: 194.4 gastrointestinal infections: 142.7 heart disease: 137.4 cerebrovascular disease: 106.9 By 2010 only two causes of death claimed at least 100 people per every 100,000: heart Read More …
From .org to .church? (#0770)
The continued growth of the internet means that if nothing changed we would run out of unique web addresses. Thankfully, those responsible for ensuring we can all continue to create new sites have solved this problem with something called IPv6. Earlier this month the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICAN started accepting applications from companies seeking new domain suffixes that included .apple, .google, and .church. So What? Most congregations now have Read More …
American Belief in God (#0767)
Americans have long been some of the world's most religious people. Wayne Baker, sociologist on the senior faculty of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, recently blogged about research that confirms America remains near the top of the list of countries when it comes to the percentage of people who believe strongly in God without any doubts. More specifically, of the 30 countries included in the International Social Survey Program, the United States Read More …
Considerable Complexity – Social Marketing (#0761)
Many congregations are rethinking how they spend their limited marketing/advertising dollars. In most cases less and less money is allocated for print (phone book, direct mail, etc.) in order to free up additional funds for new media. While this shift seems logical, the next steps are far less clear. One of the troublesome aspects of entering this new arena is the considerable complexity of social marketing. The graphic below, from Buddy Media, illustrates this quite Read More …
Most Seniors Now Online (#0759)
It's official: most American adults age 65 or older are now online. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project those age 65 and older are online more now than ever before: 53% use the internet or email (April 2012) 34% use social networking & 18% do so on a typical day (February 2012) So What? While usage rates are higher among the younger the population, the percentage of those in older age cohorts using the internet has continued to increase. Another Pew Read More …