(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Will immigration stop Christianity's decline in America? A believer thinks it may [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-09 On Easter Sunday, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, John Blake published a piece predicting that Christianity could continue to prosper in America. He believes that, despite the statistics showing many Americans moving on from Christianity, there is reason to believe — and hope and pray — the future of the faith was not as dismal as the numbers seemed to show. In his essay published by CNN, “Predictions about the decline of Christianity in America may be premature”, Blake says that there were some among the religious cognoscenti who believe there is a light at the end of the tunnel. "Yet when CNN asked some of the nation’s top religion scholars and historians recently about the future of Christianity in the US, they had a different message. They said the American church is poised to find new life for one major reason: Waves of Christians are migrating to the US. And they said the biggest challenge to Christianity’s future in America is not declining numbers, but the church’s ability to adapt to this migration." To put his opinion in context, note that John Blake has skin in the game. He is a Christian who celebrates his faith as the agent that reunited his family. His CNN profile describes him as a writer about “race, religion, politics, and other assorted topics.” And many of his pieces are about religion. Bearing that in mind, let us parse his opinion. By saying the American church “is poised to find new life” in Christian immigrants, he admits the church's future is not current Americans. His honesty on that point adds to his credibility. However, he leaves the reader hanging after saying the church has to adapt, by not saying how it should do so. To further his argument that the prognosis of Christianity’s demise is premature, he points out that Thomas Jefferson predicted in the 1820s that Christianity would be replaced in the US by a more enlightened form of religion that rejected Jesus’ divinity and belief in miracles. He writes, Instead, Jefferson’s prophecy was followed by a series of revivals, including the Second Great Awakening , which swept across America and reasserted Christianity as a dominant force in American life. Jefferson was wrong. He was an educated man and a product of The Enlightenment. The average American was not. Jefferson is hardly the first elitist to misread the intentions of the regular citizen. However, the Americans who embraced the Methodist and Baptist churches did not come from non-belief but from other Christian denominations. Alexander de Tocqueville observed this when he wrote in the 1830s: “There is no country in the world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men.” Christians may have become more passionate about their faith, but that did not translate into more of them. Being non-religious in America — or Europe — was a fringe arrangement at best. It was the province of philosophers and not the man in the street. Blake then refers to the statistics showing the decline of Christianity in the US, About 64% of Americans call themselves Christian today. That might sound like a lot, but 50 years ago that number was 90%, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center study . That same survey said the Christian majority in the US may disappear by 2070. Again kudos to Blake for not ducking the facts. He also points out that Christianity has declined in countries once dominated by faith — like Ireland. He writes of the experiences of Tina Wray, a professor of religious and theological studies at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island. But Wray adds that she recently traveled to Ireland and discovered many of its citizens have left the religion. Churches are being closed and turned into apartment buildings, she says. “People who went to mass every day stopped going,” she says. “There’s this cultural Catholic identity, but as far as practicing their faith, it’s just disappearing. So within a generation, that’s all it took. It’s just shocking.” So far, there is little daylight between Blake and someone with a more pessimistic view of the future of Christianity in the US. Blake tries to create some. He writes, Most of the religious scholars CNN spoke to said the American church may find salvation in another demographic trend: the booming of Christianity in what is called the “Global South,” the regions encompassing Latin America, Africa, and Asia. His choice of words hardly smacks of confidence. The headline of Blake's piece says “may,” and now we see that equivocation again — “may find salvation.” For the sake of argument, I will accept the word of the “religious scholars CNN spoke to” that Christianity is booming in the Global South. Instead, let us consider if that is relevant to the US. Reason says that this foreign enthusiasm for Christianity will not change the minds of existing Americans. Therefore, for Blake’s belief that this devotion to Christianity abroad will translate into gains for the faith domestically, there will need to be a lot of immigrants. Ironically, the biggest impediment to immigration is American conservative evangelicals. What a conundrum for them. Will they give priority to their faith or their racism? I do not know the answer. But again, for the sake of argument, I will assume that there is significant immigration. Will parental faith live on in their children? I see little reason to think it will. It seems a rite of passage for second-generation Americans to adopt American mores and move away from the traditions of their alien antecedents. Take language. If Americans stayed true to their family's past, most Americans would speak at least one foreign language. The vast majority of Americans do not. It is even a point of pride for many Americans that they do not. It hardly matters that many current immigrants to America are Christian if their children do not keep that flame burning. Are these potential immigrants to the US even as religious as Blake’s experts think they are? Evangelical Protestantism is on the rise in Latin America. However, like the Second Great Awakening, the shift is from traditional Christian faiths, mainly Catholic, to the more extreme sects — while non-belief is also on the rise. As well, the Irish experience should give Christian leaders pause. Sometimes religious observance is more a force of habit than an abiding faith. People go to church because everyone they know goes to church. But the minute the decline starts, it can happen quickly. Economics plays a part as well. Faith is typically stronger in poorer communities. As Marx said, “Religion is the opium of the masses.” As soon as the citizen’s economic present improves and their financial future looks more secure, the need to find comfort in the supernatural declines. I doubt that the number of Christians immigrating to the US will do much to replace the number of Americans who have left the faith, even if these new Americans stick with it. And history suggests that this infusion of religiosity will be impermanent. 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