Passion for churches declines

October 21, 2011

Bleak and bleaker.

That’s the assessment of a new report on the state of American religious congregations.

Many “Oldline Protestant” churches are showing little spiritual vitality, and their small, aging congregations are showing little of the openness to the kinds of changes that might turn things around.

Many Evangelical Protestant churches, which once seemed to be bucking these trends, are stalling out as well.

Yes, of course, there are vital and growing congregations, says the report’s author, David Roozen of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

But the overall trend is clear, Roozen said of the 2010 survey of more than 10,000 congregations — Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Baha’i. It compares results with a similar survey a decade ago and smaller ones in between. the rest

The worst news, Roozen wrote, is for what traditionally is called Mainline Protestantism because of its onetime cultural prominence, including the nation’s largest Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran denominations.