Study: Religious progressivism on the rise?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Washington Post

[DC Al Fine]

The article talked about liberal & conservative Christianity while the study dealt with religious liberalism/conservatism. C'mon journalists, use your terms consistently

Anyway, I think there's a few different groups within the "religious progressive" movement, each with their own trends; non-Christians, seculars, black Christians, & white Christians.

Non-Christians are definitely growing, largely through immigration, but they have a few converts as well.

Secular-Religious types are growing as I'd expect. Most people will never be able to embrace atheism. As many thinkers have said, Christianity will be replaced with some other religion, not science. This group contains the spiritual-but-not-religious people who dabble in different things. Their future is extremely bright.

I think a large number of Black Christians used progressive in the economic sense. Most of the black Christians I know have more in common with fundamentalists than religious progressives. Ex: I recall a poll that showed blacks were more likely to be 6-day creationists. A large portion of this group belongs in the conservative group, at least in a theological sense.

White Christians are the last group. There are two trends going on here. As older mainlines die off and younger nominals leave the faith, liberal Protestantism wanes. However there is a smaller trend of younger mainlines embracing liberal Christianity full throttle (aka people like Scott & Nathan). While the nominal future for this group is grim, the younger generation will eventually be able to increase the number of bums in pews. I suspect mainline Protestantism will bottom out in it's share of the white population sometime in the next 50-100 years or so and start growing again.

Another point to consider is that white evangelicals are demographically about the same mainline Protestantism was in the early 1960's. Expect the evangelicals to continue liberalizing and begin to shrink over the next couple generations.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

The article talked about liberal & conservative Christianity while the study dealt with religious liberalism/conservatism. C'mon journalists, use your terms consistently

Anyway, I think there's a few different groups within the "religious progressive" movement, each with their own trends; non-Christians, seculars, black Christians, & white Christians.

Non-Christians are definitely growing, largely through immigration, but they have a few converts as well.

Secular-Religious types are growing as I'd expect. Most people will never be able to embrace atheism. As many thinkers have said, Christianity will be replaced with some other religion, not science. This group contains the spiritual-but-not-religious people who dabble in different things. Their future is extremely bright.

I think a large number of Black Christians used progressive in the economic sense. Most of the black Christians I know have more in common with fundamentalists than religious progressives. Ex: I recall a poll that showed blacks were more likely to be 6-day creationists. A large portion of this group belongs in the conservative group, at least in a theological sense.

White Christians are the last group. There are two trends going on here. As older mainlines die off and younger nominals leave the faith, liberal Protestantism wanes. However there is a smaller trend of younger mainlines embracing liberal Christianity full throttle (aka people like Scott & Nathan). While the nominal future for this group is grim, the younger generation will eventually be able to increase the number of bums in pews. I suspect mainline Protestantism will bottom out in it's share of the white population sometime in the next 50-100 years or so and start growing again.

Another point to consider is that white evangelicals are demographically about the same mainline Protestantism was in the early 1960's. Expect the evangelicals to continue liberalizing and begin to shrink over the next couple generations.

That's a good analysis, and one I am mostly in agreement with.

Just to clarify, are you attributing the decline of white liberal Protestants to the declining number of whites in general?  Also, why do you believe the nominal future for the group is dim if you think our church attendance rates will go up?

[DC Al Fine]

The article talked about liberal & conservative Christianity while the study dealt with religious liberalism/conservatism. C'mon journalists, use your terms consistently

Anyway, I think there's a few different groups within the "religious progressive" movement, each with their own trends; non-Christians, seculars, black Christians, & white Christians.

Non-Christians are definitely growing, largely through immigration, but they have a few converts as well.

Secular-Religious types are growing as I'd expect. Most people will never be able to embrace atheism. As many thinkers have said, Christianity will be replaced with some other religion, not science. This group contains the spiritual-but-not-religious people who dabble in different things. Their future is extremely bright.

I think a large number of Black Christians used progressive in the economic sense. Most of the black Christians I know have more in common with fundamentalists than religious progressives. Ex: I recall a poll that showed blacks were more likely to be 6-day creationists. A large portion of this group belongs in the conservative group, at least in a theological sense.

White Christians are the last group. There are two trends going on here. As older mainlines die off and younger nominals leave the faith, liberal Protestantism wanes. However there is a smaller trend of younger mainlines embracing liberal Christianity full throttle (aka people like Scott & Nathan). While the nominal future for this group is grim, the younger generation will eventually be able to increase the number of bums in pews. I suspect mainline Protestantism will bottom out in it's share of the white population sometime in the next 50-100 years or so and start growing again.

Another point to consider is that white evangelicals are demographically about the same mainline Protestantism was in the early 1960's. Expect the evangelicals to continue liberalizing and begin to shrink over the next couple generations.

That's a good analysis, and one I am mostly in agreement with.

Just to clarify, are you attributing the decline of white liberal Protestants to the declining number of whites in general?  Also, why do you believe the nominal future for the group is dim if you think our church attendance rates will go up?

Decline of the white population is part of it, but most of the mainline Protestant's problem has to do with retention, not fecundity. 

I think nominal and practical affiliations are two very different things that aren't very strongly correlated. Changing generational attitudes are creating seemingly contradictory situation. Here's an example.

Take two people raised Episcopalian but never really believed the gospel or attended church after high school; a 25 year old and a 55 year old. The 55 year old was raised in a culture where religious affiliation was encouraged. He probably still calls himself Episcopalian and still goes to church at Christmas. The 25 year old was raised in a much more secular culture and feels no obligation to affiliate with a church. He calls himself atheist/agnostic/no religion. As those 55 year olds die off and are replaced by the 25 year olds, nominal Episcopalianism will decrease.

However, the end result is that the 25 year old who describes themselves as Episcopalian is more likely to be devote than the 55 year old. Hopefully once you have congregations full of relatively devote people, they can increase their retention rates, have more babies and increase the size of their churches.