Does the Christian faith have anything helpful to say about the mundane parts of life?
Category: Church
Race and Theology Define Different Views of the Decline of Christianity in the US
Whether defined by race or by theology, we discover not only different views of Christianity’s place in the American culture, but of different narratives of what it means to live in the United States.
Missional Musings for Post-GC 2020 Methodists
The United Methodist Church is prepared to split so that traditionalists and progressives can be missional without the distraction of battling each other over sexuality. Will either new denomination be missionally effective in the current American culture?
Public Trust and the Prophet
Religious leaders are not garnering high levels of trust among Americans. This requires them to think carefully about how they will participate in the public square. A rethinking of what it means to be “prophetic” is in order.
Disrupting Happiness
Disrupting Happiness: If there is so much evidence linking religion to a greater sense of well-being, why are so many people walking away from the Mainline Protestant Church?
Who Is the Audience? To What End?
The Pew Research Center came out with a new report on 29 August entitled “The Religious Typology.” In an attempt to develop a new way of categorizing Americans as related to religion, this study asked people a series of questions about such items as their beliefs, religious activities, and sources of meaning. Researchers then used…
The Mainline’s Missing Liberals
Pew Research has come out with new data with discouraging news for white mainline Christianity in the United States. In a previous post, I reviewed data showing that white mainline denominations are skewing more liberal, something that it has consciously chosen to do over the past century. This means that the white mainline denominations should…
Reflecting on Christmas in America
With the holidays well behind us now, we can stand back and take a look at how religion and Christmas are being approached by Americans without the annual culture wars that often attend such conversations. The Pew Research Center has provided an excellent set of data about this topic in its December 2017 study on…
Healing American Division
The Public Religion Research Institute issued a new report in December 2017 that reflects on the division among Americans following 2017 and the completion of the first full year of the Trump Presidency. Perhaps one of the starkest statistics they offer is just how much Republicans and Democrats distrust one another. The report states: “There…
More Data for White Mainline Protestants
In my previous post I explored how white mainline Protestant church leaders are out of touch with two groups: 1) the conservatives in their own ranks as well as the rest of the United States and 2) marginalized Christians. This was based on the Pew Research Center’s most recent political typology report. From this, I…