More Nones

Not long after posting my piece on Australia, I ran into a news item from York County, PA: not only has church membership declined there in the past 10 years, the decline has considerably exceeded the national average. 14% as against 2%. The ELCA, which had been the largest denomination there, lost almost nine thousand members, or over 20%, making them less numerous than the Catholics who only lost two thousand. Presbyterians and UCC also suffered large losses percentagewise; Methodists aren’t doing quite so badly, more in the same range as the Catholics.

Conservatives may say all those liberal denominations are losing because they’ve lost touch with the Biblical roots of their faith and thus alienated most of their adherents; but in fact Southern Baptists are down also, and as I’ve noted before, the more conservative Lutheran denominations aren’t doing much better than ELCA.

All these numbers are from ARDA, the Association of Religion Data Archives; they’re all available online, so you can pick your favorite county or denomination or whatever and track its growth or decline over the past 30 years.

What I want to know is what, if anything, is special about York County. I know that it’s in a part of the state where overall population is growing somewhat; that’s about it. Someday I’ll have to go through the ARDA database and check out all the neighboring counties, then look up what else is happening there, politically, economically etc.

Meanwhile I’ll close with this: the article quotes a church spokesman as saying, “These people have not stopped practicing over any serious doctrinal disagreement… mostly, they stopped attending out of habit.” I think this is probably true to some extent; but the opposite side of the coin is that their former attendance didn’t imply any serious doctrinal agreement either; it too was largely out of habit, and the same is true of most of those who still attend.

News from the Progressive Christian front

First, what is being described as a “kerfuffle” (love that word) over the rejection of an ad by Sojourners Magazine. Sojourners is the vehicle of Jim Wallis, widely acclaimed as the country’s most prominent “progressive evangelical.” That is, theologically conservative but progressive on most political issues, especially those involving poverty and social justice. Sex and gender not so much. So when a group called “Believe Out Loud” attempted to place an ad in Sojourners calling on churches to welcome all kinds of family on Mothers’ Day, and the magazine rejected it, some observers professed not to be surprised at all.

Wallis wrote to defend the rejection as based not on any substantive disagreement with the cause of equality and inclusion but simply a desire not to get involved in a controversy “not… at the core of our calling.”  This of course inflamed matters further. Subscriptions are reportedly being cancelled, perhaps a significant number. Here are a few  comments gathered from cyberspace: these from Episcopal Cafe and Religion Dispatches reflect the sense of many progressive Christians that it was a mistake all along to let Wallis be perceived as their spokesman; while over on the Atheist side, Hemant Mehta speaks for those who see this as one more bit of proof that Christianity is just not worth trying to save.

Meanwhile: reports are being tweeted that the Presbyterian Church (USA) now has enough votes to ratify an amendment to their constitution deleting heteronormative language (“the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman… or chastity in singleness”) from the requirements for ministerial office. The necessary 87th vote – from the Twin Cities presbytery – apparently came in within the past hour or so. (There’s been a net shift of at least 15 presbyteries in favor, compared with previous votes on the question.)  It seems likely that there will be defections by more conservative elements in the denomination, as with the Episcopalians and ELCA, which will make the progressive/inclusive tendency even stronger among those who remain.