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America’s great unchurched masses
Posted By katie allison granju
Just read an interesting piece about a new survey from a national Baptist group on the 1-in-5 among us who doesn’t go to church.
Some of the interesting findings:
A new survey of U.S. adults who don’t go to church, even on holidays, finds 72% say “God, a higher or supreme being, actually exists.” But just as many (72%) also say the church is “full of hypocrites.”
Indeed, 44% agree with the statement “Christians get on my nerves.”
The survey defines “unchurched” as people who had not attended a religious service in a church, synagogue or mosque at any time in the past six months.
More than one in five (22%) of Americans say they never go to church, the highest ever recorded by the General Social Survey, conducted every two years by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In 2004, the percentage was 17%.
Most of the unchurched (86%) say they believe they can have a “good relationship with God without belonging to a church.” And 79% say “Christianity today is more about organized religion than loving God and loving people.”
Jan 9th, 2008
One of the biggest frustrations I face as a Christian is the phrase, “Christians get on my nerves”. Since I can’t do anything about the pretenders who bring shame to my religion, I just have to try that much harder to set a good example and not get on people’s nerves…
I love their definition of unchurched. Looks like I’m unchurched for half the year, since most years I do go at Christmas. So it would depend on what time of year they asked me…. And for a lot of people who maybe go twice a year - Easter and Christmas, they’ll be unchurched for 25% of the year.