Christians and Christmas in 2010: A Survey [28]

THE Monday, December 20, 2010 edition of USA Today published an article by Cathy Lynn Grossman that discussed the results of a couple of recent surveys conducted by LifeWay Research, a Christian research organization, and another by USA Today/Gallup. The results were very interesting and to Christians, at least. a might disappointing. I present them here, with my spin on them, to elicit what I hope will be some interesting back-and-forth in the ensuing comments.

The Results; at least at the time the polls were taken. Let me say that the sample size used by each, especially the LifeWay poll, were of sufficient magnitude that, everything else being conducted properly, the results can be trusted as a reliable representation of the whole population at the time the survey was taken. I do have one caveat, however. The LifeWay survey is subject to bias simply because it starts out from a biased point of view which "could" influence its sampling technique. This is not to that the sampling techniques were anything but entirely professional, which I am sure they were, but only that the bias is more of possibility than with a secular organization. In this case, however, if there was bias, it makes the results that much worse.

• First, just to set the stage, from a recent ABC News poll, 83% of Americans identtify themselves as some sort of Christian (64% of whom said they were Protestant and 27% were Catholic), 13% no religion, and 4% non-Christian (I fall in the middle one if that is where spiritual is captured, BTW). By comparison, the world breaks down to 33%, 15%, 52%, respectively. I must say I was a bit surprised by these numbers. I thought the percentage of Christians in America approached 90% and in the world, 50%.
• The most top-level statistic presented is that 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas, be they Christians, atheists, agnostic, or non-Christians.
• LifeWay found that 74% of those surveyed thought of Christmas as "primarily" religious while USA/Gallup found 51% thought so. Encouragingly to Christian leaders,that is up from 40% in 1989.
• How does that translate into religious activities? Not very well.

• Only 28%, about the number who identify themselves as very Conservative, read or tell Christmas stories from the Bible.
• 34% will watch biblical Christmas movies Less than half,
• 47% will attend church on Christmas Eve or Day
• Only 58% will encourage others in the belief that Jesus Christ is savior.
• 47% of respondents said that Christmas is less religious with children present
• Even though 74% of those surveyed told LifeWay they thought Christmas was primarily religious, the same number said that most of the things they enjoy about Christmas has nothing to do with Jesus and that they celebrate Christmas because that is something you do as an American
• In 2008, a Pew Forum found that 52% of American Christians believe at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life
• LifeWay also found that 62% of those who follow non-Christian faiths, 89% who are simply spiritual, and 55% of atheists celebrate Christmas
• Gallup and other polls have, over the long-term, measured general church attendance, not just Christmas, in North America at around 43%, Special studies, however, that went out and counted attendance or used other more direct measures, came up with much lower rates, on the order of 20 - 30%.

Quite a bit, although I promise to keep it short this time. The news isn't good for the Church leadership, although some do try to find the silver-lining. What is clear from these results is that Christian Americans talk out of both sides of their mouth. In one breath and in overwhelming numbers, they say they believe Christmas is about Jesus. But by their actions, and in almost as overwhelming numbers they show that Christmas to them has very little to do with Jesus. Simply put, American Christians, by and large, when it comes to Christmas anyway, are hypocrites with a capital 'H', don't you see.

And that makes me sad. While I am not a Christian, I do believe in the basic message of Jesus, at least that part of his message on how people ought to treat one another that can be agreed upon between Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is a good message and ought to be celebrated honestly as it once was and not as this commercial bonanza for retailer and kids that it has become.

There is a lot of fodder for discussion in those startling, to me at least, statistics that I am going to keep my promise of making this one of my shortest hubs and let you all do the writing.

A CNN ARTICLE TITLED No, American Christianity is NOT Dead caught my eye and prompted me to update and republish this Hub. It refers to a recent study by Pew Research and I wanted to convey and comment on some of the results.

The research and the article made a point which, while obvious to all, is often overlooked. And that is there are three types of Christians. You have the "Cultural", the "Congregational", and the "Convictional". The former are those people who identify as Christian only because that is the culture they come from; they rarely, if ever, go to church and they certainly don't center their lives around what a particular Christian denomination says they need to believe. "Congregationalists", on the other hand, identify more closely to the Christian faith and sometimes go to church. Finally, "Convictional" Christians are those who do go to church often and do center their lives around their given denomination; these are your evangelicals and fundamentalists. This latter group often claim the other two are not Christians at all (which has the effect of greatly diminishing the total population of Christians worldwide and especially in America).

While the data does show a slow, overall decline in the number of Americans calling themselves Christian, you need to understand the above to make sense of the the table below

NOTICE THAT EVANGELICALS HAVE REMAINED almost constant, losing only 3.4%; these are your "Convictionalists". It is the "Nominal" Christians, the Cultural and Congregationalists, that have suffered the most losing 13% and 19% for Catholics and Mainline Protestants, respectively. And, where have they all gone? Mainly to the "Unaffiliated" or "None" category with its 45% increase over the last seven years.

While the article seems to downplay this a bit, to me it is quite impressive. It does bring America more in line with the rest of the world where evangelical and fundamental Christianity has suffered much larger declines. The author should really consider the other data, like in the Table 2 below, before suggesting Christianity in America may not be going the way of Europe.

CONSIDER WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN AS THE GENERATION before me and my generation (1947) begin to die off; 15% of my high school class (1965) has bit the dust as of 2015. The die-off of baby-boomers and those who came before us is only going to accelerate over the next 20 years, isn't it?

Notice that from the Silent Majority to the Baby-Boomers, the percentage of Americans who thought of themselves, in their birth cohort, as Christians dropped from a very high 85% to a still very respectable 75%. But suppose America was made up of only Gen Xers, those thinking of themselves to 70%, 15 points below the high. BUT, if only Millennials existed, America would be only 56 - 57% Christian! To me, that indicates a significant long-term decline of American Christians ... does it to you?

This pattern is not limited to just the "Nominal" Christians, it applies to "Convictionists" as well. The only sub-group of Christians that doesn't seem to be affected by age are black Christians. What is increasing, however, is "Other Faiths" (which has doubled over the ages) and, obviously, Unaffiliated.

Clearly, the only thing that is going to reverse the trend of the de-Christianization of America is 1) is the Millennial generation changes course and suddenly become religious and/or 2) the next generation is composed primarily of Christians.