Tablet Magazine: If you go into a Reform or Conservative temple, it’s likely that you will notice two things: The congregation is becoming smaller and older. Across the United States and Europe, Jewish congregations are aging at a rapid rate, a phenomenon increasingly common for mainstream religions across the high-income world.
Overall, the American Jewish population—unlike that of demographically robust Israel—is on the decline, with a loss of 300,000 members over the past decade, a number expected to drop further by 2050. The median age of members of Reform congregations is 54, and only 17 percent of members say they attend religious services even once a month. Four-fifths of the movement’s youth are gone by the time they graduate high school. The conservative movement is, if anything, in even worse shape: At its height, in 1965, the Conservative movement had 800 affiliated synagogues throughout the United States and Canada; by 2015 that number had fallen to 594.
But Jews, and their religious institutions, should not feel singled out. The share of Americans who belong to the Catholic Church has declined from 24 percent in 2007 to 21 percent in 2014, a more rapid decline according to Pew, then any other religious organization in memory. There are 6.5 former Catholics in the U.S. for every new convert to the faith, not a number suggesting a very sunny future.
The mainstream Protestant churches are not exactly filling the sanctuaries either. Some, like the internally conflicted Methodists have seen their number of North American congregants drop from 15 million in 1970 to barely half that today. Since 2007 alone, America’s mainstream churches have lost 5 million members, and even the once vibrant evangelical movement is losing adherents outside of the developing world. Ever more churches, particularly in urban areas, are being abandoned, turned into bars, restaurants, and luxury condos. And nothing augurs worse for the future than the fact that American millennials are leaving religious institutions at a rate four times that of their counterparts three decades ago; almost 40 percent of people 18 to 29 are not unaffiliated.
This decline is not necessarily a reflection of less spiritual feeling: Two-thirds of unaffiliated Americans still believe in God or a universal spirit. The Pew poll shows that since 2012, the share of Americans who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” has surged from 19 percent to 27 percent five years later.
Why, then, the decline in religion? For one thing, young Americans have different habits. Rather than join institutions, millennials, argued Wade Clark Roof, author of the book Spiritual Marketplace, are indulging in a kind of “grazing,” finding their spiritual fixes in various different places rather than any one organized church. As sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell explained, those in this age group “reject conventional religious affiliation, while not entirely giving up their religious feelings.” more
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Matthew 7:13
Meanwhile,
“As of 2010, the number of mosques in the United States stood at 2,106, up 74 percent from 1,209 mosques in 2000. The states with the most mosques include New York with 257, California with 246 and Texas with 166.
[…[
Seventy-six percent of mosques in the United States did not exist before 1980, and only 962 existed in 1994.”
https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-mosques-united-states-8b4fc81d9af1eb60
It has not slowed down.
There’s a Unitarian church that I travel past often running errands. It has a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign at its driveway entrance. The neighborhood is well off, 90% white and liberal. I looked it up online once and it boasts about it’s acceptance of everyone no matter race or gender etc…
However, I doubt that a tea partier would be welcomed into their congregation.
George Waters has it right.
Older congregants tend to remain because they have become dependent on the comradeship of a caring community. Having become too dependent they will not leave even if they don’t like or agree to changes that have been made to the original basic beliefs of the church. Younger members, and more independent members leave, and don’t return because they have become disgusted with changes that have become apostasy or hypocrisy to the original basic tenets of the church. Doctrines of demons have become more acceptable to many than a persistent, consistent teaching of Biblical truth which requires ethical and moral absolutes in living. False knowledge and pleasures of the degenerate world exert a very strong pull away from that kind of living.
“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
Proverbs 14:12
Flat out apostasy and rejecting God’s commandments regarding homosexuality and murder by abortion should drive away any Christian from such false churches.
on Zabihah (“the slaughter”) halal restaurant finder there is no total but I screen captured and used my 10-key skills and checked it twice-13,853 restaurants and markets and surely more unreported to “Zabihah” and a favorite location is next to the mosque–better check the number of mosques, somebody? go to salatomatic
Also are the Methodists not happy about the recent disapproval of same-sex marriage? Should draw back a few former churchgoers at Easter?
I called it four decades ago
It is not surprising that mosques are becoming more numerous as the US government continues bringing thousands of more unqualified Muslim immigrants into the country. They have to be majority non-whites and no Christians according to 1965 new immigration laws. The USA was too Christian and too white (from Western Europe ) and that just couldn’t be tolerated any more by some very powerful political controllers. Now America’s civil, Christian culture is in the process of being overrun by Islamic invaders who have an anti-American agenda. The ones in Congress and those in other political positions are actually functioning as Communist infiltrators. Just keep in mind that the US Congress is the prime reason this is happening–both parties. White, Christian faith Americans are the ones most targeted to become a stomped on minority. That is the Communist/Marxist way of governance.
I grew up in Church, I raised my kids in Church, I am a Christian, however I now rarely go to Church. I cannot sit and listen to pastors who don’t preach on sin and only preach on part of salvation, always leaving out the repent part. I can’t sit and listen to this, sometimes even worse than this and look around at women who are dressed like they’re out at a night at the bar or strippers.
Then the rare preacher who preaches the entire Bible and not just the parts they think people want to hear, then you find out they’re screwing the secretary.
Churches are failing because they’re not obeying God.
Churches may be failing because it’s not about the building, it’s about the people. Many have lost site of the truth of this.
Most mega churches are the worst.
The building is where people meet, it’s not as important as some would think.
Home churches are very affective. Anyhow each to their own, not my playpen not my business.
But it comes down to relationship with a living God not a religion.
Religion can grease the rails to hell at times, it misses the point, and that point would be hearing God’s voice and doing something with it.
It’s not about being a good person and weighing are good and bad in a balance hoping to come out on top.
Reformed religion is not religion: it’s a social club. Social clubs come and go.
JDHasty , spot on!
All the studies/research %’s are meaningless.
Killing humans , in the Name of God, Synagogues and Churches,,,
add in a Mosque or 2000,
What have they all been doing from the start