Fewer Faithful: ; Weve Been Duped Into Believing in an Evangelical Resurgence; Commentary

Summary

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What Baptist leaders have known for years is finally public: The Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination in decline. Half of the SBC's 43,000 churches will have shut their doors by 2030 if current trends continue.

And unless God provides a miracle, the trends will continue. They are longstanding and deeply rooted. The denomination's growth rate has been declining since the 1950s. The conservative/fundamentalist takeover 30 years ago was supposed to turn the trend around; it didn't make a bit of difference.

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Extract

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Fewer Faithful: ; Weve Been Duped Into Believing in an Evangelical Resurgence; Commentary

Leaders said it did. Reporters and politicians believed it did. But the numbers kept going down until, finally, they have become obvious to everyone.

Evangelical faith has been dropping since 1900, when 42 percent of the United States claimed that distinction. Every year, religious- right evangelicals, such as those who lead the Southern Baptists, are a smaller propor...

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