Mass exodus

The 2023-2024 Pew Religious Landscape Study has given us a lot to talk about. The headline takeaways are that Christianity continues to decline in the United States, but at a slower pace than anticipated. Secondly, the study shows that more conservative elements of American Christianity are holding steady, whereas liberal Christianity is dying outright. These are important points that, while not unequivocally “good news,” still defy many common talking points about the state of conservative Christianity and evangelicalism.

The study also gives us one more discourse correction. Roman Catholicism is not thriving in America. Apart from gains from immigration, the Catholic Church is following the same path as the Protestant mainline. It’s losing members at a dramatic pace.

The Pew study shows that American Christianity’s biggest source of decline comes from within. It is not doing a good job at retaining its own members. For every adult who joins a Christian church, six leave. But when we take a closer look, this problem is disproportionately coming from one particular Christian tradition: Roman Catholicism. Whereas Protestantism, including both evangelical and mainline varieties, loses 1.8 members compared to every new addition, Roman Catholicism loses 8.4. That’s an astounding rate of loss.

This internal decline shows up in a number of ways. Religious data analyst Ryan Burge points out that weekly attendance at Mass has gone down for about a century, with millennials 50% less likely to attend each week than were those Catholics who fought in World War II. Simply put, young Catholics don’t go to church as much as their parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents.

Another bad sign for U.S. Catholics is that, contrary to the stereotypes, they aren’t even having that many kids. Despite their divergent teachings on the subject, Catholics and Protestants have the same rate of fertility. Compared to evangelical Protestants, the Catholic rate is slightly lower. Once again, we can see that U.S. Catholicism is not a growing church.

What about those high-profile Protestant converts to Catholicism? Doesn’t this signal a larger spiritual movement? No. While it is true that certain academics and media personalities have left their Protestant churches for Roman Catholicism, the national statistics still point in the opposite direction. Only 2% of Americans who were raised Protestant are now Catholic, whereas 14% of childhood Catholics are now Protestant. While good for the headlines, conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism are blips on the national map.

If Roman Catholicism is not outbreeding other traditions, and if it is neither picking up a substantial number of converts nor retaining its own members, then what accounts for its “relatively stable” polling? How is it that the overall percent of Americans who identify as Roman Catholic is down only two points from 2014? Immigration. Forty-three percent of Roman Catholics in America are either immigrants or the children of immigrants. Thirty-six percent are Hispanics. This is the reason that Catholicism has not fully collapsed in our country. Were it not for immigrants bringing their Catholicism with them, the Catholics would look like the Episcopalians.

This is important for correcting certain common narratives within American Christianity. Despite the triumphalist claims of “high church” movements, the Catholic Church is not gaining more and more new members. (For the curious, Eastern Orthodoxy’s numbers are still so small as to hardly register on the survey.) And within Protestant churches, it is the conservative evangelicals, and especially non-denominational ones, who are seeing the most growth.

We can also see that the greatest threat to the Church in America, across all denominational lines, is the loss of its own young people. If we could keep our kids, then Christianity would be thriving here.

This easy observation does not come with as an easy solution, of course. Conversion of the heart is the work of the Holy Spirit. There is no technique that can guarantee multi-generational fidelity. Still, if we look at how the ordinary means of grace given to us by Christ are currently being used, we can learn a good deal. The Pew study polled Americans about their spiritual life at home, in addition to whether they attended worship services.

When asked if parents pray or read Scripture with their children, the numbers were quite divergent. Only 44% of Catholic parents said that they pray or read the Scripture with their children. Mainline Protestant parents are worse, with only 41%. But for evangelicals, the number is 72%. Evangelicals also registered higher when it comes to Sunday school and religious education throughout the week. This appears to be one of the more decisive elements for spiritual durability among Christian traditions, and it is one that parents can take and put into practice. Making religion real bears real fruit.

The Catholic Church’s membership drop is not unique. There’s nothing inherent to Catholicism that should cause it to fail in modern America. Rather, its problem is the same that so many other churches have had in America. It’s not sticking. Christian parents are not imparting their faith to their children. They are not personally investing themselves in the daily lives of their children. The Sunday religion is not permeating the home. In the absence of this basic family discipleship, the unbelief of modern American life will take over.

But for those Christians who do diligently teach their children at home and as they walk by the way, as they lie down and as they rise up (Deuteronomy 6:7), then the future is bright. God’s Word does not return void.