By Andy Hale

Much has been made in the last decade of the “Nones” and “Dones.” However, well before these words entered our lexicon, the church was already experiencing rapid decline.  

According to Gallup, religious participation in the United States hovered around 70% or higher from 1937 through 1999. However, religious participation has steadily declined at the turn of the century, with 9.2% of adults exiting each decade. To make it even more clear, the U.S. Mainline Protestant population was 31% in 1967 but 12% in 2022. 

“Almost every large religious tradition has been tracking their total membership for decades as a means of understanding where churches are growing and where they are declining. Anyone who has been in church administration for a while knows that membership records are far from accurate,” said Dr. Ryan Burge on the CBF Podcast Conversation.  

“Churches don’t want to cull people from the rolls because there’s always the possibility that they will return to the church one day and express offense when seeing that their name has been purged from the official records.” 

Burge, the assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, has done extensive research on the shifting American religious landscape through his works The Great Dechurching, The Nones, and 20 Myths About Religion and Politics in America.  

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Andy Hale is the creator and host of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Podcast. Hale is the Associate Executive Coordinator of CBF North Carolina. He’s also served as CBF’s Church Start Specialist, the founding pastor of Mosaic Church of Clayton, and the senior pastor of University Baptist Church of Baton Rouge. Follow on Twitter @haleandy.