One of the most wonderful things about Christianity is that there’s remarkable diversity in the way we can worship, provided we believe in the essentials of the faith. After the Protestant Reformation, denominations sprang up that allowed for variations in thoughts on secondary theological issues as well as styles of worship.
In more recent years, the “mainline” denominations, so called because they were the churches along the main roads in towns, have opted for theological and political liberalism (and downright heresy) and have seen a resulting decline. Denominations still loom large on the landscape of American Christianity, but their influence is on the downslope, according to some new research.
Ryan Burge writes at Graphs About Religion about the rise in non-denominationalism in the U.S. Against the backdrop of the constant refrain of the decline of religious observance in this country, Burge explains how the rise in non-denominational Christians is a factor that we can’t ignore.
“However, there is one group that is much larger and is growing,” Burge writes (emphasis in the original). “It’s not really a denomination. And it’s not really a tradition. They are united by what they reject — that is the idea of organized denominations. I always tell people that the rise of the nones (those who reject religion entirely) is the biggest story in the faith space. But the second most important story is the rise of the nons — that is those folks who identify as non-denominational Christians.”
Burge cites General Social Survey data from 1972 to 2022 that shows the rapid growth of non-denominationalism in the last five decades (emphasis in the original):
In the early 1970s, non-denominational Protestants were little more than a rounding error. Just 2% of all respondents said that they were non-denominational — it was 3% of the Protestant sample. You could forgive any religious demographer for ignoring this part of the sample. Both figures slowly began to increase over the next couple of decades. But really noticeable growth would not begin until the mid-1990s. By 2000, about 10% of all Protestants and 5% of the entire sample were non-denominational.
By 2010, the percentage of Protestants who were non-denominational would rise to about 20% and they were about 10% of all Americans. In the most recent survey, which was collected in 2022 — one in three Protestants did not identify with a denomination like Southern Baptists or Evangelical Lutherans. That was a twelve-point increase from just a few years earlier. Nearly 15% of all American adults identify as non-denominational now. For comparison, about 22% of the sample said they were Roman Catholic.
Information from the Cooperative Election Study shows a smaller proportion of non-denominationals yet a significant increase in recent years. Burge discounts the lower totals in the CES because that survey tends to overcount the total number of non-religious Americans. Another survey, the Religion Census, breaks down how many churches identify as non-denominational, and it shows a higher concentration of non-denominationals, where evangelicals are greater in number in general.
Flashback: Why I Am a Non-Denominational Christian
Beyond the rise of Christians who aren’t part of a denomination, what’s the takeaway? Burge makes an interesting parallel between this move within evangelical Christianity and the shift in political conservatism (again, emphasis in the original):
Just stick with me here, but I think that there’s a direct parallel between what has happened in American politics and American religion over the last couple of decades. For hundreds of years, the United States was a country where most of the movement came from the top down. The political parties had a tremendous amount of say in who the nominees were going to be for elections at every level, including President of the United States. That was also true of American religion. The most powerful denominations in the 1950s were the mainline, which had incredibly strong hierarchies. It took lots of education and certification for someone to become eligible for the role of clergy.
Think about how much things have changed in just the last fifteen years. In the world of politics, one party has been taken over by a complete political outsider - Donald Trump. The party actively tried to sabotage his ascendance in 2016. Party bosses wanted Cruz or Rubio. Not a businessman who had never held elective office. Yet, he won and has transformed the GOP in his own image.
As someone who has spent most of his life in the non-denominational sphere — growing up in the quasi-denominational Christian Church and as a member of a truly independent church — I can understand this mindset. As a congregation, we’re not beholden to any denominational leader or committee to tell us what to preach or study or what missions to support. We have trusted elders, pastors, staff, and volunteer leaders who guide our congregation from within our community. Leadership that’s on the ground with your people is the best kind.
Burge hits the nail on the head when he ties the rise in non-denominational believers and churches to the rise in conservatives’ distrust of elites. I’m not directly comparing denominational leaders to cosseted political elites, but I do think that conservative Christians are concluding that the best leaders in every sphere of life are the ones who care about them the most.
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