I keep seeing polls saying that 70% of Americans are Christian but… it sure doesn’t feel that way.
What do we even mean by “Christian” in a country where it’s been as much a cultural identity as a spiritual one? There’s a huge gap between genuine believers and people who maybe just use the word without really thinking and haven’t been to Church in 40 years.
Is America really Christian?
Polls record what people still call themselves, not the actual reality.
Picture someone who hasn’t been inside a church in forty years and still checks the box. If America were Christian I’d expect to see it more in everyday life, in how neighbors treat each other and whether Sunday Church still means anything.
When a poll says 70% of Americans are Christian, it means 70% of the people asked to pick from a list, which isn’t really the same thing at all. It doesn’t mean that 70% of people really belong to Christ.
A country can’t follow Christ the way a person or a church can, and calling it ‘Christian’ muddies things.
That 70% number is from Pew’s 2014 survey, but their newest one puts it closer to 62%.
Going from self-identified Christian to weekly churchgoer is a steep drop, down to something like 25-30%.
America is culturally Christian, but spiritually a lot less so (see this).
Even 25-30% seems generous… Research shows people overreport how often they go, so the real weekly figure is probably lower than the surveys show.
The people who show up every week are the same ones at midweek Bible study and the ones serving.
Does the 62% figure keep sliding as the cultural label loses its social value?
Picking a box on a survey is a lot easier than picking up a cross, so that 70% number has always felt a little generous to me.
My uncle hadn’t set foot in a church since the seventies but still wrote Baptist on every hospital form, so the box-checking thing rings true.
Picking a box on a survey and following Christ are miles apart, so I’d rate that 70% figure maybe a 3 out of 10 for meaning anything spiritual.
Your uncle sounds like half my extended family.
For a lot of folks that age, “Baptist” or “Methodist” was telling you which side of town they grew up on.
Weekly attendance as the dividing line? I’d be careful… committed Christians miss Sundays for work, or they’re sick or caregiving.
Percentage will keep falling though, fewer people feel any reason to claim the label.
I’m a conservative Christian myself and notice tons of people who believe they’re following Christ but who we’d probably disagree with on a lot… if that 70% were all conservative believers America would look different than it does.
The line between cultural Christian and genuine follower is probably blurrier than it looks from the outside.
The verse about many calling His name and few entering… But who are we to know which ones are the few? Some of those folks who haven’t darkened a church door in decades might have a real faith life we know nothing about.
Plenty of folks only show up at Easter and Christmas or cherry-pick which parts of Scripture they follow, while others wear the label for personal gain… It raises the question of whether that still counts as Christian.
That drop in the 70% figure is probably culture more than demographic turnover. Active faith or inherited labels? That’s the question.
Deep South here. Nearly everyone over fifty claims Christ but among younger folks it’s maybe a quarter.
Pew has it going from 92% in 1992 to around 60% today.
Matthew 7:21 comes to mind: ‘Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.’
Less than 10% are genuine believers, probably. Most of that 70% haven’t darkened a church door in decades… I do know folks who read Scripture daily and don’t make it to a building on Sunday though.
I look around on Sunday morning and wonder how many are there out of genuine faith, and how many out of habit or family expectation. That 70% national number might not be so different from what’s going on in our own local pews.
Sincere believers are dropping the label, “Christian” gets heard as a political team now in a lot of places. 2 guys in my small group answer “nothing in particular” on surveys… both pray more than I do.
Reading this. Can’t tell which group I’m in. So much doubt (lately especially).
But does that disqualify me?