Mike McManus
Marriage Savers president
December 2017 – The Barna polling group has a list of cities that are “post-Christian,” where most people don’t believe in God, or have not attended a Christian church in the last six months, or read the Bible in the last week, or donated money to a church in the last year, or feel that faith is important in their lives.
Some of these cities may come as a surprise. New England and the Northeast – which were the home of religion in America – are the most post-Christian areas of the country – worse than San Francisco.
According to Barna (barna.com), in Portland-Auburn (Maine), 57% of the population are non-believers, and in Boston, Albany-Schenectady, Providence, Hartford-New Haven, and New York, 51% to 56% of the public are post-Christian. San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle, and Buffalo tie at 50%.
Southern faith
Southern cities are still predominantly Christian. For example, only 12% in Shreveport are non-believers. In Jackson (Mississippi), Memphis, Chattanooga, Asheville, Lexington (Kentucky), Birmingham, and Charlotte – fully 80% to 82% are active Christians.
Three-quarters are believers in 15 cities such as Louisville, Baton Rouge, Charleston (West Virginia), Tulsa, Knoxville, Roanoke, Columbia (South Carolina), New Orleans, Springfield (Missouri), Savannah, and Greensboro.
However, there are 44 cities where 40% to 49% are non-believers. Some are unsurprising – Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego. But non-Christians constitute nearly half of such cities as Rochester, Fort Meyers, Chicago, Metro Washington, Cedar Rapids, Flint, Pittsburgh, Denver, Detroit, Baltimore, Austin, and Tampa.
Galen Carey, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is not alarmed by these numbers: “There are only 7 cities out of 100 where the majority of the population is post-Christian. Much of the change in religious demographics is a decline of nominal Christianity. People no longer feel they have to pretend to be Christian. We don’t see a hollowing out of the Christian population.”
Catholic factor
The percentage identifying themselves as Catholics dropped 3% and mainline Protestants fell by 3.4%. But evangelical Protestants grew by more than 2 million, rising from 59.8 million in 2007 to 62.2 million in 2014, while mainline Protestants – Episcopalians, United Methodists, and Presbyterians – lost 5 million.
However, in just one year, 2015, a third of the Catholic churches in the Archdiocese of New York – 112 parishes – closed or merged with a nearby church. Since 1996, a third of all Catholic churches in America have shuttered their doors.
A major reason for the closing of so many Catholic churches is the extreme shortage of priests. The number has fallen from 57,300 in 1985 to only 39,000 in 2014. Only 800 resigned due to the sex scandals involving priests. Some 20,000 quit to marry! The biggest problem is that only 500 men are being ordained as priests a year – far fewer than those resigning, retiring, or dying.
However, what has grown most rapidly are the religiously unaffiliated, who skyrocketed by 19 million people in only 7 years, jumping from 16.1% to 22.8 % of the population. There are now 56 million atheists, agnostics, and others with no religious affiliation.
Sobering solutions
What are the solutions? Clearly, the Catholic Church could make celibacy optional for its priests. There are 17,800 Catholic permanent deacons who perform many priestly tasks, such as baptizing, distributing Communion, presiding at funerals, and even preaching. Most are married and would happily become full-fledged priests – if married priests were allowed.
Another solution is that evangelical denominations are being formed out of mainline Protestants who embraced same-sex marriage. For example, the Episcopal Church has fallen from 3.4 million members to 1.7 million. However, 112,000 Episcopalians who left have created the conservative Anglican Church of North America. Similarly, two conservative denominations have been formed from the liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), one being the Presbyterian Church in America with 341,000 members.
Some churches should die. Vibrant ones will grow. 
Marriage Savers
marriagesavers.org
301-978-7105
