New Pew Forum Report
February 27th, 2008 | by tom |
As many of you have probably seen already, the Pew Forum has released a report on the major religions in the U.S. They surveyed 35000 Americans age 18 and up. And released their findings in a graph that you can find here. It is a pretty lengthy article, but I also found it fairly interesting. A couple things disturbed me, however. One of those things was this comment and I quote…
44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.
Praise God for the unaffiliated that is searching for spiritual hope, which by the way is 3-1 against those who are already affiliated, but if you read the article it is as if most of them that are already affiliated are just switching religious affiliation.
What are they searching for? Why is this happening? Are we as believers not encouraging others to stay faithful, and when one moves on just saying “Oh, well this person left but another will fill their seat?” Or are we doing something wrong and trying to make it harder than it is? This is disheartening to me.
Another part of the article was headed with A Very Competitive Religious Marketplace
What???
What are we competing for? Fast Food is competitive…not the traditions of our churches.
I know that some of this switching is for the good(as in converts from a false religion to the Truth), but a large majority of these are from one denomination to another.
Jesus told us “I (Jesus) tell you the truth, whoever hears my Word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death (destruction and an eternity in Hell) to life (Eternal life in Heaven with Jesus). John 5:24
Whoever…That’s all of us…whatever denomination you are worshiping with, be it Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Joe at the gas station, etc… Plain and simple. So why when we should be concerned about telling others who may not know this, we are more concerned with who we have coming to join us on Sunday morning for fellowship? Isn’t this just our own selfish self gratification in who can have the biggest church, or who can build the biggest buildings, or have the coolest worship band, our own tradition etc…
I just thought this was a very interesting report, and I think we can all learn something from it if we search our hearts. I know I am.
but this was an AWESOME post honey! And AMEN to all of it. I want so much...
