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Comment by partiallypro | Hacker News Reader

I think there are two things going on:

a) People are becoming less religious b) People are leaving smaller churches for much larger churches that are non-denominational.

Smaller churches are more conservative and more political, people seem to be burned out on politics and don't really want it as something in their face on Sunday. You couple that with natural shifts in demographics and that essentially explains a lot of what is happening. I suspect once the millennial generation has more kids, church going will tick back up.

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According to recent studies, neither of those are really happening. "Secularization theory" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularization#Current_issues_...) is the current sociological term for (a) and it is pretty well established that while there may be regional fluctuation in the numbers of religious people, at a global level, religiosity is not in decline.

As for (b), at least in the US, it is the large mainline denominations that are in steep decline and the smaller, more theologically conservative denominations that are growing most rapidly. Mega-churches are a phenomenon, but not one that falls easily into either of the above categories because they can range all the way from progressive to prosperity gospel to theologically conservative and nearly anything in between.

It's hardly conclusive, but I did an analysis using data from the General Social Survey[1] last year for a stats class, and found a downward trend in "religiosity"[2] in America between 1974 (or so) and 2014 (or so).

Granted, that's only looking at America, not world-wide, but at least here in the US there seems to be some support for a general decline in the importance of religion.

[1]: http://gss.norc.org/

[2]: a synthetic metric based on multiple questions on the survey which related to religion - some like "how frequently do you attend a religious service", "how important do you consider religion to be in your life", etc., etc.

c) "yoloculture" (as I like to call it) greatly emphasis the self as the key virtue, hence the millennial and younger can't be bothered sacrificing "Sunday Funday" to attend an inconvenient service at 9 in the morning.

Simultaneously, The rock concert megachurches with cult of personality pastors and have Starbucks inside them with much later start times and emphasize a message of self empowerment with gospel-y sounding words, however, seem to be thriving.

The only thing more constant than the darned kids is people complaining about the darned kids.

"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."

Peter the Hermit.

Wasn't he long dead by 1274?

In any case, I love the quote. Just goes to show how timeless the generational bashing is.

Yep, he was. That's what I get for trusting the Internet!

Edited.

I certainly agree older folk yelling at younger whippersnappers is a constant, but turn it on it's head for a moment: when it happens the other way around, no one questions it. "It's the Boomer's fault!" Millennial's proclaim, and every culture mag now runs a similar story.

There is something to be said for the wisdom of elders. Yes we should discard the grumpy old complaining because of change, but are we to really say all the complaints are invalid just because "it's always been done?"

I think of other societies, primarily Asian, that have deep respect for the thoughts and opinions of their elders. I think of how almost every faith, including the three major abrahamic religions explicity command followers to honor thy mother and thy father (which is generalized to honor your elders). Yet in this country, and most western countries, the fad is to kick the old out as soon as you can! "Out with the old, in with the new! Pay no mind to old people's grumbling! Their wisdom is invalided! Their opinions on culture and where society is headed is invalid!" -- And one can only wonder, is this why history is doomed to repeat itself over and over again?

We blow off what the "geezers" are telling us "Psh! Get with the times old man, things are different now!"

In my opinion, humanity hasn't changed much in the past couple thousand years. We would do better to listen to some more grumblings of the geezers. Maybe getting off a lawn or two wouldn't be so bad after all.

I wouldn't necessarily say nobody questions it, but I agree that it is more socially acceptable to blame the boomers. But... it's not exactly unpopular to malign millenials, either.

Personally if you gripe to me about boomers too much I will probably tell you to quit bitching and take some responsibility. In particular if you are young, I will remind you that you have more voters in your cohort than boomers do, so not only should you quit bitching, you should direct that energy to getting your fellow young'uns to go out and vote. After all, most of the consequences of today's politics will be borne by the young.

I also think that as much wisdom as their may be in old people, there are lots and lots and lots of ignorant jerks who aren't worth the powder to blow 'em up. Same for young people. Conversely, I've met some teenagers with more innate wisdom than most people ever get in their whole life.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

Aristophanes, over a millennium earlier.

Several thousand years ago we invented lawns.

That very same night we invented yelling at damned kids to stay off them :)

Ironically, this is exactly the opposite path my family (my wife and three kids) have taken. We left a large evangelical church for a small progressive (UCC) church.

I think you're an outlier. Obviously I don't have a dataset, just my observation, but I've seen the "my father went to this church, so I'm going to go there too" die off. Now people will go to a larger church, especially younger people, because they can meet people their age. If you go to a small community church, you'll quickly find there might be one person your age, if at all, if you're in your 20s-30s.

Now bigger churches do singles groups, etc. Zapping youth away from smaller churches effectively makes them unable to grow in the future, and their demographic target begins to die off or drop out. Church is very social, so the less people that go to the church that you know, the less likely you are to stick to it. It's very easy for a larger church to begin killing off smaller ones. It takes time, I believe this non-denominational /big church trend started 10 or so years ago...and is probably just now having a very noticeable statistical impact.

Obviously, this could be regional as well, and we can't dismiss that people have become less religious in the traditional sense.

If a church is too large and non-denominational, it ends up being a YMCA with sermons. In other words, there's no more church there, just vague platitutes and networking.

Jesus himself said: "Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

Big amphitheatre churches will flourish in the short run but they don't produce real roots, and in the long run they'll have about as much staying power as Javascript frameworks.

Hm, The Mormons have been upsizing for a century with no sign of abating. How long do we wait for 'real roots' to matter?

> I think you're an outlier.

I don't necessarily disagree (or, at least, I don't have the data to disagree). However, I'm definitely not unique in my experience. I can think of at least half a dozen people at my church (out of an active membership of ~150) that fit the description of "got fed up with the conservative politics of the 'Evangelical' church in America and sought out a church that better matches what we believe".

Note, there's a difference here between churches that are happy to just ignore things like LGBT equality (there are certainly plenty of "big" churches that fall in this category) and churches that are actively open and affirming (that is far less common among "big" churches, in my experience).

Same; the church we are at now is an ecumenical affiliate of a Baptist group and a Presbyterian group. Very progressive. Growing fairly rapidly too right now, mostly people without grey hair; lots of toddlers and preschoolers.

> Smaller churches are more conservative and more political,

You sure that generalization holds well enough to be useful?

Personally speaking, I've attended services at small churches of both political alignments. (Ranging from strongly liberal/socialist all the way to the exact opposite. I can think of at least one of each in easy walking distance.)

> People are leaving smaller churches

I think this is undoubtedly true, at least in my neck of the woods. Most of the original development around here was prior to cars being commonplace, when there was a strong motivation to having a church in easy walking distance. (Especially true given that people used to be at church far more often than now.)

These days, easier access to transport (energy) means there's much less need for geographical proximity. And this, in turn, means much less need and ability to support smaller churches. (So we've also seen a number of churches converted to condos, etc.)

I think it would be more accurate to say that small churches are free to express more extreme political alignments, both conservative and liberal.

Large churches have a lot of diversity within the congregation, making it difficult for the senior pastor to steer the whole community in a single direction. This would make them more moderate on average. They also have to worry about legalities such as maintaining a tax-exempt status, so they can't endorse a particular party or candidate too strongly.

I don't think "moderate" is the right word here. The vast majority of large churches are solidly right of center (even in the context of American politics, which has a strong rightward lean to begin with)

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