
On April 1, 2000, the Census Bureau of the United States announced in their once per decade census that the population of the United States was 281,421,906. Today, based on the Census Bureau’s online Population Clock, the United States stands at 329,491,711 people. That is an increase of roughly 48,000,000. In percentages, the United States has grown about 17.1% over the past twenty years.
Church membership has dropped 20% over that same time period. Based on a Gallup poll conducted in 1999, about 70% of the population were members of specific churches. That number now stands at 50%.
Of note is that ALL of these numbers include synagogues and mosques, as well. Keep in mind, however, that only 9% of US residents report being either Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, or “Other Religion.” This means that the majority of the numbers shown here are either Protestant or Catholic.
With that being said, now let’s use those numbers to calculate the actual number of people who report as being church members. Using a 70% membership rate, there were approximately 197,000,000 people who were church members in 2000. Today, there are 165,000,000. That means that during a span of time where our population grew by 48,000,000, church membership declined by 32,000,000.
Said another way, if we were still at 70% church membership, over 230,000,000 people would be attendees of specific churches. We stand 65,000,000 short of that number now. That’s staggering.
The experts and pollsters say that there are reasons for this decline. People can watch church services online or on their smart televisions. People don’t really feel the need to associate with a church in the digital age. There has been an overall increase of 13% of Americans who do not claim any religion whatsoever. Those who are religious see no need to join a group of like-minded people in order to worship their chosen god because the mediums at which they can find like-minded people are endless.
I have a different opinion, and I’m well aware that it might not be a popular opinion. I think all of these things are true for different people, but I would add one. I say Christians are at least partly to blame for such a drastic decline in membership over the past twenty years.
The Politicalization of the Church
Rapid fire questions. Accept the first answer that comes to mind.
What political party is associated with church?
Does the First Amendment only really apply to Christianity?
Do you think Democrats are allowed to be Christians?
If a Mosque applied for a building permit and met all planning and zoning requirements, but it was going to be really close to your house, would you try to stop it from being approved?
Should the Bible be taught in homes and churches, or should we have Bible classes in public schools?
With only 50% of the population attending church, should the legality of abortion only be based on the views of Christians?
My answers: Republican. No. Of course. No. Homes and churches ONLY. No.
If you get a moment, go read Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, one of the first treaties the United States entered into with a foreign nation and signed by the second President of the United States, John Adams, a “Founding Father” and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. In order to insure that Tripoli (which is now Libya) would be comfortable with the way the treaty would be interpreted and enforced, the United States included the following phrase in Article 11 of the Treaty:
“The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
I can’t imagine how that sentence can be misinterpreted. When considered together with the religion clauses of the First Amendment and the originator of that treaty – a Founding Father – it is quite easy to determine that those who believe that solely Christian beliefs should impact the execution and administration of our laws are blatantly ignoring – or refusing to acknowledge and/or interpret impartially – the very documents that were instrumental in our foundation. But we see it ALL. THE. TIME. The staunchest of Christians believe biblical doctrine should be present in our laws, but that is precisely one of the religious persecutions from which our forefathers declared independence.
All of this brings me to reason number one why Christians are partly to blame for the decline of church membership in America. In a country whose citizens are free to worship as they please, why do Christians feel that only their religion should impact the laws? Said another way, because this is often how it feels even to fellow believers, many Christians are closed-minded bullies who think their way is the only way and all other ways are wrong.
The Condemnation of Other Human Beings
Ever heard a left winger bash Trump because “he’s not a real Christian” or something like that. You know, because it doesn’t matter what side you’re on, judging others is a requirement of religious hypocrisy. And NONE of us are innocent.
But the Bible is full of instances where Jesus washes away the sins of a wholly sinful man or uses a wretched person in some kind of parabolic way to show his power, holiness, or grace. In other words, he sure doesn’t act like a Christian, but it isn’t my job to judge his heart or beliefs, even when he drives me crazy with lies or meanness and I want to do exactly that. That’s why I say that none of us are innocent.
Ever heard a right winger say, “No Democrat could be a Christian since they defend murder?”
Do you have any idea how many babies God ordered killed in the Bible? Well, me neither because the question is too vague to actually answer. Technically God is responsible for death since he designed us, so you could argue that he’s killed about fifty billion people. You could also dig around and find out that he was directly accused of killing (or ordering their killing) of over three hundred thousand people in the Bible, a large number of which were infants and children.
I’m just Cliff Noting the Bible, folks. Don’t get pissed off at me.
So basically, since Republicans enable sinful leaders, that means God was a Republican, but because Democrats defend murder, that means God was a Democrat. And no, this example was not meant to be an argument about abortion or Trump, it was meant to be an argument about hypocrisy. And I’m pretty sure I did what I intended to do.
Which brings me to homosexuality. Once again, God is not given the chance to be the first and only judge in a gay person’s life. They are judged and condemned their entire lives by devout Christians, lazy Christians, fake Christians, pulpit Jesuses, and even Presbyterians.
Yet it’s the ONLY rule in the entire, nutty book of Leviticus that is followed, and Jesus never condemned a single gay person. He never even MENTIONED homosexuality.
This brings me to reason number two why Christians are partly to blame for why the Church in America is dying. It’s really, really hard to go to church with people who understand God and Jesus better than the Bible does.
The Unyielding Intolerance of Christianity
The ONLY way to heaven is through Jesus Christ, right? Well, what if somebody is completely convinced that there is a god because absolutely nothing makes sense unless somebody is responsible? And what if that same person really struggles when somebody tells him that he has to love Jesus Christ? What if he doesn’t understand how to love somebody he never met?
What you’re actually saying is that I will be denied heaven. The guy in that last paragraph is me. I struggle with personal relationships with pretty much everybody who is LIVING; you really think I’m going to be very successful with somebody I’ve never met?
What you’re saying is that the personality of every Christian must mirror that of the most heaven-bound among us. It is inconceivable, then, that I have spent my entire life struggling with what religion and Christianity mean in my life, but no matter what I do from this point forward, if I don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and if I can’t make sense of why everybody’s sins are washed away simply because a human being was crucified, resurrected, and ascended, then in your interpretation of the Bible, I don’t get to go to heaven.
So at this point in my life, I’m doing everything in my power to be a better man than I was yesterday, I’m trying to give back to a world I feel I have taken far too much from, and I do my damnedest to be selfless and giving and compassionate. On top of that, when I look at anything deeply enough, be it the flawlessness of the circulatory system or the beauty of stained wood grain or the breathtaking intricacies of my children’s eyes, I am absolutely certain that a higher power made it all. But I can’t go to heaven, can I?
That’s a really easy third reason why Christians are partly to blame for the decline of the church. It is exceedingly difficult to surrender to a religion that refuses to allow for a token amount of personal discovery and individualized worship in a book and religion that contains more contradictions and cherry-picked commands than a closet full of board game rule books summarized by a class of four year olds.
God made us all gloriously different. Do you really think He’s not willing to accept that?
Memes
Church membership in the United States hovered between 68% and 73% between the years 1938 and 1999. In other words, where statistical margins of error are concerned, church membership didn’t move for at least 61 years. Then Al Gore invented the interwebs and couch preachers the world over slowly began their plague of judgmental terror over the interworld.
Take, for instance, this gem:

Quite the ultimatum, isn’t it? First of all, I’m not sure who that man is in the picture, but there is very little chance that Jesus was white. I’m going to let that go for now, but you have to admit that the American assumption that he was white has ZERO biblical evidence. Every piece of evidence imaginable says that Jesus looked pretty much like present day Middle Easterners.
Let’s look at another one:

He already saw me read it? Seriously? What is our response supposed to be when we read this? Are we supposed to think, “Oh snap!! You’re right!! Jesus watches me do EVERYTHING. I guess I just wonder why he cares about these ridiculously meaningless memes when they didn’t exist for 2,000 years.”
And then you get the pics of Westboro Baptist Church, a group of people so batshit crazy that the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance have thoroughly condemned them, but for some reason have allowed them to continue to use the word “Baptist” in their name. Unless there are no legal copyright ramifications, my only guess is that they’re so terrified of the church’s members that they just don’t say anything.
I mean, their website is godhatesfags.com, for God sakes. Don’t you just want to invite this guy over for Sunday lunch?

But let’s focus this on the memes. There are memes about homosexuality, abortion, prayer in schools, heaven and hell, how you MUST love Jesus, why Democrats can’t be Christian, why Trump isn’t a Christian, and many that are the complete opposite of that….

Seriously, I could care less if you think Trump believes in God, his money, women, or whether he actually considers HIMSELF a god. I simply do not care what you believe. The beauty of the good ole USofA is that you get to believe whatever the heck you want. But imagine a person like me or the millions of people out there that grew up in church and maybe still go often, but to us, our ability and understanding of our own beliefs is something that is still – and perhaps always will be – somewhat malleable and ever changing. For us, it will always be a journey with no real destination, and that’s okay with us.
Do you honestly think a meme that purports Jesus as having interfered in our elections is going to have unsaved souls flocking to the altar? Do you also think Jesus was pissed at the people who voted for Hillary? Does that even remotely make sense? If so, you’re saying that Jesus interfered in an election that had millions of people (including me) standing in a voting booth saying, “Are you kidding me? THIS is the best this country has to offer? I have to choose from two people I wouldn’t trust to lead a high school knitting club?”
But in THAT election, Jesus interfered? Do you see why I struggle to want to sit in pews on Sunday morning beside people that shared that meme the night before? I’m not the least bit saying that evangelicals didn’t have a say so in the outcome of the election – they absolutely did – but don’t pervert the objectives of Jesus to make them fit nicely into a political narrative. You actually have absolutely NO idea what he is doing, thinking, planning, grieving, or rejoicing at any point past, present, or future. Using your personal human assumptions to predict what God or Jesus would say or do about something is called blasphemy. Please look it up.
It boils down to this. Jesus memes, God memes, abortion memes, homosexual memes, judgmental memes, and all the other memes that are pro-Jesus/God/etc are not made to win souls to Jesus. They are meant to condemn or belittle those who do not agree with them, and they do a great job of it.
Think about it this way. What if you know a person whose best friend just came out as gay, and the next day he was considering visiting your church? Well that night, you share a judgmental or condemnable meme about homosexuals, and your acquaintance that was thinking of visiting your church decided it wasn’t the right place, and maybe because of your influence, maybe church wasn’t going to be right for him because he wanted nothing more than to support his friend. Being around people who hated homosexuals was probably not the right place for him.
Can you see why maybe memes have a way of supplying some aid toward that declining church membership?
Conclusion
I didn’t write this with the intention of calling out believers for doing something with which I don’t agree. I’m doing nothing more than stating an opinion from one believer to however many choose to read this. You’re free to listen or ignore me.
But you know what the best sermons in church usually are? They’re the ones where the preacher steps on a bunch of toes and you go home and say, “Yeah, it hurt, but the preacher was right; I need to make some changes.”
Whether you want to believe it or not, the percentage of people in this country that claim no religion whatsoever went from 8% to 21% in just twenty years. There is more to blame there than a bunch of people choosing to “do” church online. That’s nearly 43,000,000 additional people in twenty years saying, “Nah, I’m good with no religion.” Christians (and their most outspoken leaders) are at least partly to blame for that, and that should be embarrassing and unacceptable to a church who throughout my most religious years was more interested in winning souls for God than condemning them.
Now I’m not a preacher, and mine is but one opinion, but I do hope I stepped on a few toes. Church membership in the United States would benefit if that hurt just a little.
Denton,
Another insightful, thought-provoking blog as usual. I have many questions about religion and many doubts about organized religion. Thank you for putting them into words.
I had to read it twice to wrap my head around it all.
I’m going to stop calling myself a Christian. If you are one, people think about as much of you as they do a child rapist. Thanks