Church Growth Due to Biology, Not Theology?
In response to recent posts a friend sent me this note:
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Demographic research shows that the primary reason for the decline in membership in mainline churches and the growth of conservative churches has little to do with ideology and much to do with biology. Conservative church members have more children.
According to findings published in the American Journal of Sociology: “A combination of higher birth rates and earlier childbearing among conservative women …explains over three-fourths of the observed change in Protestants’ denominational affiliations for cohorts born between 1900 and 1970. Most of the rest of the observed change is caused by falling rates of switching from conservative to mainline denominations; differential apostasy plays a small but significant role.Remarkably, because it has not increased over the past 50 years or so, switching from mainline to conservative denominations as the focus of the leading explanations explains none of the decline of mainline denominations.” (From Hout, M., Greely, A., & Wilde, M. J. (2001). The demographic imperative in religious change in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 107(2),468-500.)
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As I understand it, this article claims that conservative church growth has been mostly due to conservatives having larger families. A much more secondary factor is that fewer conservatives switch to mainline churches than used to be the case. A third, but quite minor, factor is that a higher percentage of members of mainline churches disaffiliate from church than happens in conservative churches.
The article also claims that there has been no increase in the percentage of members of mainline churches switching to conservative church these past 50 years, so this cannot be a reason conservative churches seem to be growing faster than mainline churches.
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Posted by: AHMED HALIM | February 17, 2007 at 09:47 AM