![]() A 2021 Gallup poll revealed another grim number for Christians: church membership in the US has fallen below 50% for the first time. Church attendance has rebounded recently but remains slightly below pre-pandemic levels. ![]() The Covid-19 pandemic also hurt the church in America. That same survey said the Christian majority in the US may disappear by 2070. That might sound like a lot, but 50 years ago that number was 90%, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study. Virtually every recent poll about Christianity in America has been brutal for its followers.Ībout 64% of Americans call themselves Christian today. If one only looks at the numbers, Slaughter’s optimism seems misguided. What’s happening in Europe is the church’s nightmare scenario “I’d never bet against American Christianity - particularly evangelicalism,” Slaughter says, “and its ability to adapt and remain a significant shaper of the American society.” Instead, Jefferson’s prophecy was followed by a series of revivals, including the Second Great Awakening, which swept across America and reasserted Christianity as a dominant force in American life. He pointed to Thomas Jefferson, one of the nation’s founding fathers, who predicted in the 1820s that Christianity would be replaced in the US by a more enlightened form of religion that rejected Jesus’ divinity and belief in miracles. Slaughter, a historian and assistant professor of religion at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, says people have been predicting the extinction of Christianity in the US for over two centuries, and it hasn’t happened yet.Ī sparsely attended Good Friday mass in Cologne, Germany, on April 2, 2021. They said the American church is poised to find new life for one major reason: Waves of Christians are migrating to the US.Īnd they said the biggest challenge to Christianity’s future in America is not declining numbers, but the church’s ability to adapt to this migration. Yet when CNN asked some of the nation’s top religion scholars and historians recently about the future of Christianity in the US, they had a different message. They say the American church is poised to follow the path of churches in Western Europe: soaring Gothic cathedrals with empty pews, shuttered church buildings converted into skate parts and nightclubs, and a secularized society where one theologian said Christianity as a norm is “probably gone for good - or at least for the next 100 years.” One symbolizes the tragic execution of Jesus while the other represents the Christian belief in his resurrection, and the claim that death does not have the final word on him or his followers.Īs millions of Americans celebrate the holiest day in the Christian calendar on Sunday, most will hear some variation of this Easter message - finding new life in unforeseen places.īut that message could also describe a surprising prediction about the future of Christianity in the US.įor years, church leaders and commentators have warned that Christianity is dying in America. ![]() Both Christian symbols are bookends to the Easter story.
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