Bad Theology Causes Church Decline

The last few weeks we’ve been looking at recent studies about the state of Christianity in the United States, with special attention to what the data revealed about the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

I hope you non-Lutherans got something out of that too, since many of these findings apply to all churches and I included links that would take you to the corresponding data about your own church body.

Christopher D. Raymond looked at the data about his own Catholic Church and he came to a stark and generally applicable conclusion about the decline in church affiliation: “Orthodox believers stay, while those with unorthodox views leave.”

He makes that case in his article for Crisis Magazine entitled Bad Theology Is at the Heart of Declining Numbers with the deck, “Bad theology drives church decline. Orthodox believers stay, while those with unorthodox views leave. Generational data confirms it: faith falters with weak foundations.”

That seems obvious when you think about it, but the phenomenon has empirical backing. Raymond cites the findings of the Portraits of American Life Survey, a collaboration of Rice and Notre Dame, which surveyed people about their religious affiliation and beliefs. The survey included specific questions about their belief in historic Christian doctrines (e.g., the resurrection of Christ, the reality of Heaven and Hell, whether the Bible is inspired, whether the Bible is inerrant, whether God’s law is the basis for morality) and each respondent was given a score based on their answers and put on an “orthodoxy” scale.

What makes the Portraits of American Life Survey so unique and helpful is that the same people surveyed in 2006 were surveyed a second time in 2012. This made it possible to chart any changes in their beliefs and affiliations over that six year period.

Among Catholics, only 2% of the most orthodox respondents had left the church. Only 4% of the moderately orthodox left. But of the least orthodox, 16% left.

This data, according to Raymond, also accounts for the generational declines, as each succeeding generation–lacking the foundation from the previous generation–scores increasingly low on orthodoxy and high on disaffiliation.

Raymond published a more scholarly article on the subject in the Journal of Empirical Theology entitled The Impact of Theology on Disaffiliation, Disengagement, and Disbelief. Here is the abstract:

While the reasons for the differences in the growth rates of conservative and liberal churches are well studied, one important potential reason for this difference has received little attention. The argument that liberal theology undermines the basis of belief implies that those with liberal theological views may be more likely to lose faith and disaffiliate than those holding conservative theologies that reinforce adherents’ religious faith and practice. Using a nationally representative panel survey of the American public, the analysis performed here shows that those with liberal theologies were significantly more likely to disaffiliate from Christianity, attend church less often, and cease believing in God between the two waves of the survey than those with more conservative theologies. On the basis of these findings, more attention should be given to the role that theology may play in understanding patterns of secularization.

Again, this should be obvious. People who no longer believe in the tenets of Christianity are more likely to leave the church than those who do believe in them. As Raymond says, the question remains as to why people no longer believe in the teachings of their churches. He writes,

Leaving aside, for the time being, tough questions about how we arrived at a point where such unorthodoxy became so widespread, one simple step to arrest the decline is to do a better job instilling orthodoxy—and to root out teaching to the contrary where it exists. Lukewarm embrace of the Church’s teachings fails to help anyone; if anything, it just sets people up to be swept away by the next tide of secularization. Of course, improving catechesis and more strident apologetics alone won’t reverse the damage done overnight, but the evidence presented here shows it is clearly needed.

Well, let’s not leave those tough questions aside. Liberal theology is not always what laypeople come up with themselves. It is often taught from the pulpit and by church leaders. There is quite a bit of that in some Catholic churches, as in all of the mainline Protestant denominations.

But conservative churches are also losing members. I suppose that shouldn’t be surprising either, since many folks in the pews may not hold to the high level of orthodoxy that the conservative church stands for.

It occurs to me, though, that there are many ways to be unorthodox. If “liberal” theology means changing church teachings and practices to be more in accord with the beliefs and values of the surrounding culture, that accounts for theological “modernism,” which rejected supernaturalism in the name of scientific rationalism and materialism. But our “postmodern” culture is fine with supernaturalism, irrationalism, and being spiritual, as long as everyone is allowed to construct their own truth and their own morality for themselves.

The thing is, those of us in conservative churches have also been told for several decades that we need to change church teachings and practices to be more in accord with the beliefs and values of the surrounding culture. A changing culture makes for a different kind of liberalism. The typical evangelical congregation is little like the “old time religion” of its forebears, in music, worship, and preaching.

Though they may score high on the Portraits of American Life orthodoxy scale, these congregations often teach different kinds of unorthodoxy: the prosperity gospel, a social gospel, subjectivity, legalism, pop-psychology, the New Apostolic Reformation, and the list goes on and on. These are other kinds of “liberalism,” and though they have their attractions for today’s postmodernists, one can see how a church member subjected to such things over time would become disillusioned, burned out, and eager to leave.

Nevertheless, there are islands of orthodoxy that people are joining, not leaving. And where people are staying. The fact is, secularists and casualties of secularized religion are also becoming disillusioned, burned out, and eager to leave. A thriving church will not blindly conform to the beliefs and values of the Godless culture, whether that culture is “liberal” or “conservative.” Rather, it will offer people imprisoned in that culture what they do not already have: The Word. The Sacraments. Christ crucified for sinners.

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