US Christian and Para-Christian Church Bodies Ranked: Expanded
All the larger heterodox churches are growing except for the Unitarians. Oriental Orthodox Churches surge on immigration accretions.
Modelling: Sonnet 4.6
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Interesting data. Tim, I would be curious to know how you interpret the data.
Before further investigation to try to support any formal or final conclusions, my initial thoughts or guesses are:
It looks like the drop in most mainline Christian churches could show an overall distrust by all people in our country, including Christians, but particularly younger generations, of what people generally think of as “organized religion“ and that that distrust has been accelerating. The growth in PCA could be partly due to many of the PCUSA churches leaving the liberal decline of that church body, and moving over to the more conservative Presbyterian bodies. The Evangelical/non-denominational churches are at least initially viewed by people attracted to them as an alternative to “organized religion.“ The growth of heretical bodies like Mormon churches, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc, might be a growing appeal of cult-like, charismatic types of leadership to more people in our country. It might be that as the general population grows more distrusting of “organized religion,“ it becomes more attracted to charismatic leaders, in the search for meaning and happiness, so more people are drawn into following cult-like, charismatic leadership.
All very sad, that is true, but maybe corresponding to sensibilities of the people in this country at this time.
May god help us all.