Decline of Christianity in the Western world

Background[edit]

According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, Christianity will continue to be the world's largest religion throughout the next four decades. However, Christianity may experience the largest net losses in terms of religious conversion, according to expectations. Worldwide, religious conversions are projected to have a "modest impact on changes in the Christian population" between 2010 and 2050^[10] and may negatively affect the growth of Christian population and its share of the world's populations "slightly".^[10] However, these forecasts lack reliable data on religious conversion in China, but according to media reports and expert assessments, it is possible that the rapid growth of Christianity in China may maintain, or even increase, the current numerical advantage of Christianity as the largest religion in the world.^[10] In the United States, there have been some conversions to Christianity among those who grew up non-religious, but they have not been in numbers that make up for those who were raised as Christians but became religiously unaffiliated later in their lives.^[11]


Scholars have proposed that Church institutions decline in power and prominence in most industrialized societies, except in cases in which religion serves some function in society beyond merely regulating the relationship between individuals and God.^[12] Developing countries in Latin America and Africa are not experiencing a decline, mostly because of religious conversion in those countries where the Church offers broad social support services.^[13][14][15] Together with the decline of Western Christians, increasing numbers of Christians in the global South will form a "new Christendom" in which the majority of the world's Christian population will be found in the South.^[13][16] According to various scholars and sources, Pentecostalism – a Protestant Christian movement – is the fastest growing religion in the world;^{[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]} this growth is primarily due to religious conversion.^[14][15]


The European Values Study found that in most European countries in 2008, the majority of young respondents identified themselves as Christians.^[26] Unlike Western Europe, in Central and Eastern European countries, the proportion of Christians has either been stable or it has increased in the post-communist era.^[27] A large majority (83%) of those who were raised as Christians in Western Europe still identify as such. The remainder mostly self-identify as religiously unaffiliated.^[2] Christianity is still the largest religion in Western Europe, where 71% of Western Europeans identified themselves as Christian, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center.^[2]


A 2015 analysis of the European Values Study in the Handbook of Children and Youth Studies identified a "dramatic decline" in religious affiliation across Europe from 1981 to 2008;^[26] however, according to the same analysis, "the majority of young respondents in Europe claimed that they belonged to a Christian denomination".^[26]


In 2017, a report which was released by St. Mary's University, London, concluded that Christianity "as a norm" was gone for at least the foreseeable future. In at least 12 out of the 29 European countries which were surveyed by the researchers, based on a sample of 629 people, the majority of young adults reported that they were not religious.^[28][6] The data was obtained from two questions, one asking "Do you consider yourself as belonging to any particular religion or denomination?" to the full sample and the other one asking "Which one?" to the sample who replied with "Yes".^[29] The Pew Research Center criticized the methodology of the two-step approach: "Presumably, this is because some respondents who are relatively low in religious practice or belief would answer the first question by saying that they have no religion, while the same respondents would identify as Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc., if presented with a list of religions and asked to choose among them. The impact of these differences in question wording and format may vary considerably from country to country".^[2]


In 2018, the Pope lamented the ongoing trend of re-purposing churches: some of them were being used as pizza joints, skating parks, strip clubs and bars. In Germany, 500 Catholic churches have closed since 2000. Canada has lost 20% of its churches in this time frame. This is the result of a lack of clergy who are willing to staff churches as well as the result of the churches' inability to meet costs. After a scandal in Naples where a deconsecrated church became the venue for a Halloween party which featured scantily clad witches who were seated on the former altar, Pope Francis, acknowledging the decline in Church attendance, implored that the deconsecrated churches be placed in service to fulfill the social needs of caring for the poor.^[30] In a new study published in 2022, Pew Research Center projects that if the rate of switching continues to accelerate (primarily to no religious affiliation), Christians will make up less than half of the American population by 2070, with estimated ranges for that year falling between 35% and 46% of the American population (down from 64% in 2022 and down from 91% in 1976).^[31] The same study found a retention rate among American Christians closer to 67%, with one-third of those who were Christian in childhood leaving the religion by age 30.^[31]


In the Western world, historical developments since the reformation era in the sixteenth century led to a gradual separation of church and state from the eighteenth century onward. From the mid-twentieth century, there has been a gradual decline in adherence to established Christianity. In a process described as secularization, "unchurched spirituality", which is characterized by observance of various spiritual concepts without adhering to any organized religion, is gaining more prominence.^[a]