Is Christianity Still Declining in the U.S.?

In February, the Pew Research Center published some findings from their 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study survey that asks a random sample of Americans many questions about religious participation, family life, religious switching (switching religious groups), and more.

One of the notable findings from their survey is that the percentage of Americans who report a Christian affiliation has held steady in the 2020s after a slow but steady decline in the 2010s. This is an important marker of religiosity in the U.S. because Christianity has always been the most prominent religious tradition in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who report no religious affiliation--called the "Nones"-- has also remained about the same in the last few years after a slow but steady increase.

Go to the webpage for their report here. and skim their summary of the findings.

It will take years before researchers can determine if a temporary trend or if this reflects a kind of stabilization in American religiosity, but there are some indications that the stabilization is real. For example, during the 2020s the percentage of Americans who say that they pray daily has been steady at about 44-46%, and the percentage of Americans who say that they attend church monthly has also been steady in the low 30s.

At the same time, there are some indications that American religiosity will continue to decline by some measures. Younger Americans are less likely to identify as religious or as Christian than older Americans.

What do you think about these trends? Do you think religion has stabilized in the U.S.? Or do you think that this is a temporary pause from an otherwise long-run decrease in American religious? Or do you think the opposite, i.e., that American religiosity has come close to its low point and that it will eventually go back up?

What reasons can you give to support your stance?

Inviting Someone to Church

How religious beliefs and preferences form is an important question in the academic and scientific study of religion. In this class we have talked about several ways to think about the formation of beliefs and preferences, and one of the most prominent is cultural transmission that occurs along multiple dimensions. You are most familiar with vertical transmission (parent-to-child), but for many religious groups horizontal transmission (peer-to-peer) is just as important or even more important.

One way to study horizontal transmission is to measure how often people invite someone to attend a religious meeting with them. A recent article in Christianity today discusses one study of American Protestants propensity to invite others to church.

According to this study, about 60% of American Protestants who attend church have invited at least one person to attend with them during the six months prior to the survey. About 20% made two invitations during that time, and 20% also made three or more invitations.

Read the article to learn who are the people most likely to extend invitations, how the extending of invitations varies across age groups, and more.

These invitations generate create potential for a lot of horizontal cultural transmission! Of course, not all invitations are accepted, so this is very much a numbers game. The larger the number of invitations extended, the larger the number of invitations accepted even if the percentage of acceptances is low. This is all the more reason why a religious group that wants to grow should encourage its members to extend invitations.

Catholic Priest Shortage in Dublin

Dublin, Ireland has historically had a large Catholic population. That is still true today, but that does not mean that the Catholic Church in Dublin is without its share of challenges. One that recently made headlines is that there is currently only one man studying to enter the Catholic priesthood in Dublin--see the article here.

It is already well known that the Catholic Church is dealing with a shortage of priests in many areas, and Dublin in no exception. There are many factors that contribute to the shortage, and many of them center on the relatively high opportunity cost of being a priest. For example, the financial compensation is limited, and you cannot be married or have children. As a result, by becoming a priest, a young man must give up the pursuit of a financially rewarding career and an emotionally rewarding family life. And notice that I referred to a young "man," because women are not allowed to become priests, a policy that immediately eliminates half of the potential candidates.

In standard economic theory, when a market has a shortage of supply, then the price of the good in that market will increase which eventually leads to a shifting of resources from supplying goods in other markets into the market with the shortage. The market for Catholic priests could, in principle, see a similar development, with the pay for Catholic priests going up to entice more men to enter the priesthood. However, there are opposing forces that work against this solution. For example, the low financial compensation is seen to be a key aspect of being a priest and is seen as a signal of commitment. Also, by raising the compensation, the church might then have men join the priesthood for the money instead of a sense of religious duty. This is an instance of the low pay acting as a kind of screening device that allows them to identify the most committed men and thus the best priest candidates.

Instead of raising pay, the church could instead lower the cost of being a priest by allowing them to be married. This would effectively raise the non-paycheck benefits of being a priest, thereby serving a similar purpose. But this solution is also not without problems because it would the low financial compensation may make it difficult to provide for a family even with a working marriage partner. It also requires changing a policy that has been in place for years and that has its own religious justifications even though there were married priests long ago in the church's history.

Without being able to boost the supply of priests, the Catholic parishes (congregations) in Dublin are responding as best as they can. In some cases, a shortage of priests requires the combining of congregations or the establishment of new forms of worship (see the article). Another response is to shift duties that used to be performed by the priest to other volunteers. These types of adjustments will be necessary if the priest shortage continues.

How do you Identify the Most Religious Place in the World?

On Friday last week, the Pew Research Center released a short article that asks “What is the most religious place in the world?” Read the full here article and learn how they go about answering the question.

One answer to the question could be Africa. Survey respondents on the African continent consistently report that religion is very important in their lives and that they pray at high frequencies.

However, there are other possible answers.

One of those other possible answer is to say that Indonesia—which is obviously not in Africa—-is the most religious place in the world. Indonesia, which is not in Africa, is tied with Senegal, which is in Africa, for the highest percentage of residents that report religion is very important—a massive 98%. But Indonesia is also alone in first place with 98% of residents reporting that they pray daily; Senegal is in third place with less than 90%.

But another answer that a researcher is likely to give you is that it depends on how you measure religion. This is the most honest answer even if it is the most frustrating answer. Prayer might be a very important type of activity for some forms of religion but not for others, and it is inappropriate to treat frequency of prayer as a key measure of religiosity in settings where the main form of religion does not emphasize it.

This last point is one of the big takeaways from the article, so be sure you read to the end to see how the Pew Research Center plans to address this challenge of comparing religiosity across settings.

Religion at the Olympics

A recent article published by The Guardian offers some reasons why many Olympic athletes are publicly referencing their religious beliefs.

One key passage:

Research by Christians in Sport, an organisation that provides pastoral support to elite athletes, shows a marked rise in the integration of faith and sport in the past two decades. One of the key drivers is society’s shift towards protecting and respecting religious identities of all kinds. Sport likes to position itself as a champion of inclusivity, even if it doesn’t always deliver on its promises. But the visibility and acceptance of faith practices at a professional level is growing as the industry becomes increasingly globalised and diverse.

Read the article and think about how acceptance of religious pluralism and changes in government regulations on religion play a role in this trend. We will discuss religious regulations in more detail later in the class, but for now you should ask yourself how the economic way of thinking can help you think in an organized way about this topic.

Religious Publishing in the U.S.

The world of religion has competition at many margins. The most recent post on this blog was about how religious activities compete with other activities for people's time. This post is about a recent opinion piece at Religion News Service about competition in the religious publishing industry in the U.S. The author is Anna Piela, an American Baptist Church minister and scholar.

As the article explains, religious publishing has a long history in the U.S. The first Bible printed in the U.S. was actually a translation into a Native American language in 1663! Christian publishing grew tremendously in the latter part of the 20th century, and even though it has declined in recent decades, it is still an $820 million/year industry.

Religious books are published by large publishing companies but also--and this is what makes religious publishing unique--by religious denominations themselves. Denominational publishing houses print religious materials for religious instruction, music, and other topics and, depending on the denomination, provide for free or sell them to congregations or to church members directly. Having printed materials is vital for religious groups because they are a key tool in the promotion of religious teachings among children and youth and for proselytizing.

But it seems that the rise of Amazon has brought new challenges for the publishing industry. For example, Amazon has made it more difficult for brick-and-mortar bookstores to succeed. That reduces opportunities for religious groups to advertise and promote their books, not just because secular bookstores with a little space for religious book have closed but also because many religiously-themed bookstores have also closed.

Read the article to see other challenges faced by religious publishers identified by the author.

Religious publishers will need to find ways to adapt so that they can stay competitive, but do not doubt that they will. Religious groups in a competitive setting like the U.S. have always needed to adapt to stay competitive, so that is not new.

Religion and the Allocation of Time in America

Every year the U.S. Census Bureau conducts a national survey, called the American Time Use Survey, in which they collect data on how people spend their time throughout the day. It is an important survey for researchers in economics and other social sciences because its unique data allows them to study a large variety of research questions.

The most recent Time Use Survey (2023) reveals some interesting facts. For example, on average Americans spend:

• 9.84 hours/day on personal care and sleep.
• 1.20 hours/day and drinking.
• 1.92 hours/day doing household activities.
• 0.66 hours/day shopping.

You can see some summary charts here, but more better details are in some published tables here. It is there that you can get specific information about time spent in religious activities.

The civilian population 15 years and older spend, on average, about 0.11 hours/day on "religious activities." That is about 6.6 minutes per day. About 60% of that time is spent "attending religious services," and the other 40% is spent "participating in religious practices."

The average time spent on religious activities per day is higher for women (0.14 hours) than men (0.09 hours), which is consistent with the standard finding that women are more religious than men in the U.S.

Though of course there is some variance across people with some spending a lot of time and others spending no time on religious activities. For those who participate in religious activities, the average amount of time spent in religious activities is 1.50 hours/day.

Here's a table with a few comparisons:

Activity	Avg hrs/day, entire population	Avg hrs/day, participants only
Religious and spiritual activities	0.11	1.50
Volunteering	0.10	2.11
Socializing and communicating	0.57	1.96
Relaxing and leisure	4.00 (TV= 2.67)	4.51 (TV = 3.62)
Sports, exercise, and recreation	0.34	1.57
Telephone (calls, mail, email)	0.16	0.90

On the surface, the numbers for religious and spiritual activities seem small compared to the other non-work, not-sleep categories in the table. But keep in mind that a lot volunteering may be religiously-motivated or organized through religious groups, some time spent socializing or playing sports may be with members of one's congregation, and communication may also be with other religious group members. So even if time spent on direct religious practice seems small, there are many activities that have a religious dimension even if not labelled as such in the survey.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of activities that vie for people's limited time, and religious groups are always competing not just with other religious groups but also the many other non-religious "distractions" in life. In fact, it might be the little decisions about religion that people face every day that really determine the value and impact of religion in their lives.

Here are some questions for you to think about:

• Which non-religious activities pose the largest threats to religious activities?
• How do you think the cost and benefits of these non-religious activities has changed in recent years?
• How do you think the answer to the above question might depend on your age?

Resolution of a Long-standing Conflict in the United Methodist Church

For the last several years, the United Methodist Church (UMC) has been dealing with internal divisions over several matters of church policy, particularly on issues related to same-sex marriage and gay clergy. Resolving the internal conflict was delayed due the COVID-19 pandemic, but a process was put in place for congregations dissatisfied with the removal of restrictions against same-sex marriage and gay clergy to officially leave the church. During the last three years, a quarter of the UMC's congregations left the denomination, some joining a new denomination (the Global Methodist Church), some joining other Methodist denominations, and some staying independent. This resulted in a dramatic loss in the number of members in the UMC during the last few years, and it contributed to decades-long trend in UMC membership decline.

With the departures of those who opposed same-sex marriage and gay clergy, the remaining individuals and leaders faced little opposition to make official changes to church policy, and these changes were officially voted in earlier this month at their General Conference. (see here and here). This resolves a long-standing conflict in the UMC that has been touched on in several posts on this blog since 2020 (see here, here, here, and here).

This latest development was expected because so many of its opponents had left and were no longer present to prevent it, but it is still a historic development for the UMC. The removal of restrictions against same-sex marriage and gay clergy was hailed as a giant victory by some in the church but criticized as the most recent instance of straying farther from scriptural guidance for others. But whichever side of the issue a person finds themselves, it was a big change for what was once one of the largest denominations in the U.S.A.

This change is a clear reduction in the strictness of the UMC, and our economic approach predicts that this change will not help the UMC to reverse it long-run membership decline. Removing restrictions against same-sex marriage and gay clergy removes one of the remaining differences between the UMC and other mainline denominations that had already made similar accommodations. AS a result, the UMC is as similar to the other mainline denominations than it has ever been in its history, and that means that it will be more difficult than before to convince potential members of the UMC's uniqueness and value.

People inside and out of the UMC can debate whether the development was right or wrong, and that is a matter for which our economic approach cannot directly help. However, our economic approach does suggest that it will now be more difficult than ever for the UMC to claim any advantages over other mainline churches when competing for members. We should expect that the UMC's membership decline will continue apace and that what was once one of the largest denominations in the U.S.A. will not regain its once-dominant position in the American religious marketplace.