The Great Dechurching: Why Have Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church?

Why have millions of American Christians stopped going to church?

The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis, Michael Graham and Ryan Burge explores the reasons why forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the last twenty-five years. 

They try to answer three questions:

Who left?

Why did they leave?

What will it take to get them back?

For the purposes of their study, they defined a dechurched person as someone who used to go to church at least once per month but now goes less than once a year.

So who has stopped going to church? The authors break down the absentees into five major categories and then break dechurched Evangelicals down into four further sub-categories. (An Evangelical is a Christian whose final authority is the Bible and who believes that to be a Christian you must be born again.) I would analyze the individual categories at greater length but they don’t seem to make much difference.

There is no one particular group of people who have stopped going to church. Dechurching has occurred across all theological traditions—mainline churches and Evangelicals, every age group—young and old; every ethnicity—white, black, latino; every political affiliation from liberal to conservative; every educational level, from high school dropouts to people with graduate degrees. The dechurching has occurred in every geographic location; no income bracket escaped dechurching in America. Men and women seem to be about equally affected. Roman Catholic and Protestant. There is some variation in these categories but the differences don’t seem to be that great.

So forty million Americans go to church a whole lot less than they did twenty-five years ago.

We need several warnings here. There are limitations in counting the dechurched. The authors are depending on large survey samples and people self-report on their church going habits. So we are depending on people telling the truth to a pollster. This is a limitation for every poll but seems especially important here.  A couple of questions the authors do not deal with are really important. I was left wondering how many people now attend online church. They don’t go to a building but watch services on their computer or phone. The authors merely say there are lots of those people but I still don’t know how many are in that category. And in my several readings of the book I have a larger question. What constitutes going to church? I know a young man who might be considered dechurched. He does not go to a traditional church service very often. But he’s in three Bible studies, two online and one in his apartment. In addition, he is a volunteer in a local church youth group on weeknights. How many people are there like him? How do you count him?

Having said all this, it is still easier to count the absentees than it is to answer the next question—why did they leave? Again we are dependent on people’s self-reporting but they give a whole range of reasons. A few tend to dominate. 

When the Wall Street Journal analyzed this research they said the number one reason people stop going to church is they move and do not try to find a new church. And that seems like a big, maybe the biggest reason people dechurch.   Some said that life just got too busy and they no longer had time for church. Closely related, lots of people cited changes in life circumstances like divorce or remarriage.   But in their polling data the authors come up with lots of other reasons, a lot of them relational. People said they had no friends at church, A lot cited personal feelings—they just did not seem to fit in with the church, or the church just didn’t seem that loving. Some give theological reasons—they are bothered by the suffering in the world or they doubt the goodness of God or even the existence of God. Quite a few cite moral reasons—the church’s teaching on sexuality is too narrow or they want to explore their sexuality. As you would guess a number cite moral scandals in the church claiming these drove them away. Some cited the Covid pandemic. It got them out of the habit of going to church and they just never got back. Some cited political reasons—the church was too conservative politically, but just as many felt the church was too liberal. As you might expect some cited a negative church experience—they got their feelings hurt and quit attending.

After looking at Americans generally the authors home in on Bible-believing Christians in particular. People who are generally referred to as Evangelicals. Most of you listening to my video would be classified as an Evangelical. That means the Bible is your final religious authority and to get right with God you need to be born again through faith in Christ.

What about this group? Again the authors break them down into sub-groups. And for Evangelicals there are four groups: These groups are cultural Christians; dechurched mainstream evangelicals; exvangelicals; and dechurched Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).

Cultural Christians are by far the biggest group; 8 million; they have no real Christian faith. They don’t believe the Bible, do not have a personal relationship with Christ. The authors flat out say they are not believers. They are not born again. They went to church for social or cultural reasons but now they don’t. Why did they leave? Might better ask why they went in the first place. The reasons they give are almost all personal, even trivial. Again, the big one: they moved. They changed locations and just didn’t start back up going to church in their new location. Other reasons—they didn’t have any friends in a church; attending was inconvenient. They give a host of reasons and not one stands out.

The more serious dechurching began in the early 1990s. What happened then? The authors focus on three things: First, When the Soviet Union collapsed and that struggle ended, it became more culturally acceptable to be both American and non-Christian. Personally, I do not know how much credence to give this explanation. Second, rise of religious right and its involvement in politics alienated people. But their own research shows that left-wing politics alienated just as many. Finally, third, the internet. People could get what they wanted online without the bother of getting dressed and going to church. This last one makes the most sense. But I think most importantly of all—people who went to church but weren’t really Christians in the biblical sense felt free to stop attending.

24% of Americans attend church every week—or more. Another 20% or so go fairly regularly. That means that on a given Sunday about 100 million Americans are in church. That’s almost as many as watched the Super Bowl.

The authors give lots of reasons for hope. Almost all of the dechurched are open to coming back. How do we restore them to fellowship? That’s the subject of our next video.

Thanks for listening. May our God bless you richly.

More: To purchase “The Great Dechurching” on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Dechurching-Leaving-Going-Bring/dp/0310147433

Religious “nones” are hard to classify. https://religionunplugged.com/news/2024/2/6/religious-nones-are-a-complex-group-hard-to-pigeonhole

Christianity Today reviews certain aspects of the book: https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2024/february/african-american-nones-black-church-faith-shift-pew-deconst.html?utm_source=CT%20Daily%20Briefing%20Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=722630&utm_content=15748&utm_campaign=email

An interview with the authors: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2024/01/24/the-great-dechurching-why-so-many-americans-are-leaving-their-church