IS CHRISTIANITY DYING IN AMERICA?

“For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The     

number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise. The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported” (Associated Press, 10/9/2012).

This study goes on to say that the fastest growing segment of adult Americans is those who have no religious affiliation of any kind. Approximately 20 percent identify with this group, which is currently growing at an amazing one percent per year.

During the first week of April 2009, two significant events spoke to this issue. First was the cover story of Newsweek magazine, “The Decline of Christian America,” a well-written and thought-provoking piece. The second was a statement that President Obama made while speaking in Turkey: “America is not a Christian nation.” What an interesting place the President chose to make this statement. Turkey is a predominately Muslim nation.

Frankly, I don’t have an argument with either the Newsweek article or the President’s statement because I think they are simply confirming the obvious. We live in a post-Christian nation and the quicker we awaken to this fact and embrace it, the better off we will be. In the three years since the Newsweek article and the President’s statement, the number of people claiming to be Christians in America has continued to decline. Currently, less than 19 percent of Americans attend church regularly and that percentage grows smaller every year. While we rejoice in the growth of a few mega-churches, the hard fact is that Christianity is declining — it’s dying in America!

More than once in the last few years I have written that we are in a critical time in the Church and that stormy weather is ahead. The dark clouds now gathering on the horizon are more significant than any we have previously experienced. 

You may think I’m crazy, but stormy weather actually can have a positive effect on the Church and its future. Harsh attacks on the Church that threaten its existence can have a cleansing and refocusing effect. Rodents that have been a nuisance, that have brought filth into the ship of faith, and have fed on food that was not theirs, will clear out or be washed away. Everything that is not tied down will get blown away and many believers will find their voices in witness and new power in prayer.

When the early Church had difficulty fulfilling the Great Commission and simply wanted to hang out in Jerusalem, God put an end to their unwillingness by permitting the hammer of persecution to fall. God took a missionary in pre-training and used him to scatter the Church (see Acts 8:1). Before his conversion, Paul (then called Saul) was used of God to pressure the Church and cause them to spread throughout the Roman Empire. They did not go willingly — they only stepped out because they feared for their lives. Will God allow the hammer of persecution to fall on America? Just how arrogant are we?

In China today, the Church is spreading more rapidly than just about anywhere else on earth.  The more the Communists try to stamp out Christianity, the more it spreads. The more persecution falls on the Church, the greater the purity of the believers; the greater the purity of the believers, the more they are available to the Holy Spirit; the more they are Spirit-led, the more the Church spreads, resulting in more evangelism.

I hope what I just wrote causes some of you to be uncomfortable, maybe even angry. We call ourselves here in the West a Spirit-filled community and yet the persecuted Church around the world is more powerfully alive and well than we are, even though they have almost nothing in comparison to our freedom and affluence. Our Church in the West is shrinking and losing what little influence we had. The persecuted Church, living under tyranny, is thriving, growing, and no matter what the oppressors do, they cannot shut it down. When the heavy boot of persecution stomps on the Church, the remnants squirt out the sides and start all over. What began as one body of believers and was persecuted suddenly becomes several, and all of them have the life of Jesus flowing in and through them.

I think the best thing that could happen to the Church in North America right now would be a good slap of persecution. Maybe a hard head-slap would knock some of the silliness out of the Pentecostal/charismatic Church. Maybe throwing a few evangelical pastors in jail would cause contemporary thinking to get reoriented to what is really important instead of what is cool and culturally relevant. Maybe the blows of the persecutor would cause some of the pastors of historic denominations to get up off their padded chairs and walk the streets ministering the life of Jesus to the lost, lonely and broken. Maybe a good punch in the nose would cause the sleepy Church of 2012 to wake up and act like the Church was destined to be. Maybe taking away the tax incentives for charitable giving and taking away the tax-free status of churches would get us back to the basics of why we worship through giving!

“The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you. Do you remember what I told you? ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’ Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you” (John 15:19-20, New Living Translation).