What's Happening to the Church in America?

The Pew Research center released a survey today (October 9, 2012) with the title “None’s on the Rise.” The subtitle reads, “One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation.” It is a startling survey that speaks about the decline of the church and “religion” in the overall life of Americans. You can read the article for yourself at http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx. Below, I have highlighted the ten most astounding things I took away from this survey.

1. “One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.”
2. “A third of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation (32%), compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%).”
3. “Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.”
4. “15.3% of U.S. adults answered a question about their current religion by saying they were atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”
5. “The new Pew Research Center/Religion & Ethics News Weekly survey finds that about three-quarters of unaffiliated adults were raised with some affiliation (74%).”
6. “The number of Americans who currently say religion is very important in their lives (58%)… is far higher than in Britain (17%), France (13%), Germany (21%) or Spain (22%).”
7. “By 2012, 29% of U.S. adults indicated they seldom or never attend religious services.”
8. “The percentage of Americans who say the Bible should be taken literally has fallen [to] an average of about 38%.”
9. “Two-thirds of Americans, including 63% of the religiously unaffiliated, say religion as a whole is losing its influence on American life.”
10. “88% of religiously unaffiliated Americans are not actively seeking to find a church or other religious group to join.”

The apostle Paul said to the church at Rome that it is high time for us to awake out of sleep. My prayer is that God will awaken the church because we are slowly losing ground to the forces of evil. There is too much at stake for us to slumber while these perilous times are upon us. It’s time for us to wake up and to shake the sleep from our eyes and realize there is a spiritual war that is raging all around us. It’s time that we awake from our apathy, repent of our hypocrisy, and re-fire on our duty to win the lost at any cost. Jeff Steele said it best in his song when he said, “It’s time for the army of God to arise and say we want America back!”