Lent Begins Wednesday

(KNSI) — Today is Ash Wednesday, marking the start of Lent, and it comes at a time when church attendance is declining.

However, experts like Byron Johnson, the head of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, says what’s being broadcast in pop culture is only part of the story as “Religion in America is alive and well, very stable, and has been for decades. There’s wishful thinking that faith might go away, that people would give up on God, but that just doesn’t seem to be born out in the data.”

He says most of these reports about faith are opinion pieces or outright flawed. “You read popular articles in a lot of newspapers, you’re going to be left with the idea that religion is going away, and it’s just completely false.”

The Pew Research Center estimated in 2020, 64% of Americans, including children, identified as Christian. Their projections, not identified as the only possibilities or predictions, showed that due to the religious switching rate, that number would shrink to 35% by 2070. Respondents were asked what religion – if any – they were raised in and what – if any – is their current religion. Switching was defined by people who changed between the faith tradition they were raised in and their religious identity in adulthood.

In a 2021 piece, the number of people who identified as Christian fell from 78% in 2007 to 63%, with those considered religiously unaffiliated at 29%, up from 16% in 2007. Those considered religiously unaffiliated answered “nothing in particular” when asked about identifying with or practicing specific faiths.

Johnson says the people responding to surveys may also not always see their denomination listed, so they check the box for “none of the above,” which lumps them into atheists or agnostics, which he says is wrong.

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