There was a good Pimlico Journal piece this past week on a similar poll in the UK, done by a similarly biased pollster, and the similarly deluded reaction from online cons/trads.
In addition to all the wishcasting you noted, Pimlico points out that immigration likely skews the numbers. In the UK it’s Africans and in the US it’s hispanics, but in neither case is a Great Faith Revival likely, at least not in the way online Cons would like, if the “christian youth upsurge” is in reality a lot of newly immigrated brownoids.
There are still some strong churches out in the burbs where young conservative families want to raise their kids. They need to be very accommodative of families though.
But the pickings are slim anywhere in the city or in shrinking zip codes.
Thanks for the splash of cold water. We all need to have realistic expectations. My local NO parish, St Typical's, is largely a senior center on all days, and week days it is especially populated w very senior women.
My anecdotal experience is that church attendees are overwhelmingly old people (either married empty nesters or old women there by themselves). There are some families in the mix where the mom/dad are in their 30s or 40s with young children. It's very rare to see single young people or young couples in church.
That's my experience as well but it's partially due to the neighborhood my parish is in. Upper Middle class suburbs just don't have a ton of young people in their 20's in today's world.
Maybe. I've visited quite a few different parishes in three large archdioceses and observed the same patterns. Also, I can't remember the last time I saw a new parish opening; they are closing and consolidating them all the time. I think young people are just dropping out, pure and simple. They leave home after high school and never really think twice about going back to church. I think a lot of Gen Xers and millennials drifted away but came back when they got married and had kids, but that's happening less often. We'll see.
I said partially. Young people do tend to drop out, but it looks like Gen Z, and every other group, has hit the bottom of the decline. It remains to be seen if there will be a bounce back.
I've never been polled and I don't know anyone else who has. Though to be fair it's not something that comes up often in conversation.
I only believe polling when it's vastly to one side...like those polls that say 90% are unhappy with Congress. That is true; Congress sucks. 80-90% think Kennedy was not assassinated by LHO. That's also probably true. Nearly 100% think housing prices are too high. Vox populi, vox dei.
Any polling that's not at least 80-20 is extremely suspect, and not a reliable indicator of anything. As always, look for other signs, such as consumer habits, migration, how many crosses or American flags you see.
I'm pretty sure Barna's dataset is quota sampled, that is, non-random. Barna's wheelhouse is surveying the church community itself for internal opinions. This is probably why every other dataset in existence shows, year after year, a decline or at best plateau in religiosity with Gen Z being the least religious generation in recorded history. It's a complete outlier because it's using a methodology to show its own year-over-year trends, not really what the country is looking like as a whole.
I think we've exhausted the portion of the population who believed and went to church because it was just what was expected of you. The only way for attendance and belief to go back up is for Christianity to be considered high status again. I think we've passed the George W Bush/new Atheist era where being religious was completely coded as dumb and being an atheist was coded as smart, but we're still a long way from being a good Christian and going to weekly services being the expected behavior of an upstanding citizen.
There was a good Pimlico Journal piece this past week on a similar poll in the UK, done by a similarly biased pollster, and the similarly deluded reaction from online cons/trads.
In addition to all the wishcasting you noted, Pimlico points out that immigration likely skews the numbers. In the UK it’s Africans and in the US it’s hispanics, but in neither case is a Great Faith Revival likely, at least not in the way online Cons would like, if the “christian youth upsurge” is in reality a lot of newly immigrated brownoids.
There are still some strong churches out in the burbs where young conservative families want to raise their kids. They need to be very accommodative of families though.
But the pickings are slim anywhere in the city or in shrinking zip codes.
Thanks for the splash of cold water. We all need to have realistic expectations. My local NO parish, St Typical's, is largely a senior center on all days, and week days it is especially populated w very senior women.
My anecdotal experience is that church attendees are overwhelmingly old people (either married empty nesters or old women there by themselves). There are some families in the mix where the mom/dad are in their 30s or 40s with young children. It's very rare to see single young people or young couples in church.
To me it seems the evangelical churches are the only ones with a younger demographic. I also live in central Florida, FWIW.
That's my experience as well but it's partially due to the neighborhood my parish is in. Upper Middle class suburbs just don't have a ton of young people in their 20's in today's world.
Maybe. I've visited quite a few different parishes in three large archdioceses and observed the same patterns. Also, I can't remember the last time I saw a new parish opening; they are closing and consolidating them all the time. I think young people are just dropping out, pure and simple. They leave home after high school and never really think twice about going back to church. I think a lot of Gen Xers and millennials drifted away but came back when they got married and had kids, but that's happening less often. We'll see.
I said partially. Young people do tend to drop out, but it looks like Gen Z, and every other group, has hit the bottom of the decline. It remains to be seen if there will be a bounce back.
I've never been polled and I don't know anyone else who has. Though to be fair it's not something that comes up often in conversation.
I only believe polling when it's vastly to one side...like those polls that say 90% are unhappy with Congress. That is true; Congress sucks. 80-90% think Kennedy was not assassinated by LHO. That's also probably true. Nearly 100% think housing prices are too high. Vox populi, vox dei.
Any polling that's not at least 80-20 is extremely suspect, and not a reliable indicator of anything. As always, look for other signs, such as consumer habits, migration, how many crosses or American flags you see.
I'm pretty sure Barna's dataset is quota sampled, that is, non-random. Barna's wheelhouse is surveying the church community itself for internal opinions. This is probably why every other dataset in existence shows, year after year, a decline or at best plateau in religiosity with Gen Z being the least religious generation in recorded history. It's a complete outlier because it's using a methodology to show its own year-over-year trends, not really what the country is looking like as a whole.
https://gildhelm.substack.com/p/its-no-great-awakening
I think we've exhausted the portion of the population who believed and went to church because it was just what was expected of you. The only way for attendance and belief to go back up is for Christianity to be considered high status again. I think we've passed the George W Bush/new Atheist era where being religious was completely coded as dumb and being an atheist was coded as smart, but we're still a long way from being a good Christian and going to weekly services being the expected behavior of an upstanding citizen.
What is a poll?
What is its purpose?
How does it collect data?
How does it interpret data?
…and the central question:
Who pays for the poll—and WHY??