Since 1972, when Dean Kelley published Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, a good portion of the noticing of religious trends has been framed in Kelley’s terms. This led to concentration on what his title could take for granted: that Conservative Churches were growing. Kelley’s case and much else that fit his frame could have been supplied in an implied subtitle: Why Liberal Churches Are Declining. Readers who have a spare afternoon to play not Pokémon but Google can find hundreds, if not thousands, of entries on these subjects, whether explicitly defined by Kelley in 1972, or in our times by Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), or the Pew Research Center. We check the proposals and findings of these weekly, and often find them revealing.
What’s new? There is little point in retracing what contributed to the liberal churches’ problems. That is all very familiar. But recently we’ve been noticing how the issue has changed now that conservative churches are not growing, at least not consistently and markedly, or, as their own prophets point out vigorously: many of these today seem to be declining numerically, along with so much else among religious and community-serving agencies.
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