Decline of religion

[Mister Agenda]

In America, the churches are doing it to themselves, and the more reasonable people who leave, the more extreme the remnants become. Evaporative extremism.

[Fake Messiah]

Pew analysis shows ‘no clear evidence’ Christian revival in UK

Claims of a Christian revival among the UK’s young adults may be based on data from surveys whose methodology can’t guarantee accurate results — while two major UK studies show a downturn, rather than a resurgence, in faith, said Pew Research Center.

On Jan. 23, Pew published a short analysis on conflicting data among surveys assessing whether Britain’s young adults are embracing Christianity.

A flurry of opt-in surveys — where participants sign up to participate “often in response to website ads or email campaigns” — have touted an upswing in Christian belief, practice and identity among those in the 18-34 age range, wrote Conrad Hackett, associate director of research and senior demographer at Pew, in his analysis.

Sponsoring organizations for such surveys have included the UK charity Bible Society, which announced in April 2025 that “church attendance in England and Wales is on the rise,” with “the most dramatic increase seen among young people.”

Tearfund, another British-based Christian charity, said its 2024 opt-in survey showed a spike in young adult participation in online worship, with its 2025 survey indicating that a greater share of younger rather than older adults planned to attend Christmas services.

Opt-in surveys by the Church of England, polling firm YouGov, the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer project and the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life have all found “high levels of religious activity among young adults in recent years,” Hackett wrote.

However, data from major surveys drawing on random population samples “show that Christian identity and practice are not increasing among young adults in Britain,” he noted.

Britain’s Labor Force Survey, which typically interviews more than 50,000 persons per quarter, has measured a continuing decline in Christian identity in the UK across age groups, with 44% of British adults identifying as Christian by the summer of 2025, down from 54% in early 2018, according to Pew.

Data from the annual British Social Attitudes survey, which polls a random sample of over 3,000 adults, also “shows no clear evidence of a Christian revival,” he said.

“Among all adult respondents, the share who identify as Christians and who go to church at least once a month was 12% in 2018 and 9% in 2024,” Hackett wrote.

The BSA poll found that the number of young adult Christian churchgoers “has not risen above pre-pandemic levels,” standing in 2024 at 6% for adults ages 18 to 34, down from 8% in 2018.

https://www.osvnews.com/pew-analysis-sho...val-in-uk/

[Paleophyte]

The YouGov poll was always problematic, but was latched onto by the religious community as evidence that they aren't a dying breed. The only polls that you really need to conduct can be seen in the pews every Sunday morning, and they haven't improved for the churches.

[AFTT47]

In America, the churches are doing it to themselves, and the more reasonable people who leave, the more extreme the remnants become. Evaporative extremism.

Evaporative Extremism . I love it! It's not a real term (as far as I know) but it ought to be! The concept is valid. As the more sane members of the group depart, the core becomes more and more extreme, thus accelerating the departures. Eventually, the core goes super-critical! The whole thing goes up like a supernova!

[The Grand Nudger]

Enclave extremism. Imagine a reasonable person who is socially conservative. I know, I know, it's difficult. It will be even more difficult if you release that reasonable social conservative into a group of other reasonable social conservatives. In fact they will all..and very quickly, seem less reasonable individually and as a whole. Very quickly as in within 15 minutes of casual conversation about hot buttons. Works the same way for social liberals.

15 minutes to begin showing effects. A whole generation of this......

[Fake Messiah]

Even the Christian news portal is running an article about how Christianity and religion in general is going down.

And although they have some wrong ideas about the role of religion in society, they make interesting points why Christianity has become obsolete.

Christianity isn’t just in decline — it’s become obsolete, says sociologist

Christian Smith says that traditional religion hasn’t merely lost adherents — it’s become culturally obsolete. That’s the claim at the heart of his 2025 book, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America.

He urges us to shift our gaze from church stats to the cultural currents shaping everyday life. “In the current zeitgeist, traditional religion just doesn’t make sense,” he says. By “traditional religion,” Smith means the institutional faiths that have long shaped American life, like Catholicism, mainline Protestantism, white evangelicalism, Black Protestantism and Mormonism. And the problem isn’t simply about belief, or lack thereof. “It doesn’t fit ordinary life — not in a cognitive or theological way, but in a cultural vibe way.”

In the United States, the cultural shifts Smith identifies began in the early 1990s and accelerated through the 2000s. Their effects are generational: each cohort — from baby boomers to gen X, millennials and now gen Z — has been progressively less religious than the one before. Millennials, he notes, are the “pivot generation,” coming of age in a world where traditional religion no longer resonated as it once had. (The Canadian case suggests a parallel dynamic unspooling on an earlier timeline.)

Smith points to 1991 as an epoch-altering year. Politically, the Cold War ended, and the Reagan-Bush era was waning. Economically, globalization ramped up, reshaping markets, consumption and daily life. Culturally, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Seinfeld’s “show about nothing” signalled a broader reorientation of values and sensibilities. Religiously, surveys recorded what would become a lasting shift as the share of Americans identifying as non-religious began to climb.

“It was the end of one moral and symbolic order,” he says, “and the beginning of something quite different.” By the early 2000s, the conditions for religion’s cultural eclipse had already been established. Then came the shock of 9/11, enabling New Atheists like Richard Dawkins to gain traction and to cast religion as a public problem rather than a resource.

Along with globalization and mass consumer capitalism, the digital revolution reshaped the cultural milieu in which faith had once made sense. The internet, in particular, made inherited beliefs easier to question, loosened the grip of institutional gatekeepers and expanded the range of imaginable forms of belonging well beyond churches and denominations. It also brought long-suppressed denominational scandals into public view, further eroding trust in religious institutions.

Smith resists accounts framing all this as the work of enemies or ideology. “Religious conservatives often look for direct antagonists — the media, universities, atheists, secular elites — but those are minor factors,” he says.

In principle, Smith argues, traditional faith is meant to grapple with life’s darker realities. It should have had the internal resources to meet the deeper struggles of millennials — their despondency, anger and search for meaning — drawing on centuries of reflection on suffering, brokenness and redemption. Instead, by the late 20th century, traditional religion had largely redefined itself to meet prevailing cultural expectations. Many churches came to emphasize goodness, niceness and happiness, responding primarily to cultural demands for positivity.

This cultural accommodation, Smith argues, ultimately hollowed out religion’s relevance for younger generations. “Millennials — facing wars, environmental crises and economic hardship — didn’t see religion as relevant,” he observes. “Religion, packaged as ‘nice,’ didn’t resonate.”

https://broadview.org/christian-smith-book-religion/

There you go, another Christian blaming culture for declining religion. But people started leaving religion simply because it was not forced on them anymore. Religion was not about "giving people hope in times of personal darkness", it was to oppress them.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think religion is undergoing more of a shift than a decline. When people stop going to church, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re becoming less religious. It usually means that they’ve become dissatisfied with that particular franchise and are looking for something to fill the void. Sort of like swapping athlete’s foot for jock itch.

Boru

[Paleophyte]

They'll probably fill it with something more chaotic, but you can't have organized religion without the organization. That's what's killing the churches. It's the regular Sunday attendances that kept the brainwashing alive.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

They'll probably fill it with something more chaotic, but you can't have organized religion without the organization. That's what's killing the churches. It's the regular Sunday attendances that kept the brainwashing alive.

Which is my whole point - it’s that organizations that are in decline, not religious sensibilities. And I’m nothing less than delighted to see churches on their uppers. 

I’ll take a Wiccan over a Presbyterian any day.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

There are many churches in Germany which are being recommissioned as living spaces, art galleries, hobby areas, even sport halls because attendance is steadily decreasing:
 
https://youtu.be/R3lAW7R4F58?t=346
 
Yet the number of mosques is still increasing almost everywhere. Just like the number of churches in less developed countries.