HMM: New Harvard Research Says U.S. Christianity Is Not Shrinking, But Growing Stronger.

New research published late last year by scholars at Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington is just the latest to reveal the myth. This research questioned the “secularization thesis,” which holds that the United States is following most advanced industrial nations in the death of their once vibrant faith culture. Churches becoming mere landmarks, dance halls, boutique hotels, museums, and all that.

Not only did their examination find no support for this secularization in terms of actual practice and belief, the researchers proclaim that religion continues to enjoy “persistent and exceptional intensity” in America. These researchers hold our nation “remains an exceptional outlier and potential counter example to the secularization thesis.”

Stay tuned. My University of Tennessee colleague Rosalind Hackett has long argued that the big religious story of the 21st Century wasn’t going to be Islam, but Christianity. Plus: “Put high fertility and [faith] retention rates together with general population decline and you have a potent formula for change.”