Finally, Mississippi is #1

When I was growing up in small-town Arkansas, we had a saying about our neighbors to the east: "We're 49, they're 50. Thank God for Mississippi!"

Call it a school kid's coping mechanism. Every time some new national poll would come out measuring poverty, or education, or whatever, it always seemed like we Arkansans were back-to-back with our Mississippian brethren - right at the bottom of the heap. Hearing all the jokes about our hillbilly accents or our supposed lack of shoes was bad enough. But to see the stereotypes about our backwardness supported by statistical evidence was enough to give a kid an inferiority complex.

Well, a new poll is out and Mississippi is finally on top. A recent nationwide Gallup poll finds that Mississippi is the "most religious" state in the nation. 85% of Mississippians report that religion is an important part of their daily lives. Arkansas ain't too far behind at 78% (and tied for 5th overall). As the green-shaded graphic at the top of this post shows, the most religious states are found mostly in the South, whereas the least religious ones are in New England and the West Coast.

I seem to remember President Obama making an unfortunate comment during the presidential campaign about the small town poor clinging to their guns and their religion. He was rightly criticized for that remark (though he claimed it was misunderstood). Still, there is at least a broad correlation between poverty and adherence to religion, at least if you consider that the Southern states are amongst the poorest in the nation. And that makes sense: the Christian faith does indeed offer a message of hope to the poor, calling on them to be united with God and one another in the church and offering the promise of an eternal salvation that puts present suffering in perspective.

But let's flip the question on its head. Why are the wealthy so unreligious? Toward the end of his life, John Wesley wrote a sermon called, "Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity," where he bemoaned the failure of Methodists in that day to adhere to the faith of their predecessors. Wesley believed that the growing affluence of Methodists was a direct cause of their weakening faith. And perhaps most disturbingly, he does not seem to offer a convincing remedy to the problem in the text of the sermon.

Besides just looking at broad brushstroke correlations between per capita income and levels of religiosity in various states, we might also look at the example of our own church. Is it possible that the lukewarm discipleship so prevalent in the United Methodist Church is a direct result of the church's great wealth? And is there a remedy for that problem?

But hey, just so you don't misunderstand me - I'm as proud as I can be about my Arkansas roots. When I go home for a visit, I'm happy as a pig in slop. I root for the Razorbacks like a maniac on Saturdays in the fall, and I speak that lingering hillbilly accent with pride.

I'm also proud at the character of my fellow Arkansans. Though they're often poorer than their neighbors in other states, they are a resilient and hospitable people who typically exhibit a deep faith in God. Don't believe me? Just read the polls!

Crunching the numbers

At times, it seems like the United Methodist Church has a 'numbers obsession.' The statistics are familiar: when the church was formed in 1968, it had well over 10 million members in the U.S.. Today, just 40 years later, the numbers have dropped to below 8 million - all in a time when the population of the United States itself has risen from 200 million to over 300 million people.

That's right. While the population of the country has risen by 50%, the membership of the church has dropped by 20%. By any measure, that is a failure.

But what does it mean?

In the past, I have written disparagingly about the church's obsession with numbers. I've never had a problem with focusing on thriving, growing churches. I've just worried that an obsession with numbers would lead us to offering cheap grace, with an over-attention to adding warm bodies to the pews while watering down the gospel in order to get them there.

The Igniting Ministry campaign has always seemed to confirm that fear to me; its intent is to market the church - to 'raise awareness' and hopefully increase numbers - but it does so by offering a message so nebulous that it is essentially meaningless: "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors." (I know and have read about the work Igniting Ministry does with target congregations and the training they have received, but that is a relatively small part of the way the campaign has affected the whole church. It is bad theology, and - I can't say this strongly enough - it is a crying shame that we have spent so much money on advertising that does not mention the name of Jesus Christ, all in the name of being sensitive to "spiritual seekers." I have no doubt that John Wesley does somersaults in his grave over this.)

Today I want to offer a mea culpa. I believe numbers are important, and I believe we need to focus on them. Two things have caused me to change my tune and openly embrace a focus on numerical growth in the church.

The first is that I've come to believe we have nothing to fear from the watered down message of marketing programs like Igniting Ministry. They don't work. Igniting Ministry has been around for years, and its results are as hollow as its message. UM Communications can offer press releases every time a new Barna study says that Igniting Ministry has increased the 'favorability' of the United Methodist 'brand' in the public at large, but that has done nothing to arrest our precipitous decline in numbers. Thus, I can only conclude that my fears about cheap grace were wrong. In our cultural climate, apparently even cheap grace doesn't draw a crowd.

The second point is really more important, and it's the subject of my new column in the United Methodist Reporter. In December, I was with Wesley Seminary's Lovett Weems at a conference in Washington D.C., and he presented on the importance of pastors and congregations that are serious about their numerical growth. The core of Lovett's message to us that day can be found in this article. It really boils down to this: Jesus called us to make disciples, and the church in Acts exhibited remarkable growth by boldly proclaiming the gospel of Christ. As the inheritors of that apostolic ministry, we are called to do the same.

I've got to admit that this has really shaped my thinking about my own ministry. The testimony of the Scripture is that, when the true gospel is proclaimed, people will respond.

Might this be a litmus test for faithful ministry?

Flawed results, but useful implications

Last week, I cited the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's new study on the religious landscape in the United States. I want to highlight what I think is a very insightful analysis of that study from David Steinmetz, who teaches church history at Duke Divinity School. Dr. Steinmetz contributes op-ed columns to the Orlando Sentinel, and a few days ago he wrote this article looking at the results of the Pew Forum's survey.

Dr. Steinmetz says that, while the survey's conclusions rest on "impressive data", they nonetheless are "flawed by their failure to understand the nuanced boundaries that exist between and among Christian churches." As an example, he invokes the categories of "mainline", "evangelical", and "historically black" as labels that have limited usefulness. For example, while many historically black denominations exhibit evangelical theology, they rarely self-identify as evangelical (a moniker which is associated with white Protestantism). Moreover, while the United Methodist Church falls under the "mainline" category, there are many United Methodists who do self-identify as evangelicals.

Here's the main point: Steinmetz suggests that labels are more accurate to describe individuals' theological outlook than they are broad denominational identity, exactly because denominational identity means much less than it once did regarding the theological outlook of its members.

Thus, he concludes that while the Pew Forum is accurate in describing the American religious landscape as fluid, "what that thesis means requires analysts to ask questions as nuanced and complex as the reality they are studying -- in short, some better questions than they have asked thus far."

I think Steinmetz is right on in these comments, and they raise the question for me: Are broad religious labels meaningful in any sense, when they are applied to denominational identity? Or conversely, have we reached such a point in Protestant culture that denominations are so pluralistic as to be relatively meaningless as identifiers of theological conviction?

My own contribution to the wide-ranging conversation about the Pew Forum study comes in my current column in the United Methodist Reporter, which takes a wholly different tack than that of Dr. Steinmetz. I look at what the Pew Forum concludes about "net loss" in terms of religious shifting. As a "net loser" of members through such shifting, how can the United Methodist Church better form its members so that they understand their Christian identity in a United Methodist context? As a sanctificationist people, we ought to do that pretty well. The current state of our church suggests that we do not.

Number crunching

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a study last month that charts the religious demographics of our country. It makes for fascinating reading. The study looks at shifts in and out of religious traditions, and its findings suggest that church attendance is just as fluid as it looks on the ground.

For instance, 28% of adults indicate that they have left the religious tradition of their childhood. But because the Pew Forum is dealing with broad categories ("Catholic," "Protestant," "Muslim"), that number is a little misleading. When shifts between Protestant denominations are taken into account, the number jumps way up to 44%. The number of those who do not identify with a religious tradition at all is 12%, and the number of those calling themselves either atheist or agnostic is 4%.

The Pew Forum study also looks at net winners and net losers in all this shifting around. The United Methodist Church, it turns out, is a net loser. 8.3% of adults said they were raised Methodist, whereas only 6.2% identify as Methodists now (which includes both the UMC and other Methodist denominations). That comes out to a net loss of 2.1%.

So what do these numbers mean? Essentially, it means that more people leave Methodist churches than stay or transfer in. In my mind, that's an issue of formation. Our people are not formed in such a way that they see their membership in the church as fundamental to their identity. So they leave.

Robin Russell has a good analysis of the Pew Forum study in the current edition of the United Methodist Reporter. My column in the upcoming issue will offer my own take on the study, and I'll link to it when it appears.

Like so many of the statistics you see about church membership these days, there is a level of frustration at what is happening to the church. But I can see some real positives as well. For instance, the 16% of the American population that is either unaffiliated, agnostic, or atheist, represents about 48 million potential Christians! For those who are called to evangelism ministries, you have your target population!

Also, if we know some vital information about how we are losing members, it gives us a starting point from which to engage in conversations about how Christian formation can better occur in the life of the church. And then maybe those folks who are drifting away will see reasons to stay and grow in their faith.