{"id":55795,"date":"2021-03-29T10:08:03","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T15:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=55795"},"modified":"2021-03-29T10:08:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T15:08:03","slug":"us-church-membership-falls-below-50-percent-first-time-in-80-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/29\/us-church-membership-falls-below-50-percent-first-time-in-80-years\/","title":{"rendered":"US church membership falls below 50 percent first time in 80 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a sign of the times:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/media\/545364-us-church-membership-falls-below-50-percent-for-first-time-poll\">US church membership falls below 50 percent for first time<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s intriguing that church membership was so low 80 years ago &#8211; that puts thing in perspective a bit.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s important to note that some of these statistical drops are a reflection of changes in practice that set in decades earlier. As social pressure to belong to church decreases, the portion of the population that wasn&#8217;t practicing anyway is more likely to be honest about that and drop membership.<\/p>\n<p>That isn&#8217;t to deny that secularization is rapidly advancing. This part of the story reflects what we all see happening in our church communities:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Among people born before 1946, 66 percent belong to a church with the share of people dropping as the generations progress. 58 percent of baby boomers, 50 percent of Generation X and 36 percent of Millennials report belong to a church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>awr<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This reflects what we all see happening in our church communities:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":55797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-new-ws"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - 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