On my daily walk with the neighbors, we were discussing the churches in our vicinity. One neighbor was interested in switching churches, and wanted to know where the others went or where we had visited and what we thought. Most interesting to me was that the denomination never came up. A recent study backs up my anecdote:
The report estimates that between 47 percent and 59 percent of U.S. adults have changed affiliation at least once. Most described just gradually drifting away from their childhood faith.
“This shows a sort of religion a la carte and how pervasive it is,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist of religion. “In some ways, it’s an indictment of organized Christianity. It suggests there’s a big open door for newcomers, but a wide back door where people are leaving.”
Denomination was not as important as other factors. So what was important in our discusion? Location of the church (in terms of how long that Sunday morning commute would be), leadership in the church (mostly whether we liked the minister or felt he/she was hypocritical or judgmental), and friendliness (Did we feel comfortable in the church and welcomed?)
May 12th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
One big consideration for me now that I have kids is the gender and race of the leadership and the congregation. I don’t have much say in who my boss is. I vote but don’t have much final say about who my elected officials are. But I can decide that I want to go to a church with black leadership so that my black son sees black men and women leading a community of white, black, asian, and hispanic people. And I can’t imagine a situation where I’d go back to a church with “seperate but equal(?)” gender roles like the one that I was raised in.