(RNS)—About a decade ago, the conservative commentator and radio show host Glenn Beck told listeners to “look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church website. If you find it, run as fast as you can.”

In essence, Beck was telling his followers to reject a strain of Christian theology that dates back at least 100 years in the United States: the Social Gospel.

Popularized by Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist pastor, in the early 20th century, this theology focuses on issues such as poverty, exploitation, disease and hunger as the primary action items for the church.

Instead of focusing on the individual problem of sin, Rauschenbusch and other advocates of the Social Gospel believed Christians should focus on reforming institutions in the United States to make the country more equitable and fairer for all people.

Do American Christians still embrace the core principles of that doctrine? Or do they agree with Beck?

Acceptance of Social Gospel

Certain aspects of the Social Gospel still enjoy widespread approval. For instance, about 80 percent of Christians believe “God instructs us to protect the poor,” and only 15 percent believe “addressing social issues distracts people from achieving salvation.”

Other facets of the Social Gospel provoke more disagreement. While 61 percent of nonwhite evangelicals agree “social justice is at the heart of the Gospel,” that sentiment is only shared by 36 percent of white evangelicals. About 3 in 5 white evangelicals—twice the rate of other Christian groups—agree with the statement “God is more concerned about individual morality than social inequalities.”

Given that white evangelicals are outliers on a number of questions related to the Social Gospel, and white evangelicals’ tendency to vote for Republicans, it seems probable their divergence from nonevangelicals’ views on social justice is more about political partisanship than about theological tradition. The data confirms that suspicion.

For instance, a Christian who is Republican is twice as likely as a Christian Democrat to believe “building the kingdom of God on earth is only about bringing people to Christ, not changing social structures.”

Two thirds of Democrats who are Christians believe “social justice is at the heart of the Gospel,” while just 36 percent of independents and 35 percent of Republicans of the faith share that belief.

Social Gospel at church

Given that Democrats are more likely to embrace tenets of the Social Gospel, it would be fair to believe they are hearing these beliefs amplified in their churches, while Republicans are hearing more discussion of personal salvation and individual responsibility.

To test that theory, I put together a data model to determine how religion interacts with political partisanship to shape people’s beliefs about the Social Gospel. This model only included respondents who identified with a religious tradition. The religiously unaffiliated “nones” were excluded. I controlled for age, income, education, gender, race and other basic demographic factors.

Clearly, Republican Christians, regardless of church attendance, are more likely to believe individual morality is more important than societal inequalities. Church attendance only accelerates this belief, with more than half of Republicans who are weekly attenders agreeing on personal morality, compared with less than 40 percent of those who never attend.

Not much of a surprise. But for Democrats, the data gets more interesting. The more they attend church, the more likely they are to embrace a message of individual responsibility as opposed to societal sin.

If those on the left side of the political spectrum are attending churches that preach a strong version of the Social Gospel, those messages are not finding their way into the hearts and minds of the average liberal churchgoer. In fact, the data says just the opposite: The more Democrats go to church, the more they hold views on individual responsibility in common with Republicans.

That may come as a surprise to many progressive Christian communities and organizations that focus squarely on Social Gospel concerns like the Poor People’s Campaign, but there is no evidence to be found here that religious Democrats are more likely to focus on the problems preachers like Rauschenbusch focused on during the Progressive Era.

Instead, American Christianity is being seen more and more as a vertical relationship with God as opposed to a horizontal relationship with those in the community.

Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going. He can be reached on Twitter at @ryanburge. The views expressed are those of the author.

Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—When it comes to memorializing the nation’s Civil War legacy, Americans are nearly evenly divided over whether to preserve Confederate symbols, memorials and statues, according to a new Public Religion Research Institute survey.

The new PRRI survey conducted with E Pluribus Unum, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a more equitable and inclusive South, finds 51 percent of Americans favor preserving Confederate history, memorials and statues, while 46 percent are opposed.

That division can be found on a host of issues. Take the Confederate flag: 50 percent see it primarily as a symbol of Southern pride, while 47 percent see it mostly as a symbol of racism.

Divided by politics, race and religion

The divisions fall along party, race and religious lines: Republicans and white evangelicals overwhelmingly support preserving memorials to Confederate history, while Black Americans, non-Christians, Jews and unaffiliated Americans see those memorials as a symbol of racism.

“One of the things the report is telling us is that we still have not resolved one of the fundamental conflicts that has haunted us throughout American history,” said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of PRRI.

“It’s the question of whether the country is a promised land for European Christians that has white supremacy embedded in that idea, or whether we’re a pluralistic democracy where everybody stands on equal footing before the Constitution.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s database shows more than 2,000 Confederate symbols in the United States and Puerto Rico, disproportionately in 11 Southern states.

But the country’s divisions over the legacy of the Confederacy are bigger than geography. They exist in all parts of the country and can best be predicted by party affiliation, race and religion.

Nearly 9 in 10 white Republicans, or 87 percent, support efforts to preserve the legacy of the Confederacy, compared with 23 percent of white Democrats. When examined by race, 57 percent of white Americans support efforts to preserve Confederate legacy, compared with 23 percent of Black Americans.

Support strongest among white evangelicals

Religion is also a predictor of attitudes toward the Confederacy. Majorities of Protestants, Catholics and Latter-day Saints support such efforts to preserve Confederate monuments and memorials, with white evangelicals besting all others at 76 percent.

Support falls to 35 percent among non-Christian Americans, Jewish Americans (33 percent) and religiously unaffiliated Americans (33 percent).

The survey was conducted among a sample of 5,439 adults in all 50 states. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.7 percentage points.

The survey did point to some areas of common ground. Nearly all Americans (90 percent) supported efforts to “tell the truth about the history of slavery, violence and discrimination against racial minorities” as well as efforts to “promote racial healing by creating more inclusive public spaces.”

A majority of Americans support monument reform of some kind. The PRRI survey broke down support and opposition to reforming Confederate memorials into four categories: 24 percent said they supported removal of all Confederate memorials, 18 percent said they opposed removing memorials, 30 percent lean toward reform and 24 percent lean against reform.

Liberal Democrats and liberal independents were 20 times as likely to support Confederate monument removal as conservative Republicans. Religiously unaffiliated Americans and non-Christian Americans were twice as likely as white evangelicals to support removal.

Black Americans were three times as likely to support removal as white Americans.

Renaming schools and mascots

Americans were also divided on renaming public schools and mascots.

But majorities of Americans favored the idea of local governments providing mortgage assistance for people whose descendants were denied home loans because of their race. A majority also favor scholarships for descendants of enslaved people forced to construct those campuses. White Christians were least likely to favor those efforts.

E Pluribus Unum, an organization founded by former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, is working in 13 states, including among congregations of faith, to drive conversation around systemic racism and economic inequality.

“We use a phrase, ‘relentless incrementalism,’” said Scott Hutcheson, managing director of E Pluribus Unum. “Every data point shows us a path. It is depressing but we have to believe it’s not hopeless.”

Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Substantial majorities of evangelicals in the United States say they want an immigration solution that both secures the border and values those already in the country.

The Evangelical Immigration Table and World Relief sponsored the Lifeway Research study.  Researchers surveyed evangelicals to determine their attitudes toward immigrants and refugees, as well as their opinions on potential legislative actions addressing the issues surrounding immigration.

“Evangelical Christians should be looking to the Bible—not any political party’s platform, media personalities or even a survey of fellow evangelicals—to determine how they respond to the arrival of immigrants to their communities,” said Matthew Soerens, national coordinator of the Evangelical Immigration Table.

“But as evangelical leaders seek both to disciple those under their care and to advocate for public policies consistent with biblical principles, this study allows leaders to verify the extent their positions are in line with the views of evangelicals ‘in the pews’ and to know how to better serve them.”

More than 4 in 5 evangelicals describe legal immigration as helpful to the United States, and around 2 in 3 believe the country should at least maintain the current number of legal immigrants approved in a year.

One-fourth (25 percent) say legal immigration is helpful and the United States should increase the number allowed each year, 40 percent see it as helpful and say the nation should maintain the current number approved, and 19 percent believe it is helpful but favor decreasing the legal immigrants approved each year.

Fewer (17 percent) believe legal immigration is harmful to the United States, with 10 percent saying the country should decrease the number approved and 6 percent believing it should completely stop approving legal immigrants.

Evangelicals are most likely to see the number of recent immigrants to the United States as an opportunity, but significant numbers also view them as a threat.

More than 2 in 5 say the arrival of immigrants is an opportunity to show them love (46 percent) and an opportunity to introduce them to Jesus (41 percent). A third (33 percent) say they are an improvement to America’s cultural diversity, and 19 percent say they provide a boost to entrepreneurial activity.

On the negative side, 33 percent of evangelicals say the recent number of immigrants is a threat to the safety of citizens, 32 percent say they’re a drain on economic resources, 31 percent see immigrants as a threat to law and order, and 26 percent view them as a threat to traditional American customs and culture.

“While fear of the volume of immigrants is not absent among evangelicals, the larger response is one of love for these individuals,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “More than four times as many evangelicals find legal immigration helpful to the United States than those who find it harmful.”

National and personal responsibility

American evangelicals believe the nation has a moral responsibility to accept refugees and immigrants in a variety of circumstances and that Christians should be caring for them.

More than 3 in 5 evangelicals (70 percent) agree the United States has a moral obligation to accept refugees, which are legally defined as someone fleeing persecution due to specific factors such as their race, religion, or political opinion.

Additionally, around 3 in 4 agree that a national moral obligation exists to accept refugees fleeing religious persecution (74 percent) and people fleeing natural disasters (73 percent).

Smaller majorities of evangelicals agree there is a moral obligation for the nation to accept people from other countries seeking to be reunited with family members already in the United States legally (67 percent) and people from other countries fleeing poverty (60 percent).

Additionally, 69 percent say Christians have a responsibility to care sacrificially for refugees or other foreigners, and 58 percent say Christians should assist immigrants even if they are here illegally.

“World Relief alone has partnered with thousands of churches and tens of thousands of volunteers to resettle refugees and serve other immigrants in the past decade, and of course, many churches have their own ministries to immigrants as well,” said Soerens, who also serves as the U.S. director of church mobilization and advocacy at World Relief.

“Over the past year, the arrival of large numbers of Afghans and Ukrainians who were forced to flee their homelands has reminded many Christians of their biblical calling to love these uniquely vulnerable neighbors.”

In each area of national and personal responsibility, evangelicals by belief are more likely than self-identified evangelicals to strongly agree that a moral obligation exists.

Legislative solutions

Seven in 10 evangelicals (71 percent) say it is important for Congress to pass new immigration legislation in 2022. When asked about specific types of emphases they would prefer in immigration policy, evangelicals want laws that provide citizenship opportunities for those who are here illegally and that also protect the U.S. border.

A significant majority of evangelicals say they support potential legislation that ensures fairness to the taxpayer (94 percent), protects the unity of the immediate family (92 percent), respects the rule of law (92 percent), respects the God-given dignity of every person (90 percent), guarantees secure national borders (90 percent) and establishes a path toward citizenship for those who are here illegally, are interested and meet certain qualifications (78 percent).

Support for each of these principles has increased among self-identified evangelicals since a 2015 Lifeway Research study, except for guaranteeing a secure border, which remained statistically unchanged.

Comparing those who strongly or somewhat support specific approaches to immigration reform in 2022 and those who responded yes to questions of support in 2015, the largest increase in support occurred on the issues of protecting the unity of the immediate family (up 20 percentage points, 72 percent to 92 percent) and establishing a path toward citizenship (up 16 points, 61 percent to 77 percent).

“There are many aspects to the laws and the administration of immigration processes in the U.S. that have potential for reform, but there is widespread agreement among evangelicals about the importance of specific priorities,” McConnell said. “More than three-fourths of evangelicals support comprehensive reforms that seek to improve multiple priorities in one set of legislation.”

Nearly 4 in 5 evangelicals (78 percent) would support changes to immigration laws that both increase border security and establish a process to earn legal status and apply for citizenship for those currently in the U.S. unlawfully.

Four in 5 (80 percent) would back bipartisan immigration reform that strengthens border security, establishes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, and provides a reliable number of screened, legal farmworkers. Additionally, 2 in 3 evangelicals (65 percent) say they’d be more likely to vote for candidates who supported such immigration reforms.

“We’ve increasingly seen evangelical Christians eager to advocate with their elected officials for more compassionate public policies toward these distinct categories of immigrants, which is consistent with many of the policy views identified in this new study,” Soerens said.

When asked the best way for Congress to address immigrants who are in the country illegally, 46 percent of evangelicals back requiring them to pay a fine as restitution and then allow them to apply for permanent legal status if they pass a background check and meet other requirements.

Fewer would want them deported to their country of origin (25 percent) or granted amnesty and provided permanent legal status (17 percent). Another 12 percent say they aren’t sure, and 1 percent wants Congress to do nothing to address immigrants here illegally.

“More than twice as many evangelicals prefer establishing a process for immigrants who came to the country illegally to obtain legal status than deporting these people,” McConnell said. “While differences exist in how this should be resolved, there is clear agreement that continuing to do nothing is not the best option.”

Politically, half of evangelicals describe themselves as somewhat (25 percent) or very conservative (24 percent). While 35 percent say they’re moderate, fewer classify themselves as somewhat liberal (9 percent) or progressive or very liberal (4 percent).

Influences and involvement

Evangelicals say their views of immigration come from a wide variety of sources, but they’d still appreciate more insight on the issue from sermons.

When asked what has influenced their thinking on immigration the most, evangelicals are most likely to say the media (23 percent), the Bible (20 percent), friends and family (16 percent), immigrants they have observed (11 percent) and immigrants they have interacted with (10 percent).

Fewer point to positions of elected officials (6 percent), their local church (3 percent), national Christian leaders (1 percent) and teachers or professors (less than 1 percent). Another 6 percent aren’t sure, and 4 percent didn’t choose any of the options.

When asked their top three influences, friends and family climb to the top, with 51 percent saying those loved ones are one of the primary factors shaping their view of immigration. Slightly fewer point to the media (46 percent).

Around 1 in 3 say one of their top influences is the Bible (36 percent), immigrants they have observed (33 percent), positions of elected officials (32 percent) and immigrants they have interacted with (30 percent). Fewer say their local church (19 percent), national Christian leaders (11 percent) or teachers or professors (7 percent) were among their top three influences.

“More self-identified evangelicals say their thinking on immigration is most influenced by the Bible or the media than in 2015, and fewer say they are most influenced by immigrants with whom they have interacted,” McConnell said.

“While more evangelicals point to understanding and accepting the Bible’s influence on the topic of immigration, the majority do not yet appear to have made it primary.”

While most evangelicals (63 percent) say they are very familiar with what the Bible teaches about how immigrants should be treated, 76 percent say they would value hearing a sermon that teaches biblical principles and examples that can be applied to immigration in the U.S.

Some evangelicals have been actively involved in ministering to immigrants through their local churches.

Three in 10 (30 percent) say they have heard immigration discussions at their church that encouraged outreach to immigrants in their community. Slightly more (34 percent) say their church has a ministry or outreach that serves refugees or other immigrants.

More than 1 in 3 say they are either currently involved in a ministry that serves refugees or other immigrants (15 percent) or have been in the past (21 percent).

After seeing the results of the 2015 Lifeway Research study, Soerens said he and other leaders worked to develop additional resources focused on a biblical perspective on immigration. He believes that work is evident in the 2022 study.

“While there’s clearly still a need for more discipleship,” he said, “we are encouraged by the increase in the share of self-identifying evangelicals who have heard a biblical message on the theme of immigration and who now say they are familiar with what the Bible says on this topic.”

The online survey of 1,007 Americans was conducted Aug. 8-19, using a national pre-recruited panel. Researchers used quotas and slight weights to balance gender, age, region, ethnicity and education to reflect the population more accurately. The sample of 1,007 surveys included 512 completed by those with evangelical beliefs and 911 completed by self-identified evangelicals. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.1 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Fuller Theological Seminary, the nation’s largest interdenominational seminary, has chosen a Baptist as its new president—David Emmanuel Goatley, the first Black person to hold the office.

He will replace Mark Labberton, who announced he was stepping down last year after 10 years as president, saying he hoped his replacement would be a woman or person of color.

Goatley comes to Fuller from Duke Divinity School, where he was hired in 2018 to direct the office of Black church studies and to teach theology. He has since also become associate dean for academic and vocational formation. He will take the helm at Fuller in January.

Fuller, which offers master’s and doctoral degree programs, contains two schools: the School of Mission and Theology and the School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

The seminary, founded in Pasadena, Calif., in 1947 by the radio evangelist Charles E. Fuller, enrolled 2,458 students in 2021-22, slightly down from 2,788 in 2018-19, according to the Association of Theological Schools.

It is seen by many as more progressive than some of its evangelical counterparts. School officials have allowed an LGBTQ student group on campus, for instance, even as they have maintained a traditional sex ethic in its code of conduct.

Santiago “Jimmy” Mellado, CEO of Compassion International, who chaired Fuller’s presidential search team, said Goatley was “uniquely prepared” to further Fuller’s mission.

A native of Louisville, Ky., Goatley, 61, is ordained in the National Baptist Convention. He earned a Ph.D. at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is best known for his theological study of mission work. For more than two decades, he served as CEO of Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society, a Black missions agency, stepping down in 2018.

“Blessed with an extraordinary collection of life experiences, healthy drive, innovative spirit, relevant capabilities all seasoned with wisdom, he brings a track record of building up diverse leaders for Jesus across the globe,” Mellado said.

Goatley acknowledged the strain on Christian theological education at a time when enrollments are declining, churches are closing and Christians are shrinking as a share of the U.S. population. In 2019 Fuller closed campuses in Orange County, Northern California and the state of Washington, but the seminary retains its campuses in Pasadena, Phoenix and Houston.

“These are tough times for institutions to serve the church,” Goatley said in a telephone call. “But we’ve been through tough times before. We won’t shrink from the challenge. ”

Goatley also cited the cost and accessibility of theological education, as well as what he called the “toxicity of the culture,” among the challenges he will face in guiding the seminary.

He said he was drawn to Fuller because of its commitment to ministerial and vocational formation, its willingness to work in residential, remote and hybrid education and what he called its “commitment to the world.”

“That resonates with me and who I am and where I find energy,” Goatley said.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—America long has prided itself on being a country where people can choose whatever religion they like. The majority has long chosen Christianity, but by 2070, that may no longer be the case.

If current trends continue, Christians could make up less than half of the population—and as little as a third—in 50 years.

Meanwhile, the so-called nones—the religiously unaffiliated—could make up close to half of the population. And the percentage of Americans who identify as Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and other non-Christian faiths could double.

Those are among the major findings of a new report from the Pew Research Center regarding America’s religious future—a future where Christianity, though diminished, persists while non-Christian faiths grow amid rising secularization.

Using multiple factors to project future

Researchers projected possible religious futures for the United States using a number of factors, including birth rates, migration patterns, demographics like age and sex, and the current religious landscape.

They also looked at how religion is passed from one generation to another and how often people switch religions—in particular, Christians who become nones, a number that has been increasing in recent years.

They projected four different scenarios, based on differing rates of religious switching—from a continued increase to no switching at all.

“While the scenarios in this report vary in the extent of religious disaffiliation they project, they all show Christians continuing to shrink as a share of the U.S. population, even under the counterfactual assumption that all switching came to a complete stop in 2020,” according to the report. “At the same time, the unaffiliated are projected to grow under all four scenarios.”

Increasing numbers become disaffiliated

Currently, about a third (31 percent) of Christians become disaffiliated before they turn 30, according to Pew Research. Twenty-one percent of nones become Christian as young adults. Should those switching rates remain stable, Christians would make up 46 percent of the population by 2070, while nones would make up 41 percent of the population.

If disaffiliation rates continue to grow but are capped at 50 percent of Christians leaving the faith, then 39 percent of Americans are projected to be Christian by 2070, with 48 percent of Americans identifying as nones.

With no limit placed on the percentage of people leaving Christianity and with continued growth in disaffiliation, Christians would be 35 percent of the population, with nones making up a majority of Americans (52 percent).

If all switching came to a halt, then Christians would remain a slight majority (54 percent), while nones would make up 34 percent of Americans, according to the projection model.

Non-Christian faiths would rise to 12 percent to 13 percent of the population, largely due to migration, in each scenario. Migration does affect the percentage of Christians, as most immigrants coming to the United States are Christians, said Conrad Hackett, associate director of research and senior demographer at Pew Research Center.

“Still the greatest amount of change in the U.S., we think currently and in the future, will come from switching,” he said.

Projections not predictions

Researchers stressed the report contained projections based on data and mathematical models, not predictions of the future.

“Though some scenarios are more plausible than others, the future is uncertain, and it is possible for the religious composition of the United States in 2070 to fall outside the ranges projected,” they wrote.

One reason for the decline among Christians and the growth among the nones in the models is age. While Christians have more children than nones, they are also older. Pew estimates the average Christian in the United States is 43, which is 10 years older than the average none.

“The unaffiliated are having and raising unaffiliated children while Christians are more likely to be near the end of their lives than others,” Stephanie Kramer, a senior researcher at Pew, told RNS in an email.

Using mathematical models, Pew has also projected the future of religion around the world. Those models were adapted for different regions, said Hackett. Muslims, for example, he said, tend to have the youngest population and the highest fertility rates, driving the growth of that faith.

However, he said, in the Gulf states, migration has brought many Christians from other countries to the region as temporary workers.

Examining multiple variables

The current report takes advantage of the amount of data collected about the U.S. religious landscape. Researchers also looked at intergenerational transmission for the first time, said Kramer.

“The variables we use to study that were: What is the mother’s religion? And what is the teen’s religion,” she said. “If that was a match, we consider the mother’s religion transmitted.”

Researchers also looked at a relatively new trend of disaffiliation among older Americans. Sociologists have long focused on younger people, who are most likely to switch religions. But in the United States and other countries, older people are also starting to switch at growing rates.

“It’s not as large scale, but it’s still significant,” said Hackett. “And it’s contributing to the religious change that we have experienced and that we expect to experience in the years ahead.”

Hackett said that the projections do not show the end of Christianity in the U.S. or of religion in general, which he expects to remain robust. And most nones, while claiming no religion, do not identify as atheists.

Kramer said the United States appears to be going through a pattern of secularization that has happened in other countries, though “we may be a bit behind,” she added.

Other factors outside the model—such as changing immigration patterns and religious innovation—could lead to a revival of Christianity in the United States, according to the report. But none of the models shows a reversal of the decline of Christian affiliation, which dropped from 78 percent in 2007 to 63 percent in 2020, according to Pew research.

In the report, researchers note that “there is no data on which to model a sudden or gradual revival of Christianity (or of religion in general) in the U.S.”

“That does not mean a religious revival is impossible,” they wrote. “It means there is no demographic basis on which to project one.”

Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

PHILADELPHIA (BP)—Gen Z matches adults age 76 and older in a desire to share their faith, an American Bible Society study revealed.

Furthermore, Gen Z—adults 25 and younger—lead all ages in their openness to spiritual conversations, the Bible society said Sept. 8 in releasing its latest chapter of the 2022 State of the Bible.

More than half—54 percent—of Gen Z and Elders, defined as individuals 76 and older, expressed a desire to share their faith with others, the Bible society’s study showed.

About six out of 10 Gen Z adults—engaged in individual spiritual conversations with three or more persons in the past year, more than any other age group studied.

“We asked a range of questions with different phrasing—sharing faith, having spiritual conversations, talking about the message of the Bible,” the American Bible Society stated. “The Bible itself expresses the work of evangelism in various ways (preaching, reconciling, conversing, answering), so we felt comfortable approaching the subject in different ways.”

‘Greater openness to spiritual conversations’

The findings are a good report for Gen Z, the American Bible Society said, in contrast to the previous release from the 2022 report placing a large percentage of Gen Z among committed Christians who don’t attend church at least once monthly.

“We’re especially encouraged by Gen Z. Our last chapter included some causes for worry, but here we see a desire for faith-sharing among Scripture-engaged young people,” the Bible society said in releasing the report’s sixth chapter, focused on evangelism. “We also see signs of a greater openness to spiritual conversations in the Gen Z culture.

“As with many other factors in State of the Bible, evangelism is strongly associated with Scripture engagement and church attendance. Those who are committed to the Bible and the church are far more likely to be committed to sharing their faith.”

Factors that likely influence Gen Z’s gospel sharing are changes in American culture that have made the gospel “genuinely new” to Gen Z. American culture is “less overtly Christianized,” and methods of evangelism have adjusted to include Christian music, films, novels, streaming television and internet memes, the Bible society observed.

Among other generations, 45 percent of Millennials and Gen X, and 50 percent of Boomers said they wanted to share their faith.

When it came to actually sharing their faith with others, 54 percent of Boomers said they shared their faith with at least three people in the past year, the age category ranking closest to Gen Z. Among others, 52 percent of Millennials, 51 percent of Gen X and 45 percent of Elders shared their faith with at least three others.

Gen Z breaking barriers

“Are we seeing a generational shift in openness to spiritual matters?” the Bible society asked. “Where previous generations learned to avoid religious talk, our findings suggest that Gen Z is breaking those barriers.”

Feeling inadequate in social interactions (19 percent), a lack of knowledge of faith issues (15 percent) and fear of what others will think of them (12 percent) rank as the top three obstacles to evangelism among Scripture-engaged Christians of all ages.

Gen Z described their top obstacles as a lack of knowledge of faith issues (31 percent), guilt about inconsistencies in their own lives (22 percent), and being unsure about their own faith (19 percent).

Yet, practicing Christians overwhelmingly (96 percent) expressed some degree of satisfaction with their church’s role in helping them learn to share their faith, with 29 percent extremely satisfied, 31 percent very satisfied, 23 percent satisfied and 14 percent somewhat satisfied.

The desire to share one’s faith is also impacted with such factors as educational level, decreasing as education increases; residency, with rural communities surpassing suburbanites; race and ethnicity, with more non-Hispanic Blacks expressing a desire to evangelize than non-Hispanic whites; and southerners surpassing westerners and northeasterners.

American Bible Society researchers collaborated with the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center to survey a nationally representative group of American adults on topics related to the Bible, faith and the church. The study conducted online via telephone produced 2,598 responses from a representative sample of adults 18 and older in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

NASHVILLE (BP)—More than 100 years ago, Southern Baptist P.E. Burroughs wrote on the importance of vestibules, the small gathering areas common in many churches to be built throughout that century.

Vestibules “are worth far more than their cost,” he said. “They lend an air of welcome; they provide waiting room for people who arrive during prayer or such other parts of the service as may delay the incoming congregation; they encourage sociability.”

Burroughs’ book from which that passage originated—Church and Sunday-School Buildings—was published by the Baptist Sunday School Board in 1917, the same year he was asked to lead its newly-created architectural department.

For many Southern Baptists it became a guide during an unprecedented construction boom of churches in the two decades following World War II, a time that also witnessed a period of high attendance and church programs galore to occupy the space.

Time is undefeated, though. Eventually, those same buildings showed their age. Drastic upgrades or new construction become necessary.

‘A sense of community’

Coupled with the recent church planting movement, churches are getting a new look with architects and ministry leaders focused on the needs of today while not ignoring the input of those like Burroughs from a century ago.

One of the operative words in developing those plans is “together.”

“It seems that churches are moving toward a more intimate setting where people can be reached,” said Kevin Goins, a Panama City, Fla.-based architect.

“It’s about a sense of community. For me the lobby is just as important as the [worship area]. It’s where relationships are formed and you catch up with folks.”

The Baptist Sunday School Board, and then after becoming Lifeway, had its own department of architects and related personnel for church construction through 2013, at which point it began to partner with an outside firm for that purpose.

A former production coordinator for Lifeway’s Church architecture division, Goins still works with churches today.

“Trends are for ‘smaller,’” he said. “People are going back to the community church.”

He stressed that the church’s sanctuary remains a focus for its purpose and mission.

Also, its overall size doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t foster a sense of community.

Connections and commons spaces valued

Alan Dobbins, the managing partner of Myrick, Gurosky + Associates (MG+A) in Birmingham, Ala., said large connection and commons spaces have become some of the most important on church campuses in his company’s work designing church buildings.

“Since the early 2000s, major areas of focus have been on reaching younger families through dynamic children and student spaces. Worship will always be a key component and the biggest trends we’re seeing in these spaces are the incredible investments being made in technology,” he said.

The late 1990s and early 2000s brought many relocation projects and new builds for MG+A, when megachurches were building large multi-phased campuses, Dobbins said.

During and after the Great Recession, the focus shifted to renovations on existing structures when churches were forced to do more with less.

“This was also a result of churches simplifying program needs, which decreased square foot requirements,” he said.

“The trend has been for churches to maximize their facilities by multi-using spaces and utilizing more off-campus resources such as small groups meeting in homes.”

‘People want to be together’

First Baptist Church in Lafayette, La., partnered with MG+A in a remodel that came a few years before senior pastor James Pritchard arrived in April 2020. First Baptist Church in Forney, where he previously served as teaching pastor, had undergone a remodel roughly during the same time as First Lafayette.

Pritchard recognized differences and similarities for each.

First Lafayette is in downtown and relatively landlocked, while First Forney had 30 acres to work with. Forney also needed to address areas such as a large special needs ministry that requires more space and specific equipment.

Both had something in common, however.

“People want to be together,” Pritchard said. “Architecture follows ministry strategy, and you see that desire to gather and linger.”

First Lafayette basically has three large buildings that were connected in the remodel to form a central “main street.” The large atrium setting has a coffee bar, seating and couches for attendees.

“It’s become a gathering place for the entire church,” said Pritchard.

At First Baptist in Forney, the classic architecture of the previous building funneled people to the sanctuary but did so just as quickly at the conclusion of service to the parking lot.

“The new building has a place to stay, and people would do that for an hour or so after church,” he said. “They hang around and visit because they can.”

Congregations want their permanent space

Other congregations have different starting points.

Many church plants begin their existence in locations such as homes, a storefront or even a section of another church’s building. There comes a day, though, when many if not all look to get their own location.

That tends to happen, said Dobbins, when a church reaches a point where its financial resources can support such a move.

“There is certainly a burn-out factor that comes with using a temporary space every week and the challenges that come along with setup and takedown,” he said. “This places a significant importance on a young church plant’s ability to reach that critical mass in a timely manner.”

The North American Mission Board worked with MG+A in the construction of a new worship facility for First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, which rebuilt after a mass shooting.

Loans are available to church planters who pass NAMB’s assessment as well as go through a process with NAMB’s church loans team. Those loans are available for church plants to purchase or, in some cases, build, said NAMB spokesman Mike Ebert.

“As they mature, most plants refinance with another lender and pay off the loan with us. Most church plants utilize a local contractor and there are too many of them for us to be able to make recommendations,” he said. “We do suggest questions to ask and how best to walk through the due diligence process with a general contractor.”

Changing trends

A 2015 volume of The Journal of Florida Baptist Heritage pointed to trends over the last 50 years, moving away from construction plans espoused in Burroughs’ book, which was updated in 1920 with minor changes.

For one, several large churches such as First Baptist in Orlando constructed or remodeled modern buildings “to create mega-church stadium seating facilities with the latest in sound, lighting and audio-video technology.”

Another trend came in large churches buying out existing structures such as defunct shopping malls and essentially transforming them into churches. First Baptist in Lakeland, Fla., did this and established a new name—Church at the Mall. It has since changed its name to Lakes Church and meets among three campuses.

A third trend is churches gathering in homes until affordable meeting space can be found. The Florida journal cited it specifically among the hundreds of mission congregations in economically challenged areas.

Don Hepburn of the Florida Baptist Convention wrote that particular article for the journal and concluded with “the ‘church’ can now be defined theologically as a ‘people,’ but also may be defined by its purpose and place.”

Healthy relationships are important for mental health. A congregation is no different, with studies showing resilient faith in young adults is connected to strong relationships within church.

Burroughs placed a priority on worship space.

“The auditorium should be marked by reverent dignity such as will inspire worship,” he wrote. He didn’t care for “irregular and sometimes fantastic proportions of some modern (for him) auditoriums [that] must grieve and even offend worshippers.”

That included pictures on the walls or ceilings, memorial pictures and “ill-conceived Bible scenes wrought into the windows.”

But he also addressed the importance of providing space for “meeting social demands” such as a “social room” that could be used for a number of purposes including banquets, lectures and “moving pictures or musicals.”

Prioritize investment in technology

Technology has changed in order to keep people connected, but it is no less needed.

“Churches can underestimate the value and cost of … investment in technology,” Dobbins said. “Coming out of the pandemic, we all realized just how important it was to carry the message outside the walls of the church with live stream and broadcast capability.

“Churches should be prioritizing their investment in these technologies as having just as much importance as actual physical spaces.”

That aside, the experience of remote worship that many congregations had in the spring and summer of 2020 drove home the importance of being together in-person.

“Churches have figured out in recent decades that fellowship and connection happens in a more natural way when spaces are intentionally designed for that purpose,” Dobbins said. “New churches are designed to have enough commons space for people to connect.”

Goins has worked with churches to accommodate interesting requests and requirements. North Jacksonville (Fla.) had to design around an eagle’s nest. A South Carolina church incorporated an old airplane into its youth building.

Others want a link to the past even as they step forward into the future. A stained-glass window is carefully moved and placed within a wall or room of a new building.

One small church asked Goins to design a simple, no-frills worship area that would have made P.E. Burroughs proud.

“The important thing for the church is to have a strong, clear vision,” he said. “Their goal is to find ways to reach their community.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—In 2020, attendance was soaring at Emerywood Baptist Church in High Point, N.C. Giving was steady. The church was getting ready to send more than 25 people on a mission trip.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

And then—just as Emerywood had canceled all its plans and adjusted to outdoor worship to slow the spread of the virus—came the murder of George Floyd and the summer’s mass protests against racial violence.

As the Black senior minister of a predominantly white Southern church with an address on Country Club Lane, Timothy Peoples said, he told his congregation, “You can’t call me ‘pastor’ and [a racial slur] at the same time.”

In the middle of it all, the minister said, he had a breakdown.

Surveyed ministers from 20-plus denominations

Peoples isn’t the only minister to face challenges pastoring through the pandemic, according to the results of the #PandemicPastoring report released Sept. 1 by researcher Eileen Campbell-Reed.

Campbell-Reed, visiting associate professor of pastoral theology and care at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and creator of the “Three Minute Ministry Mentor” podcast and video blog, surveyed more than 100 Christian pastors, chaplains, campus ministers and lay leaders from more than 20 denominations between June 2020 and April 2022.

Participants included clergy she had been following for more than a decade as part of the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project, as well as ministry and lay leaders from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Helping Pastors Thrive initiative.

As the COVID-19 pandemic stretched from that first spring into summer, Campbell-Reed said, she realized its impact on ministry wasn’t going to be short-lived.

At the same time, ministry leaders were steering their congregations through pressing issues of racism, gender inequity and increasing partisan divisions.

Examined impact of ‘multiple pandemics’

She wanted to learn how these “multiple pandemics” were changing the jobs—and lives—of pastors and other ministry leaders.

“I think we have indeed entered into a new era of ministry,” Campbell-Reed said, announcing the findings of her report in a webinar hosted by Good Faith Media.

“I didn’t really know that until I delved deeply into this data.”

Campbell-Reed was joined in the webinar by Peoples and other clergy from the CBF, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), African Methodist Episcopal Church and Presbyterian Church (USA). None of the clergy in the webinar were participants in the #PandemicPastoring report’s surveys and interviews.

They shared their experiences of pastoring in a pandemic—like Sarah McClelland-Brown, now pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Warner Robins, Ga.

McClelland-Brown said she left her small, rural Disciples of Christ congregation in 2020 when members wanted her to return to preaching in person. She was pregnant with her second child at the time.

Ministers identify challenges

Among some of the challenges clergy identified in the #PandemicPastoring report were relationships and leadership concerns like burnout, figuring out how to lead in unprecedented times and minimizing harm to others.

Other concerns evolved as the pandemic wore on, Campbell-Reed noted. In summer 2020, it was about adapting quickly to online or outdoor worship and speaking out on racial justice issues. By the next summer and fall, it was coping with grief and managing conflict within their congregations.

The last few years brought moments of surprise and delight, too. Some clergy named stronger relationships—both with other people and with God. Some pointed out their congregations’ creativity and ability to adapt to new ways of worshipping together.

Pastors demonstrate resiliency

Most surprising to Campbell-Brown was the resiliency of pastors, she said.

While the difficulties of the pandemic drove Peoples to a breakdown, members of his congregation picked him back up again. They gave him some time off, then gathered around his desk when he returned and told him this was work they had to do together, not work he had to do alone.

“I’ve said over and over. The pandemic shutdown was actually really good for us,” he said.

While it led some to leave his church, it created space for others to be vulnerable, to share their experiences, to confront their privileges and to take action.

“We finally took on hard discussions and challenges that we had been putting off for so long,” Peoples said.

Reason for hope

The #PandemicPastoring report isn’t the only recent research to find reason to hope after years of pandemic.

Several surveys by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability show that some church leaders saw growth in their congregations despite the prevalence of COVID-19.

A survey earlier this year by ECFA of 1,710 North American founding pastors and church leaders concluded that while only 7 percent of new churches drew 200 or more people on their launch day in 2020, that number rebounded to 20 percent in 2021. That compared with 12 percent in 2019 and 19 percent in 2018.

A separate survey of 151 multisite directors or campus pastors shows that about two-thirds, or 64 percent, said they were part of a congregation that launched a new campus between 2019 and 2022.

“I’m part of a church that did that,” said Warren Bird, ECFA senior vice president of research, at a separate webinar on church planting in the COVID-19 era on Tuesday.

“It was exciting. It was one more way to reach out during the pandemic and to see spiritual fruit happen.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The National Association of Evangelicals unveiled a sweeping report on global climate change, laying out what its authors call the “biblical basis” for environmental activism to spur fellow evangelicals to address the planetary environmental crisis.

“Creation, although groaning under the fall, is still intended to bless us. However, for too many in this world, the beach isn’t about sunscreen and bodysurfing but is a daily reminder of rising tides and failed fishing,” reads the introduction of the report, penned by NAE President Walter Kim.

“Instead of a gulp of fresh air from a lush forest, too many children take a deep breath only to gasp with the toxic air that has irritated their lungs.”

Biblical case for creation care

But the authors admit persuading evangelicals is no small task, considering the religious group historically has been one of the demographics most resistant to action on the issue.

The nearly 50-page report was released Aug. 29. Titled “Loving the Least of These: Addressing a Changing Environment,” it opens with a section that insists protecting the environment is a biblical mandate.

“The Bible does not tell us anything directly about how to evaluate scientific reports or how to respond to a changing environment, but it does give several helpful principles: Care for creation, love our neighbors and witness to the world,” the report reads.

The authors go on to cite passages such as Genesis 2:15 (“God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it”), Matthew 22 (“Love your neighbor as yourself”) and Deuteronomy 15 (“Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart”).

“We worship God by caring for creation,” the report reads.

Another section outlines the basic science behind climate change, but the report, produced in partnership with the NAE’s humanitarian arm World Relief, returns often to the real-world impacts of climate change, such as how air pollution created by fossil fuels can have negative outcomes for children’s health or disproportionately affect the poor.

Kim suggested the emphasis on lived experiences, which are often tied to churches or evangelical organizations, is by design.

“One of the things that you’ll see in this document is not simply scientific information, though that is there, or biblical argumentation, although that is there, but you also hear stories of actual impact on communities,” he said in an interview.

‘Understand the human dimension’

Real-world examples help readers “understand the human dimension of the impact of climate change,” he explained.

“I think people of faith responded very deeply, because we’re wired to follow in the footsteps of Jesus of loving God and loving our neighbor.”

Dorothy Boorse, a biology professor at Gordon College and the chief author of the report, agreed.

“One of the things that can be true for evangelicals is they have a very deep desire to care for others, and they often have a deep spirit of hospitality,” she said.

Appealing to concerns about health and care for children, Boorse said, can “spark an imagination” in evangelicals that climate change is “not different from other problems in the world that we feel committed to care about, such as education, food availability or disaster relief.”

The focus on persuasion may be the result of necessity. The NAE has spoken out on environmental issues before (the new report functions as an update of a similar document published in 2011). But while mainline Protestant Christian groups and Pope Francis have repeatedly signaled the urgency of addressing climate change, many prominent evangelical leaders have suggested the opposite.

White evangelicals least likely to agree

Last year, Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, dismissed climate change as “nothing new” in a Facebook post and compared it to biblical instances of extreme weather—such as the flood in Genesis or the years of famine and drought in Egypt—that are depicted as acts of God.

The result often has been a religious community resistant to acknowledging the source of the issue, much less acting to prevent it. In a Pew Research survey conducted in January, white evangelicals were the religious group least likely to agree that human activity contributes to climate change, with only 54 percent saying humanity contributed a great deal or some to the trend. By comparison, 72 percent of white nonevangelicals, 73 percent of white Catholics, 81 percent of Black Protestants and 86 percent of Hispanic Catholics said so.

But as Boorse points out in the report, there has been some movement since the 2011 report was published, particularly among young evangelicals: A year after that document was unveiled, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action was founded.

“One huge pattern that I observed is that young evangelicals are very concerned about the environment,” said Boorse, who sits on the advisory board of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action. “There’s an entrenchment of certain ways of thinking that just takes a long time to change.”

Rising global sea level points to urgency

Activists say the change can’t come soon enough. In addition to ongoing droughts in various parts of the world, the NAE report was unveiled the same day as news broke that, given the current pace of climate change, 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet—around 110 trillion tons of ice—is slated to melt into the sea, raising global sea levels nearly a foot between now and 2100.

Asked if she was hopeful the report and similar efforts could urge evangelicals to muster their resources and help prevent further environmental calamities, Boorse acknowledged she often is frustrated by fellow faithful who espouse baseless conspiracy theories about climate change or express open hostility to science in general.

“That has been very challenging for me in my professional life,” she said. “But I feel God has privileged me with the task of speaking to a group of people that I know and love, and trying, consistently, to talk about this as a real phenomenon—and it needs our attention.”

For Boorse, the necessity of the work—and the tenets of her faith—sustain her for the fight ahead.

“I’ve decided to be hopeful,” she said. “I think everybody has to, or you’d never get anything done.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Frederick Buechner was asked on numerous occasions how he would sum up everything he had preached and written in both his fiction and nonfiction.

The answer, he said, was simply this: “Listen to your life.”

That theme was constant across more than six decades in his career as a “writer’s writer” and “minister’s minister”—an ordained evangelist in the Presbyterian Church (USA) who inspired Christians across conservative and progressive divides with his books and sermons.

Buechner died peacefully in his sleep on Aug. 15 at age 96, according to his family.

Early success with first novel

Born Carl Frederick Buechner on July 11, 1926, in New York City, he moved frequently with his family in his early childhood as his father searched for work, settling in Bermuda after his father’s death by suicide when he was 10.

His studies at Princeton University were interrupted by World War II, but he completed his bachelor’s degree in English in 1948. He quickly achieved fame with the 1950 publication of his first novel, A Long Day’s Dying.

When his second novel, in his own words, “fared as badly as the first one had fared well,” he moved to New York City to lecture at New York University and focus on his writing.

It was in New York City that he had an experience that changed the course of his life and work. He began attending Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Desire to learn more about Christianity

Growing up, neither side of his family had a “church connection of any kind,” as he put it, but he went because he happened to live next door and “because I had nothing else to do on a Sunday,” he recounted in a video posted on YouTube by the Frederick Buechner Center.

One Sunday, he was struck by a particular turn of phrase by the church’s pastor, George Buttrick: “Christ is crowned in the hearts of those who love him and believe in him amidst confession and tears and great laughter.”

He recounted: “I was so taken aback by ‘great laughter’ that I found the tears springing to my eyes.”

He later told Buttrick he wanted to learn more about Christianity, to more than simply join the church. The pastor pointed the young writer to Union Theological Seminary—with some misgivings. Buechner quoted Buttrick in his autobiography The Sacred Journey as saying, “It would be a shame to lose a good novelist for a mediocre preacher.”

Buechner graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity degree—he’d later receive nine honorary degrees—and was ordained as an evangelist in 1958 at the same church where he had been so moved by Buttrick’s words.

That same year, he launched the religion department at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, where he taught for nine years before moving with his family to their farmhouse in Vermont. He later was awarded lectureships at Harvard and Yale universities and held teaching positions at Tufts University, Calvin College and Wheaton College.

Prolific author spanning multiple genres

In 2016, Princeton Theological Seminary President Craig Barnes launched the Buechner Writing Workshop at the seminary, calling Buechner a “minister’s minister.”

Over the course of his life, Buechner wrote nearly 40 books across a number of genres: fiction, autobiography, theology, essays and sermons.

Among his novels, Lion Country was a finalist for the 1972 National Book Award and Godric a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. His short story “The Tiger,” published in The New Yorker, took third prize in the O. Henry Awards in 1955.

Listening to one’s life became a theme in his work, because, he said in a 1989 appearance on the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, if there was a God and if God were as concerned with the world and involved in it as Christianity says, then surely one of the most powerful ways God speaks to people is in what happens to them.

That’s something bestselling memoirist Anne Lamott, a progressive Christian who wrote the introduction to the 2016 book “Buechner 101,” has said she took away from Buechner’s writing.

It gave Lamott the confidence, after paying attention to her own life, “to share that with my readers and to trust that that is ultimately all we have to share with one another—is our truth in our very own voice,” she said in a YouTube video posted by the Frederick Buechner Center to mark Buechner’s 90th birthday.

Influential across denominational lines

While Buechner was ordained in a progressive mainline Protestant denomination, his fans also included Catholics and conservative evangelicals.

Russell Moore, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission who recently was named editor in chief of Christianity Today, credited Buechner’s writing with making him a better evangelical in a 2017 commentary for the magazine.

“J. Gresham Machen and Carl F.H. Henry taught me that I needn’t put my mind in a blind trust in order to follow Jesus. Buechner taught me the same about my imagination,” Moore wrote.

James Martin, editor at large of America Media, said in another YouTube video posted by the Frederick Buechner Center that the author was “instrumental in my early days as a Jesuit.”

On Monday, Martin tweeted: “I’m so sorry to hear of the death of Frederick Buechner, who led a long and fruitful life and was one of my favorite spiritual writers. The Sacred Journey is one of the most beautiful spiritual memoirs ever written. May he rest in peace with the God he loved for so long.”

Buechner, who split his time between Vermont and Florida, is survived by his wife, Judith Buechner, three daughters, a son-in-law and 10 grandchildren.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—No small number of millennials was first introduced to personal technology tending to their tamagotchis during recess. Only later did the dot-com revolution, smartphones and social media invade every part of their lives, from relationships to health to music—and faith.

Today, meditation podcasts, TikTok sermons and livestreams of Friday (Jumah) prayers are all at everyone’s fingertips.

A study out of Canada suggests this last generation to experience a smartphone-free childhood still is keeping one foot firmly planted in the real world—at least when it comes to religion.

The study, led by University of Waterloo sociologist Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, found that a sizable minority of millennials in the United States and Canada (32 percent) turns to digital religious or spiritual activities on at least a monthly basis. But only 5 percent said they do so without engaging in in-person forms of religion or spirituality once a month or more.

“For the most part, people are both involved in person and supplement that through digital religion,” Wilkins-Laflamme explained.

Digital worship complements in-person religion

The findings will comfort faith leaders who worry that technology will displace religiosity, said Pauline Cheong, a professor at Arizona State University who researches religion and communication technologies but wasn’t involved in the Canadian study.

Digital religion “is not a disruption or huge tear in the social fabric,” Cheong said. “There are a lot of savvy religious users using it to complement existing ties” to religion.

A millennial herself, Wilkins-Laflamme set out to gauge to what extent her generation, which is less likely to participate in organized religion than previous generations, engages with religion online.

She surveyed 2,514 respondents in March 2019. The study, therefore, does not account for how the pandemic may have changed millennials’ digital habits during a time when many houses of worship went online.

“The overall takeaway for me was that digital religion is definitely a thing, but it’s a thing that only a chunk of the (millennial) population does,” Wilkins-Laflamme said.

Millennials also participate in digital religion to varying degrees. Wilkins-Laflamme left the definition of digital religion largely up to respondents; it could include anything from using a Bible app to watching a spirituality-themed Instagram reel.

Forty-one percent of U.S. respondents reported passively consuming any kind of religious or spiritual digital content at least once a month, while only 32 percent of U.S. respondents took the time to post about religion or spirituality on social media monthly.

Millennials in Canada, where the population is less religious overall, were active at lower rates, with 29 percent taking in digital religious content and 17 percent posting it.

What about Gen Z?

It’s not yet clear whether Gen Z, who are more digitally native than millennials, will engage in real-world religion as much as their elders. Paul McClure, a sociologist who studies religion and technology at the University of Lynchburg, applauded Wilkins-Laflamme’s study but noted that his own research shows that greater Internet use is associated with lower levels of religiosity.

His latest study, published in June, found that among U.S. youth ages 13 to 19 years, increased screen time is negatively associated with religious commitment, even when their parents are highly religious.

“We cannot say for sure that screen-based media is actively making adolescents less religious,” McClure’s study states. “But it is clear that screen time either displaces or substitutes for religious belief, identity and practice among adolescents from religious families.”

Cheong agrees that while millennials are taking advantage of new virtual resources, digital advances alone won’t be enough to appeal to younger generations.

“Moving forward, religious organizations and leaders need to do what they can to maintain and sustain the trust, to cultivate healthy relationships,” she said.

That may mean trying to bypass their smartphones and getting young people involved face-to-face. But Wilkins-Laflamme’s study suggests that any religious leader interested in connecting with both Gen Zers or millennials needs to take digital religion seriously.

“Religious groups who don’t have an online presence will really struggle with those two generations,” she said.

Ahead of the Trend is a collaborative effort between Religion News Service and the Association of Religion Data Archives made possible through the support of the John Templeton Foundation.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—At 8 a.m. on Tuesdays in July, as usual, John Perkins was participating in his weekly Zoom Bible study.

Officially the leader and the attraction for the more than 200 who log on each week, Perkins is far from the sole speaker, and that’s the way he wants it.

“I’m learning from them, because they are doing really good research,” said Perkins, 92, of his co-leaders, both pastors and lay people, each of whom teaches from their perspective. “We want our Bible class to be a model of what the influential pastor or the influential leader can do back in their own hometown.”

This collective approach has been Perkins’ way of doing ministry since he began.

In November, shortly after having surgery for colon cancer, Perkins went where he has gone for years—the annual meeting of the Christian Community Development Association, which he helped organize decades before.

It was worth the journey from Mississippi to Missouri, he said, to see his friends and to continue to motivate them while he could.

“Really to pass on, in my own way, this mission that we have arrived at together,” he said in a phone interview. “I just came to encourage and to say goodbye.”

A farewell tour it may be, but Perkins has been in motion as long as he’s been in ministry, moving mostly between his native Mississippi to California and back, always focused on his goals of transforming communities through faith and racial reconciliation.

Overcoming hatred and bitterness

Along the way Perkins has overcome the deaths of loved ones and his onetime hatred of white people, who included police who took the life of his brother and, years later, nearly killed him. Perkins, who at times was one of the few Black leaders in predominantly white evangelical settings, credits particular Caucasians for being there for him to introduce him to the Christian faith, bind his wounds and comfort him when he was mourning.

Born in 1930, Perkins lost his mother to starvation when he was just 7 months old. When he was 16, his brother was killed by a police chief after the young man grabbed the blackjack the officer had used to strike him.

Perkins fled to California in the 1940s after his brother’s death and a decade later launched a union of foundry workers in that state. After the Korean War broke out, he was drafted and served three years in Okinawa, Japan. After he returned stateside, he later became a Christian and was ordained a Baptist minister.

Returning to his native state in 1960, Perkins turned out to be as much an organizer as a clergyman. He started a ministry in Mendenhall that provided day care, youth programs, cooperative farming and health care. He registered Black voters and boycotted white retailers. When he visited college students at a Brandon, Miss., jail who had been arrested after a protest in 1970, he was tortured—“beaten almost to death,” he writes in his latest book—by law enforcement officers.

After recovering, he moved to Jackson, Mississippi’s capital, where he mentored college students.

Relocation, redistribution, reconciliation

In 1976, Perkins published his influential book Let Justice Roll Down, codifying his principles of relocation, redistribution and reconciliation—known as Perkins’ “Three Rs”—as a way to address systemic racism with social action.

“Justice is an economic issue,” Perkins said. “It’s the management and stewardship of God’s resources on the Earth.”

In 2006, Christianity Today placed Let Justice Roll Down at No. 14 on a list of the top 50 books that had shaped evangelicals over the previous five decades.

The late Ron Sider, former president of Evangelicals for Social Action (now Christians for Social Action), said Perkins has “phenomenal” influence, cultivating—possibly more than “any single American”—holistic ministries meeting both spiritual and physical needs of people in rural and urban settings.

The ministry at Sider’s Mennonite church in Philadelphia, said Sider in an interview before his death on July 27, “is modeled on John Perkins, as are hundreds of others around the country.”

Perkins encouraged “collective prosperity,” where wealth is distributed equitably, and living in neighborhoods close to the poor, something he has done in the South and in the West.

“I’d say a lot of white suburban folks like me were deeply challenged by his call to justice and to the three Rs of his ministry,” said Jo Kadlecek, communication manager of Baptist World Aid Australia, who was inspired by Let Justice Roll Down and later co-authored a book with Perkins after he sought her out.

“‘You know Jesus didn’t commute from heaven,’ he’d say frequently, referring to urban ministers’ belief that Christians who help poor and underserved communities should consider residing near them.

Leaving a lasting legacy

Perkins returned to California in the 1980s, in part to hand off the leadership of what he’d built in Mississippi and to let others develop those skills. Perkins’ family founded the Harambee Christian Family Center in a high-crime area of Pasadena, offering after-school and teen programs and providing urban missions training to visiting church work groups.

“You win the trust of parents, you win the trust of community leaders, because you’re proving, day by day, that you want to develop children and young people,” said Rudy Carrasco, who served as the center’s executive director and is now a program director for the Murdock Charitable Trust in Vancouver, Wash. “I learned that from John Perkins. … And he’s doing it now.”

In 1989, Perkins cofounded the CCDA, taking his ideas from his own books and his own previous ministries. The group urges thousands of annual conference attendees to focus on building churches and sharing the gospel in local communities while also renovating houses, hosting medical clinics and tutoring schoolchildren to prepare them for college.

Sider said Perkins’ efforts on racial reconciliation contributed to the “evangelical center” growing more diverse to the point that the National Association of Evangelicals—on whose board Perkins served in the 1980s—now has an African American board chair, an Asian American president and a woman vice chair.

“That’s enormous progress, and it’s the sort of thing that John’s influence has helped to create,” Sider said.

In the 1990s, after returning to Jackson, Perkins founded the Spencer Perkins Center, named for his son who died suddenly in 1998 after suffering a heart attack at the age of 44. The center focused, as had other ministries of his father, on evangelism, affordable housing and helping poor children and families.

‘The Ridiculous Paradox of Suffering’

The elder Perkins has summed up his life’s work and learnings in what he calls his “manifesto,” a trilogy of books that concluded with the publication of Count It All Joy: The Ridiculous Paradox of Suffering.

In the book, Perkins recounts some of the tragedies he has faced but talks of suffering as a part of faith, rather than a failure of it.

“This is the message that I want to leave as a witness to the next generation,” he writes in the introduction. “It’s not only given that we should believe on God, but that we should suffer for his names’ sake.”

Shane Claiborne, co-founder of Red Letter Christians and who has known and worked with Perkins more than 20 years, said Perkins has long demonstrated “ministry of presence.”

Claiborne said Perkins’ approach to Bible study, whether early in the morning at CCDA conferences or online on YouTube and Facebook, is symbolic of the way he has lived his life.

“Almost everything that John does is collaborative,” said Claiborne, who co-wrote with him the 2009 book Follow Me to Freedom: Leading and Following as an Ordinary Radical. Claiborne has joined Perkins in an online Bible study, as has megachurch pastor Rick Warren and civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson.

Participants “might not have all the same theological assumptions, but they’ve got some wisdom he wants them to share, and they’re his friends,” Claiborne said.

Perkins has been trying to build co-laborers rather than view himself as the only one to emulate.

“My dad, he has a hard time with people thinking that he is this person that people should be following,” Priscilla Perkins, co-president of her parents’ foundation, said as the online Bible study came to a close. “No, it’s Christ that we’re following, so we want to make sure that everybody knows that.”

Over the last two decades, institutions of higher learning such as evangelical Calvin University and Jackson State University—a historically Black school—have recognized her father with a program, or with a scholarship named in honor of Perkins and his wife Vera Mae.

Seattle Pacific University has had a John Perkins Center since 2004 and has held training events, lectures and a day of service for incoming students in hopes of moving them from charitable to community development activities.

John Perkins Center Executive Director Caenisha Warren said Perkins’ principles have become ingrained in her. She recalled seeing an article about adding a fourth R to the 3 R’s.

She started reading it, “only to discover it was talking about the other 3 R’s of reading, writing and arithmetic, when I truly assumed it was the Perkins 3 R’s—relocation, redistribution, reconciliation,” she said in an email to RNS.

Perkins once said he didn’t want buildings erected in his name because they might not last. “I have to say it: It feels good,” he said of the programs named for him.

But his sense of satisfaction does not mean he feels the work he accomplished with his wife of seven decades has been sufficient.

“Deep down in my heart I find joy, but I also see that we could have done more,” said Perkins, who was honored in June as a Black Christian “elder” at a Museum of the Bible gala. “But I’m thankful as I look back at it.”