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Decline of Christianity in the Western world

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Revision as of 02:49, 28 December 2020 by Michael Glass (talk | contribs) (→United States: minor copy edit)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) Phenomenon of decreasing Christian affiliation in the Western world

The decline of Christianity is an ongoing trend in West and North Europe. Developed countries with modern, secular educational facilities in the post-World War II era have shifted towards post-Christian, secular, globalized, multicultural and multifaith societies. Infant baptism has declined in many nations, with thousands of churches closing or merging due to lack of attendees. There is also evidence of decline in North America (especially in Canada) and in Australia. Despite the decline, Christianity remains the dominant religion in the Western world, where 70% of the population is Christian. In addition, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, within the next four decades, Christianity will remain the world's largest religion. This is due to the birthrate of Christians and due to Christian evangelism (Christians have 2.7 children per woman, which is above the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman). The largest net losses due religious conversion are expected among Christians, notably in North America (28 million), Europe (24 million). Christianity is expected to lose 66 million due to religious conversion.

Background

Scholars have proposed that Church institutions decline in power and prominence in most industrialized societies, except in cases in which religion serves some function in society beyond merely regulating the relationship between individuals and God.

Reports are mixed on the extent and rate of the decline of Christianity. A 2015 analysis of the European Values Study in the Handbook of Children and Youth Studies identified a "dramatic decline" in religious affiliation across Europe from 1981 to 2008. However, Christianity is still the largest religion in Western Europe, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, where 71% of Western Europeans identified themselves as Christian. According to the same study, 83% of those who were raised as Christians still identify as such. The European Values Study found that in most European countries in 2008, the majority of young respondents identified themselves as Christians. Unlike Western Europe, in Central and Eastern European countries the proportion of Christians has been stable or even increased in the post-communist era.

In 2017, a report released by St. Mary's University, London concluded that Christianity "as a norm" was gone for at least the foreseeable future. According to the report, 91% of people in the Czech Republic between the ages of 16 to 29 have not declared a religious affiliation, and in the United Kingdom, only 7% identify as Anglican (compared to 6% who identify as Muslim). In at least 12 out of the 29 European countries surveyed by the researchers, based on a sample of 629, the majority of young adults reported that they were not religious.

By 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion. By 2050, Christianity is expected to remain the majority of population and the largest religious group in Latin America and Caribbean (89%), North America (66%), Europe (65.2%) and Sub Saharan Africa (59%). According to Mark Jürgensmeyer of the University of California, popular Protestantism is one of the most dynamic religious movements in the contemporary world. Changes in worldwide Protestantism over the last century have been significant. Since 1900, due primarily to conversion, Protestantism has spread rapidly in Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Muslim World and Latin America. The significant growth of Christianity in non-Western countries led to regional distribution changes of Christians.

Religious conversions are projected to have a "modest impact on changes in the Christian population" between 2010 and 2050. The scenario is missing reliable data of the religious switching in China; because China don't ask about religion in its national statistics. media reports and expert assessments suggest that conversions to Christianity is rising and growing rapidly in China and that "extremely rapid growth of Christianity in China could maintain or, conceivably, even increase Christianity’s current numerical advantage as the world’s largest religion, and it could significantly accelerate the projected decline by 2050 in the share of the global population that is religiously unaffiliated". According to the Pew Research Center, if China is included on data or scenario it may positively affect on the future growth of Christians, and may negatively affect the growth of the Religiously Unaffiliated. The largest net losses are expected among Christians, notably in North America (28 million), Europe (24 million). On the other hand, according to study by "The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion", which published by the professor of Christian mission Charles E. Farhadian, and the professor of psychology Lewis Ray Rambo, between 1990 and 2000, approximately 1.9 million people converted to Christianity from another religion, with Christianity ranking first in net gains through religious conversion.

Evidence of decline by country

Australia

In the 2016 Census, just over 30% declared that they had no religion. Also, in a 2017 survey of teenage Australians aged 13–18, 52% declared that they had no religion, compared with 38% Christian, 3% Islam, 2% Buddhist and 1% Hindu.

Canada

In Quebec, since the Quiet Revolution, over 500 churches (20% of the total) have been closed or converted for non-worship based uses. In the 1950s, 95% of Quebec's population went to mass; in the present day, that number is closer to 5%. Despite the decline in church attendance, Christianity remains the dominant religion in Quebec, where 82.2% of people were Christians, according to 2011 National Household Survey.

Chile

Cases of sexual abuse, attempt to hide information, and interference in government affairs have been the main causes of the decline of Christianity in Chile. According to the public broadcaster TVN, the number of Chileans who declare themselves Catholics fell from 73% in 2008 to 45% in 2018. In addition, it is the Latin American country that has less trust (36%) in the Church throughout the region according to Latinobarómetro. 63% of the Chilean population profess some branch of Christianity, according to the Encuesta Nacional Bicentenario identifies as Christian, with an estimated 45% of Chileans declaring to be part of the Catholic Church and 18% of Protestant or Evangelical churches. 5% of the population adheres to other religion.

Attempts to restore the Roman Catholic Christian faith in Chile have failed. The Argentine newspaper Clarín reported that Pope Francis's State visit to Chile in 2018 "had been the worst in his five years of pontificate." After the papal visit, the crisis in the Chilean Catholic Church increased. According to the Bicentenario survey, atheism has grown from 21% in 2018 to 32% in 2019.

Ireland

Christianity, specifically Catholicism, remains the dominant religion in the Republic of Ireland. In the 2016 census, 85.1% of the population identified as Christian. However recent social changes, including the lifting of a ban on abortion and the legalising same sex marriage, have solidified the growth of liberal thinking in Ireland, particularly within the younger community. An Irish priest, Fr. Kevin Hegarty, asserted in 2018 that the church's authority was undermined by the papal encyclical, called Humanae Vitae, that established the Church's opposition to contraception. He reported that there is only one priest under the age of 40 in the entire diocese of Killala; only two priests have been ordained over the last 17 years, and there have been no candidates for the priesthood since 2013. Hegarty blames this decline on the Church's positions on female ordination, contraception and sexuality. A continued requirement for children entering Irish Catholic owned schools to be baptized keeps the overall level of baptisms high, though the number of individuals practicing a faith or attending church is at an all-time low and rapidly decreasing.

Netherlands

Starting in 1880 and accelerating after the Second World War, the major religions began to decline among the Dutch, while Islam began to increase. During the 1960s and 1970s, pillarization began to weaken and the population became less religious. In 1971, 39% of the Dutch population were members of the Roman Catholic Church; by 2014, their share of the population had dropped to 23.3% (church-reported KASKI data), or to 23.7% (large sample survey by Statistics Netherlands in 2015). The proportion of adherents of Calvinism and Methodism declined in the same period from 31% to 15.5%. With only 49.9% of the Dutch currently (2015) adhering to a religion, the Netherlands is one of the least religious countries of the European Union, after the Czech Republic and Estonia. By the 1980s, religion had largely lost its influence on Dutch politics and as a result Dutch policy on women's rights, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and prostitution became very liberal in the 1980s and 1990s. As a result of the decline, the two major strands of Calvinism, the Dutch Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, together with a small Lutheran group, began to cooperate as the Samen op weg Kerken ("Together on the road churches"). In 2004 these groups merged to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.

In 2015, Statistics Netherlands found that 50.1% of the adult population declared themselves non-religious. Christians comprised 43.8% of the total population, of whom 23.7% were Catholics; 15.5% Protestants; and 4.6% members of other Christian denominations. Followers of Islam comprised 4.9% of the total population, Hinduism 0.6%, Buddhism 0.4% and Judaism 0.1%.

The proportion of the population following Islam has increased, primarily via immigration. In the early 21st century, religious tensions between native Dutch people and migrant Muslims was increasing. After the rise of politician Pim Fortuyn, who sought to defend the Dutch liberal culture against what he saw as a "backwards religion", stricter immigration laws were enacted. Religious tensions increased after the murder of Pim Fortuyn in 2002, as well as the 2004 assassination of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri, a conservative Muslim.

In December 2014, for the first time, there are more atheists (25%) than theists (17%) in the Netherlands. Currently the majority of the Dutch population is agnostic (31%) or spiritual but not religious (27%).

In 2015, 63% of Dutch people think that religion does more harm than good. A quarter of the population thinks that morality is threatened if no one believes in God, down from 40% in 2006. The number of people reporting that they never pray rose from 36% in 2006 to 53% in 2016.

Italy and Spain

Adherence to established forms of church-related worship is in rapid decline in Italy and Spain, and Church authority on social, moral and ethical issues has been reduced. In 2017, the PBS News Hour reported that Seville's historic cloistered convents were suffering from Christianity's decline in Spain.

Despite the decline of daily attendance and the church's authority, Catholicism remains the dominant religion in Spain and Italy. According to the Spanish Center for Sociological Research, 68.3% of Spaniards self-identify as Catholic in 2019, and according to Pew Research Center, 83.3% of Italy's residents are Christians.

United Kingdom

Attendance at Anglican churches had begun to decline in the UK by the Edwardian era, with both membership in mainstream churches and attendance at Sunday schools declining. Infant baptism declined after World War II. In 2014, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams stated that the UK had become a "post-Christian country." In 2014, only 4.3% of the population participated in a Church of England Christmas service. Nevertheless, around 60% of all respondents identified as Christians in the 2011 Census.

United States

Christianity is the largest religion in the United States. Christians represented 73.7% of the total population in 2016 and 65% in 2019 while those identifying as "no religion" or "unaffiliated" rose to 26% of the total population. Nationwide Catholic membership increased between 2000 and 2017, but the number of churches declined by nearly 11% and by 2019, the number of Catholics decreased by 2 million people. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) lost about 30% of its congregation and closed 12.5% of its churches: the United Methodist church lost 16.7% of its congregation and 10.2% of its churches. The Presbyterian Church has had the sharpest decline in church membership: between 2000 and 2015 they lost over 40% of their congregation and 15.4% of their churches. Infant baptism has also decreased; nationwide, Catholic baptisms are down by nearly 34%, and ELCA baptisms by over 40%.

In 2018, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that churches in Minnesota were being closed due to dwindling attendance. Mainline protestant churches in Minnesota have seen the sharpest declines in their congregations. The Catholic Church has closed 81 churches between 2000 and 2017; the Archdiocese of Minneapolis closed 21 churches in 2010 and has had to merge dozens more. In roughly the same time frame, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Minnesota has lost 200,000 members and closed 150 churches. The United Methodist Church, which is Minnesota's second-largest Protestant denomination, has closed 65 of its churches. In the early 1990s, the Archdiocese of Chicago closed almost 40 Catholic churches and schools. In 2016, increasing costs and priest shortages fueled plans to close or consolidate up to 100 Chicago Catholic churches and schools in the next 15 years. The Archdiocese of New York announced in 2014 that nearly 1/3 of their churches were merging and closing. The Archdiocese of Boston closed more than 70 churches between 2004 and 2019. Nationally, Catholic school enrollment has declined by more than 430,000 students since 2008.

Moderate and liberal denominations in the United States have been closing down churches at a rate three or four times greater than the number of new churches being consecrated. However, according to The Christian Century, the rate of annual closures is approximately 1% and quite low relative to other types of institutions. It has been asserted that of the approximately 3,700 churches that close each year, up to half are unsuccessful new churches.

Denominations like Jehovah's Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Pentecostals and Eastern Orthodox had slight increases in membership between 2003 and 2018 but the number of adults in the United States who do not report any religious affiliation nearly doubled over that period. In 2017, Schnabel and Bock argued that while "moderate religion" has declined in the United States since the late 1980s, "intense religion" including evangelicalism has persisted.

See also

References

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