Are we moving towards a de-Christianized America ?

In the last 20 years, the declining of Church attendance in American churches has been felt across the board in the mainlines denominations. This worrisome trend thrusts the future of American Christianity at the forefront of the religious debate. Where is America headed as a society? Would Christianity in America disappear or metastasize?

According to a model published by the Pew Research Center, the Christian percentage of the US population in the 70’ and 80 ‘was 90 percent. This has been dropping dramatically ever since and will reach below 50 percent around 2040.

While the trend creates anxiety and concerns among the Silent Generation (Born 1928–1945), Baby Boom Generation (Born 1946–1964) and Generation X (Born 1965–1980), for the Millennial Generation or Generation Y (Born 1981–1996), it seems normal as if it was anticipated. The growing number of the “nones” (people without church affiliation) among the millennial and Generation Y reinforces the trend.

Phillis Tickle, a scholar of religion, in her book, the great emergence: how Christianity is changing and why, contends that every five hundred years the Church goes through a rummage sale.

According to her in the first 500 years of the Christian Church, the Roman Emperor Constantine was instrumental of the spread of Christianity. In the 11 century, the church splinted between the Rome Catholic in the West and the Orthodox Church in the East.

In 16 century, the church went through the reformation with people such as Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli. In the year 2000, the decline of the church in the West was apparent while the church in the global south was growing.

Douthat, in a recent article published in New York Times contends that the church in America is going through what he calls “the Americanization of the Christian faith.” Douthat argues that Americans are not less religious, they are just not keen to attend churches and have embraced secular Christianity and its heresies.

Americans have a church of self-love, with prophets like Oprah Winfrey preaching a gospel of the divine self, a “God within” spirituality that risks making selfishness a virtue. A church of prosperity, with figures like Joel Osteen as its bishops, that insists that God desires nothing more for his elect than American prosperity, capitalist success.

American have churches of politics, preaching redemption through political activism — a Christian nationalism on the right, by turns messianic and apocalyptic, and a progressive utopianism on the left, convinced that history’s arc bends always in its favor.

I am of the opinion that American Christianity will continue to decline but will not disappear. New foyers of growth that are emerging in the global south will impact the reverse of American Christianity. What will emerge out of this hybridization needs be defined.