The drop in people going to church may have stabilized — for now | Opinion

Over the past few years I’ve written occasionally about a well-documented drop in church attendance and affiliation among Americans.

There are indications that free-fall may have stabilized. In February, the Pew Research Center released its third Religious Landscape Study, a mammoth project that over 17 years has sampled more than 35,000 randomly selected respondents each time it’s been conducted.

The Pew Center reported that in the period it studied most recently, seven months in 2023-24, 62 percent of U.S. adults identified as Christians. That’s a 16-point drop since the first study in 2007. However, it marked a stabilization. Between 2019 and 2024 the Christian share of the adult population hovered between 60 percent and 64 percent.

Similarly, the share of the religiously unaffiliated population, called “nones” — those who identify as atheists, agnostics or as “nothing in particular” — has plateaued at 29 percent of the population after a long period of dramatic growth, Pew said.

If, like me, you take these newer numbers as welcome news, well, not so fast. This stabilization probably is a brief pause before another plummet.

Older Americans are generally more religious than younger ones, who are also proving less likely to bring their own kids up with traditional religious beliefs and practices. So, as Baby Boomers pass from the scene, they will be replaced by generations of less churched folks — another big hit for religion.

Reading all this, I always find myself pondering the mystery of faith itself. Where does faith come from? Why do some people have it and others don’t? Why do some abandon it and others hold fast despite ill winds?

I’ve been thinking about my friend Kenny, who passed away in 2022.

We used to laugh about the first time we saw each other. Back in the 1980s, he showed up at the church where I was pastor. As I recall, his wife had dragged him there against his will. They were having marital problems and she’d told some of us in the congregation beforehand that her husband could benefit from a good dose of Jesus.

That first service, I noticed Kenny glowering at me the whole time I preached, and I made a mental note: “OK, this guy is trouble.”

Later, Kenny insisted he hadn’t been glowering. He was trying to figure out what the heck I was talking about. He wasn’t raised in church, had never felt a need to attend one and didn’t have a clue what point I was trying to make. It was all mumbo jumbo to him.

But something piqued his interest, because he kept coming back. His wife quit coming, but he kept on. They divorced, but he kept showing up at church.

He was a home builder and a weekend bass player in a rock-and-roll band. At some point, he volunteered to play in the church’s worship band.

He was transformed if I’ve ever seen anybody transformed. For 35 years he was at church every time the doors were open. Sunday mornings. Sunday nights. Wednesday night Bible studies. Friday night Bible studies. Revivals. Work days on the grounds.

He owned the biggest wide-screen TV any of us had ever seen. Whenever there was a Super Bowl or a championship fight or a March Madness, half the guys in the congregation would pile into his den, occupying every stick of furniture and sitting knee-to-knee on the floor and devouring pizzas and shouting at the gargantuan screen that took up a whole wall.

Kenny wasn’t trouble. He was a sweetheart.

And he loved him some Jesus. Twenty years in, he’d still get so animated in a Bible study over a passage of scripture that he could barely stay in his chair. We couldn’t shut him up sometimes to let somebody else talk. It was comical.

He had every opportunity to give up. The housing crash of 2008 wiped out his business. His dad died. His mom developed dementia and he was the only one left to take care of her, which he did, for years. The same week she was buried he learned he had terminal esophageal cancer.

None of it diminished his faith. Even cancer couldn’t keep him out of church for long. If he was able to drive and stand on two feet, he was on stage thumping that bass.

That’s the mystery I ponder again and again. There are so many for whom God, religion and the church appear to be ephemeral, if they’re anything at all. They never see a need for any of it. Or they embrace it a while, but the least gust of adversity blows them away.

Yet, sitting right beside them is a Kenny, somebody for whom faith becomes everything. Faith transforms them. It centers them. I always get the feeling they’ve seen something mighty and unmistakable they can’t unsee. God has become as real to them as the breath in their lungs.

Why them? Why one and not another? I’d like to know what ineffable thing sets such people apart. Maybe God just picks out a Kenny once in a while and says, “Hey, I’m going to manifest my grace through you. You’re going to enjoy this ride.”

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.