Faith, part III--Americas

For several centuries, Roman Catholic was the only legal religion in Latin America.  Mass attendance was low (10%) and only about 20% of the people participated in church life at any time. Today 51% attend weekly and 79% say religion is important to them.  What happened?  Protestantism was gradulally allowed, first through British and American merchant communities.  About one in four Christians is Protestant today. In the 50s, as Protestants began to make inroads, the Catholic church judged it as an appeal to the material deprivations of the poor.  As an antidote they coined Liberation Theology which was thinly veiled Marxism.  But it never caught on with peasants, in fact backfired and Protestantism grew more, especially Pentecostalism. The Catholic Charismatic Movement did however begin to grow enormously.  Today, attendance in Catholic seminaries has grown to 20,000 where it was 4000 in 1960. It has been most vibrant in countries like Guatemala where the Catholic-Protestant split is about 50-50.  But it comes at a price of polarization and distrust between the two groups as well as anti-semitism. 

            In USA, 78% of the people claim affiliation with Christianity, 2% are Jewish, 4% other, and 12% are unaffiliated.46% attend weekly and 66% say religion is important in life. 82% told Gallup they were “sometimes very conscious of God’s presence.” 44% said they felt called by God to do something. Yet many have concluded that Christianity is dying and in decline.  The answer to this is two-fold.  First, Millenials are attending poorly (about 1/3) which actually matches attendance of their parents when young.  Second, many more are unaffiliated with a particular church.  These “nones” have grown from 8 to 22% since 1990—but what is meant is “no actual membership”.  A third reason often cited, “Young people are more liberal about sex,” has been shown to be meaningless in numbers. What does seem to be measurable is the decline in mainline Protestants.  Many of these bodies have lost half or three-quarters of membership.  Conservative traditional denominations and Catholics have held their own while Pentecostals, and LDS have soared.  But most of all, the conservative, evangelical Non-denominational churches have come out of nowhere to be a major player.  Why have many left their denomination for a more conservative church?  It is often traced to the secularization among intellectuals in seminary and clergy.  Similarly, Judaism has gone through a season of decline in numbers and liberalism, but in the last 20 years has seen a resurgence amid increased observance of traditions.  All of this points to American faith, not in decline but holding at least as many adherents as in previous generations.