1. Shifts in the Religious Landscape
21st Century Realities about Western Culture

2. From the Washington Post, by Ed Stetzer – 28 April 2017
“If it doesn’t stop its decline, mainline Protestantism has just 23 Easters left.”
Religious Landscapes and Metropolitan Community Churches 2

3. Religious Landscapes and Metropolitan Community Churches
U.S. Statistics
Of the 250,000 Protestant churches in America, 200,000 are either stagnant (with no growth) or declining. That is 80% of the churches in America….
4,000 churches close their doors every single year.
There is less than half of the number of churches today than there were only 100 years ago.
3,500 people leave the church every single day.
Since 1950, there are 1/3rd fewer churches in the U.S.
Religious Landscapes and Metropolitan Community Churches 3

4. Decline of Church Attendance
Percentage of Americans attending worship more than “Seldom” or “Never”
Graph by Corner of Church & State, an RNS blog
Source: Gallup
Religious Landscapes and Metropolitan Community Churches 4

5. Growth of the Religiously Unaffiliated, 1976 - 2016
The religiously unaffiliated—those who identify as “atheist,” “agnostic,” or “nothing in particular”—now account for nearly one-quarter (24%) of Americans. Since the early 1990s, this group has roughly tripled in size.
Growth of the Religiously Unaffiliated,
Percent of Population
Values
Sources: General Social Survey, ; PRRI American Values Atlas.

6. By 2050…
In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion. Muslims will be more numerous in the U.S. than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.
The share of adults belonging to mainline churches dropped from 18.1% in 2007 to 14.7% in 2014.

7. Context: Global
Over the past 100 years, Christianity has experienced a profound southern shift in its geographical center of gravity. Whereas in 1900 over 80% of all Christians lived in Europe and Northern America, by 2005 this proportion had fallen to under 40%, and will likely fall below 30% before 2050.

8. United Church of Canada
Membership and Participation
in Thousands
MEMBERSHIP
SUNDAY SCHOOL MEMBERSHIP
AVERAGE WEEKLY ATTENDANCE
Note: Data from 2009 is based on a linear extrapolation of trends since The extrapolated data are unlikely to be completely accurate predictions, but they do give a sense of the severity fo the decline faced by the denomination.
*Not recorded by UCC before 1977
SOURCES: UCC YEARBOOK, 1980; UCC YEARBOOK, 2007, VOL. 1; UCC YEARBOOK & DIRECTORY, VOL. 1 STATISTICS 2009
ANDREW BARR / NATIONAL POST

9. UK Christian Church Membership: 1975 - 2010

10. Australia
Christianity is by far the most predominant religion in Australia, but the country’s religious landscape has changed dramatically over the past century with the percentage of Christians dropping from 96 percent of the population in 1911 to 61 percent in 2011 according to the most recent census2 report.
The  Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) social trends report found that the rising numbers of non-believers mirrors a steady decline in people reporting Christian beliefs, while those professing other beliefs, including,  Buddhism, Islam and Hinduism were on the rise.3
Latest figures show that Buddhists (2.5%), Muslims (2.2%), Hindus (1.3%) and Judaism (0.5%) all trail to the religiously unaffiliated which make up 22 percent of the total population.