The USA is not a Protestant nation anymore

This was long coming. The USA has embraced multiculturalism like Australia has, and therefore, have no backbone in the faith the helped the country.

AP starts its news piece this way:

For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise.

So, it's not that they are turning to Catholicism as some have suggested, but those who are not affiliated with a historical church, or those non-denominational churches, are not considered Protestants at all.

The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50 percent. The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when no Protestants are on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republicans have their first presidential ticket with no Protestant nominees. 

Among the reasons for the change are the growth in nondenominational Christians who can no longer be categorized as Protestant, and a spike in the number of American adults who say they have no religion. The Pew study, released Tuesday, found that about 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent in the last five years.

Just as Europe is turning more and more secular, the USA has also adopted the same approach, and this is alarming for those who have always considered that the USA is an exceptional nation, because it is, as they say, a Christian nation:

Growth among those with no religion has been a major preoccupation of American faith leaders who worry that the United States, a highly religious country, would go the way of Western Europe, where church attendance has plummeted. Pope Benedict XVI has partly dedicated his pontificate to combating secularism in the West. This week in Rome, he is convening a three-week synod, or assembly, of bishops from around the world aimed at bringing back Roman Catholics who have left the church.

As this trend continues, it is sure to affect the politics of the the USA.

The trend also has political implications. American voters who describe themselves as having no religion vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Pew found Americans with no religion support abortion rights and gay marriage at a much higher-rate than the U.S. public at large. These "nones" are an increasing segment of voters who are registered as Democrats or lean toward the party, growing from 17 percent to 24 percent over the last five years. The religiously unaffiliated are becoming as important a constituency to Democrats as evangelicals are to Republicans, Pew said. 

There was a belief that the USA was different from Europe, because of its religiosity, that although it was a wealthy nation, it still had a faith to rely on. Well, as the Guardian Newspaper reports, that's only an illusion:

Researchers have been struggling for decades to find a definitive reason for the steady rise in those with no religion. The spread of secularism in western Europe was often viewed as a byproduct of growing wealth in the region. Yet among industrialised nations, the US stood out for its deep religiosity in the face of increasing wealth.

Both news sources point to the fact that there are no Protestants in the Supreme Court, and that the Republican presidential candidates, both are not Protestants. That, in the party that is considered the bastion of Protestantism.

Is this a sign that Protestantism as an experiment has failed? Catholics have not done well either. It is very interesting that such a study comes in the month when Protestantism celebrates its birth!!

Regardless of the final assessment we give to this finding, it shows that the thought of the USA as a Christian nation, is now just a myth.

The Emerging Church has not emerged. An appraisal

I have had to encounter the "emergent church" quite a lot in my denomination. A couple of years ago, there were like obsessed about it, to the point that somebody did a Th.D. on the movement.

But yes, it is not showing sings that the new approach is working as it was expected. Is it because it is too soon to expect it. or is it because we live in a society that wants instant gratification?

Well, here it's an essay that I find very balance, although it leans a bit to the emergent movement, I still find it very interesting.

The Emerging Church has not emerged. I hear this statement a lot. Another one I hear is, “Missional churches are not growing.” To begin with, I realise some missional gatherings are just a bunch of recalcitrant kids, including some grownups who haven’t grown up. They are doing the missional thing because it’s ‘cool’ and they got sick of the established church telling them to grow up. But more importantly, what are leaders and denominations looking at or looking for when they measure growth?
Is it designated buildings for worship, an increase in attendees, or several church ‘plants’ over a given period? Is growth defined by a church’s budget or the employment of full-time staff? If you’re looking for these ‘evidences’ of growth in a missional church, you may not find them. 
From where I stand, missionary churches (I prefer this term) have several clear characteristics. To begin with, they take the bare bones, pre-Constantinian New Testament way of doing church very literally, often adopting some of the Jewish/Eastern cultural expressions that go along with it. They make deliberate attempts to function more like a group of missionaries on a foreign mission field. In true missionary fashion, they learn the language or (in a western context) the lingo or jargon, and they try to submerge their ecclesiology into the particular sub-culture they are trying to reach. All of this takes time—sometimes years of icebreaking and relationship-building occurs before the first ‘official’ meeting (if you could call it that). I grew up among headhunters on the mission field in Indonesia. It is common for missionaries to spend years and years working among Muslims or Hindus without a single convert. This doesn’t necessarily mean that their methods are deficient. The New Testament frequently uses agricultural-type metaphors to describe the Kingdom of God. This is where the term ‘seeding the gospel’ comes from. Therefore, finding evidence of growth or ‘fruit’ in such settings can be tricky, especially if one evaluates things from a contemporary Church Growth mindset where economies of scale and pragmatism are often influencing factors.I am not saying that all ‘Church Growth’ principles do not have merit and I am not suggesting that attractional (or established) churches do not have ministry beyond the monoculture.  I agree that some missional churches don’t seem to be making much progress, but the same could be said of some attractional churches. I know of many attractional churches that have had to lay off the pastor and close their doors. It’s tough out there. We are in a pagan era that is most likely more resistant to the gospel than the pre-Christian paganism of the first century.I feel we need to better understand each other and dissolve this ‘us versus them’ mindset that is dividing some great people from both camps who love Jesus and are trying to grow saints and save sinners. I am not necessarily advocating for some kind of new ecumenism, but both the attractional and missional churches can greatly benefit from liaising together, and working toward ways where mission, discipleship and leadership are shared and celebrated. Simon G. Rattray Simon is a consultant with the Jump Network – an agency committed to reviving the latent missionary impulse among God's people. www.thejumpnetwork.com.au

By RUSSELL D. MOORE

Are we witnessing the death of America's Christian denominations? Studies conducted by secular and Christian organizations indicate that we are. Fewer and fewer American Christians, especially Protestants, strongly identify with a particular religious communion—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, etc. According to the Baylor Survey on Religion, nondenominational churches now represent the second largest group of Protestant churches in America, and they are also the fastest growing.

More and more Christians choose a church not on the basis of its denomination, but on the basis of more practical matters. Is the nursery easy to find? Do I like the music? Are there support groups for those grappling with addiction?

This trend is a natural extension of the American evangelical experiment. After all, evangelicalism is about the fundamental message of Christianity—the evangel, the gospel, literally the "good news" of God's kingdom arriving in Jesus Christ—not about denomination building.

The post-World War II generation of evangelicals was responding to congregations filled with what they considered spiritual deadness. People belonged to a church, but they seemed to have no emotional experience of Christianity inside the building. Revivalists watched as denominational bureaucracies grew larger, and churches shifted from sending missionaries to preach around the world to producing white papers on issues like energy policy.

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More and more Christians choose a church not on the basis of its denomination, but on the basis of more practical matters.

The revivalists wanted to get back to basics, to recover the centrality of a personal relationship with Jesus. "Being a member of a church doesn't make you a Christian," the ubiquitous evangelical pulpit cliché went, "any more than living in a garage makes you a car." Thus these evangelical ministries tended not to talk about those issues that might divide their congregants. They avoided questions like: Who should be baptized and when? What does the Lord's Supper mean? Should women be ordained? And so on.

The movement exploded. Before 1955, there were virtually no megachurches (defined as 2,000 people per worship service) in the country. Now there are between 850 and 1,200 such churches and many are nondenominational, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Evangelicalism wanted to open its doors to all believers and it often lacked roots in the traditions of particular congregations. So many evangelical churches have a generic identity. This has changed the feel of local church life.

Where hymnody once came from the spontaneity of slave spirituals or camp meetings, worship songs are increasingly now focus-grouped by executives in Nashville. The evangelical "Veggie Tales" cartoons—animated Bible stories featuring talking cucumbers and tomatoes—probably shape more children in their view of scripture than any denominational catechism does these days. A church that requires immersion baptism before taking communion, as most Baptist traditions do, will likely get indignant complaints from evangelical visitors who feel like they've been denied service at a restaurant.

But there are some signs of a growing church-focused evangelicalism. Many young evangelicals may be poised to reconsider denominational doctrine, if for no other reason than they are showing signs of fatigue with typical evangelical consumerism.

For example, artists such as Keith and Kristen Getty and Sojourn Music are reaching a new generation with music written for and performed by local congregations. Yes, prosperity preacher Joyce Meyer sells her book "Eat the Cookie, Buy the Shoes," which encourages Christians to "lighten up" by eating cookies and buying shoes (seriously). But, at the same time, Alabama preacher David Platt is igniting thousands of young people with his book "Radical," which calls Christians to rescue their faith by lowering their standard of living and giving their time and money to Church-based charities.

And though nondenominational churches are growing, the Southern Baptist Convention—the nation's largest Protestant group—has over 10,000 students studying for ministry in six seminaries right now.

If denominationalism simply denotes a "brand" vying for market share, then let denominationalism fall. But many of us believe denominations can represent fidelity to living traditions of local congregations that care about what Jesus cared about—personal conversion, discipleship, mission and community. Perhaps the denominational era has just begun.

Mr. Moore is dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.