The Presbyterian Church (USA) or PCUSA has been in the news more this past week than any time this year. The denomination officially amended its constitution earlier this year to allow gays and lesbians to serve as ministers and lay leaders. Last Saturday, the Rev. Scott Anderson was ordained as the denomination's first openly gay pastor. He told CNN: "It's an exciting time for me personally to be the first openly gay person ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and Read More …
Trends
Evangelicals Don’t Have a Pope (#0514)
Roger Olson is an evangelical scholar who serves as Professor of Theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University. Recently he blogged about a troubling trend: news reports that don't put their stories in context. Olson focuses on a prominent evangelical pastor in Texas who stated that Evangelicals must not vote for Presidential candidates who are Mormon, because Mormonism is a cult. Many of the reports failed to include details about how Read More …
More & More Multi-Generational Households (#0513)
The Pew Research Center recently released "Fighting Poverty in a Tougher Economy, Americans Move in with Their Relatives." The report considers how the Great Recession has influenced household composition. Over the last few years, more and more people have opted to live in multi-generational households as a means of handling economic pressures. A longer term look at household composition shows that the percentage of those living in multi-generational households declined Read More …
Why America Is and Isn’t Unusually Religious (#0511)
Tobin Grant, associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, recently wrote an article for Christianity Today about the unique nature of American religiosity. In that piece, he noted that the United States continues to be quite religious while most other developed countries have become increasingly secular. Upon deeper review, ongoing American religiosity is not an aberration but a logical outcome resulting from our unusually high level of economic Read More …
Do Church Members View Your Website? (#0508)
In the July/August 2011 edition of Presbyterians Today, Joelle Anderson and Ida Smith-Williams wrote an article about trends in how Presbyterian congregations communicate digitally. They reported on research that shows a significant increase, between 2001 and 2008, in the percentage of congregations who use e-mail and websites to communicate with members. So What? While congregations have moved toward websites, perhaps congregants have moved beyond them. More specifically, Read More …
Save Me on TV? (#0507)
Reality programs have changed the makeup of television offerings. This seemingly ever-expanding segment of the market is incredibly diverse. With that framework in mind, it should not be surprising that someone is pitching the idea of a show called "Save Me!" "Save Me!" has been characterized as being something like "The 700 Club" meets "Real Time with Bill Maher" meets "Big Brother." The show is the idea of self-proclaimed "spiritual anthropologist" Jim Henderson, who Read More …
Liberal Protestant Decline – Fact Check (#0506)
Yesterday, I wrote a review of Mark Chaves' new book American Religion: Contemporary Trends (2011). In that post, I included a quote that offers a basic overview of something most people take for granted: the decline of liberal Protestant churches over the last several decades. As a result of this shift, there were twice as many Americans who "claimed affiliation with conservative denominations as with theologically more liberal ones" (p. 87). Chaves goes on to Read More …
Review of American Religion (#0505)
Meet the Author Mark Chaves is professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University. In addition to teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, Chaves directs the National Congregations Study. He is the author of three books: American Religion: Contemporary Trends (2011), Congregations in America (2004), and Ordaining Women: Culture and Conflict in Religious Organizations (Harvard, 1997). While most of his Read More …
American Congregations Are Weaker (#0501)
Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor, recently wrote about the experiences of American faith communities during the first decade of the new millennium. His article focuses on The Hartford Institute for Religion Research recently released report titled "A Decade of Change in American Congregations, 2000 – 2010," which was authored by David A. Roozen. Among the findings: Forty-seven percent of congregations that said their worship experience was "innovative Read More …
Should Religion and Business Mix? (#0500)
When I was a young adult, I learned that religion and business were independent spheres. Since that time, I have, thankfully, learned that any such division is necessarily artificial. One does not cease being guided by one's faith because one enters the marketplace any more than one is only guided by it while on the campus of her or his religious gathering space (e.g. mosque, synagogue, church, etc.) or in some other space set aside for religious purposes. A person must, Read More …