This post originally appeared on a previous version of this website.
Last summer, I came across an article where Dr. Ryan Burge made what I considered to be a shocking argument: the more education you have, the more likely you are to be religious.
This thesis ran counter to what I’ve heard or inferred from my Evangelical upbringing. We continue to hear of the archetypal young person who goes off to college, becomes liberalized, and falls away from the faith. But this story runs counter to what Burge has found in his research. With nearly 600,000 responses over 15 years of the Cooperative Election Study, those who didn’t complete high school consistently top the charts as those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular.
My surprise at this statistic comes not only in the face of our present-day narratives, but from the example provided by the history of the Church. Were Christians not the ones caring for what has been described as the “quartet of the vulnerable:” the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant? Has it not been those on the margins of society who have been drawn to the Church throughout history? Is the data showing that this is no longer the case?
In a book to which Burge contributed his research, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back, authors Jim Davis and Michael Graham state that the research “overwhelmingly shows that Americans who make less money are more likely to dechurch than those who make more money (26).” That is to say, of people who have been regular church attenders in their lifetimes, the people who are more likely to leave are those with fewer resources. In the United States, this often correlates to those who have less education.
In a recent presentation at Transform Minnesota’s 2024 Leadership Summit, Davis synthesized this point when discussing the “myth” that dechurching is primarily happening among the upwardly mobile. Instead, the people leaving the Church are those most likely to experience life change, particularly if they don’t have a financial or social safety net. In this sense, the group who finds the most “success” in the Church is the same group who finds success in America: individuals with two parents who graduate from college, get (and stay) married, and have kids.
What, then, does this mean for the Church?
The main thrust of The Great Dechurching and its companion resources are not only to provide data about why people are leaving, but to help churches identify ways to bring people back. As churches approach this work, I believe they need to remember the context of those they are trying to bring back.
With one of the primary reasons people have “casually” dechurched being that they moved and haven’t gotten reconnected, many churches are raising up people in their congregations who have roles directly associated with new arrivals, like realtors and school administrators or teachers, to connect with these new arrivals and invite them to church. These are great first points of contact, but how do we also reach someone who, for example, may not interact with a realtor when moving? Can a landlord have the same role, or is there an additional power dynamic to be considered? How do we empower members of our congregations to connect with new arrivals in their lives?
I think we must also consider the way we do ministry involving those we consider less fortunate. Are we doing ministry to that group, approaching a person as someone receiving help, as someone to be served? Or are we building relationships and welcoming people into community on equal footing? At the same time, how do we approach this group with more than just a hope that they will help grow our church?
Church decline is real and multifaceted. We must not only focus on steps we find “easy” for church growth which ultimately reach a small, similar looking group. Instead, we must develop methods which more holistically reach and bring together all who God cares for.
