'The great dechurching': Why so many Americans are leaving their churches

About 40 million Americans have left churches and other religious institutions in the last 25 years.

For some, the decision is rooted in deep pain. But for the majority, their reasons for leaving are a lot more mundane than you'd expect.

“Most people have left for really pedestrian reasons. Like, I moved; attendance was inconvenient; or, say, family change," Michael Graham, co-author of "The Great Dechurching" says.

So, what does that say about the importance of faith in America?

Today, On Point: 'The Great dechurching.'

Michael Graham, program director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Co-author of "The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?"

Pastor Jim Davis, teaching pastor at Orlando Grace Church. Co-author of "The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?"

Part I

CHAKRABARTI: When we asked you for stories, if you've left your religion or houses of worship, you sent us some of the highest numbers of messages we've ever received. Here are just a few.

(LISTENER MONTAGE)

KRISTEN FOWLER: I was raised a Catholic. And went to church every Sunday, but as an adult, I have not gone. I actually don't even really go on holidays anymore. I think that the reason for that is the views of the church on things like divorce, same sex marriage and abortion just don't align with my views.

BILL HENLEY: We were raised Catholic in our forties, we had a falling out with the local church because sermons were becoming very political, especially about abortion. And that just really irritated us. That's not why we go to church.

BRIGETTE BISHOP: I grew up going to a Protestant church every week. I taught Sunday school, I sang in the choir, and I was even a church organist for a couple years. I stopped going to church in my thirties because they hurt me deeply. I got postpartum psychosis after the birth of my second child, and the pastor of the church we were attending accused me of being possessed by a demon.

CHAKRABARTI: So those were On Point listeners Kristen Fowler in Lexington, Kentucky, Bill Henley in Oregon, and Brigette Bishop in Norfolk, Massachusetts, sharing some of the deeply painful reasons many Americans have left their churches. They are among the 40 million Americans who have stopped going to worship services in the past 25 years alone.

Now that 40 million number includes people of all faiths. But today, we're going to focus on Christianity, because it is the faith that the majority of religious Americans practice. And because, the surprising fact is, most of those people who have left their churches have done so for remarkably mundane reasons.

So what does that tell us about the perceived centrality of organized religion in American life? Joining us now is Michael Graham. He's the program director for the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. It's a group underneath the Gospel Coalition. Mike, welcome to On Point.

MICHAEL GRAHAM: So good to be here, Meghna.

Thank you. And also, with us today is Pastor Jim Davis. He's the teaching pastor at Orlando Grace Church. Pastor Davis, welcome to you as well.

PASTOR JIM DAVIS: Thank you for having us, Meghna. And Mike and Pastor Davis are co-authors of the book "The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?"

Now, I just want to emphasize once again that 40 million number. Of course, includes Americans of all faiths, but just because Christianity is such a major part of that 40 million number, I'd like to confine our analysis to American Christians. So first of all, both of you are in Orlando, Florida, and Pastor Davis, let me just start with you.

I'm wondering if your own congregation, if you have seen the effects of this rapid decline in the people who are physically attending services.

DAVIS: We've certainly seen it in our city in a major way. Our church is actually growing right now, but I know that's not the norm for many churches around the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so I should note that both of you are at the same church as well. Okay, then you said you've seen it in your city, in Orlando. Would you guys like to describe what has been changing in Orlando?

DAVIS: Yeah, so Orlando, if you go back to the '90s and 2000s, it felt like it was becoming some sort of Christian Mecca.

You had the president of the Southern Baptist Convention was down here. One of the largest churches in the state was pioneering the non-denominational space, major world Christian organizations were relocating seminaries here. And then you fast forward, and we now have the same percentage of evangelicals as New York City and Seattle.

So we're seeing this trend as heavily as most any city. I think the latest statistic that I saw has us at the sixth most dechurched city per capita, by per capita in the United States.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, wow. Okay. So that is a precipitous decline in a remarkably short period of time. In your book, both of you go through thoroughly about the whys. And of course, that's the heart of our conversation today, which we'll get to.

But the question that immediately comes to my mind after hearing about such a rapid decline, is it consistent across different groups of Christians, right? So let's just take it by race, for example. Is the rate of dechurching amongst different or ethnicities in America the same?

GRAHAM: No the rate of dechurching is a little bit faster among Asian Americans, and it's a little bit slower among Hispanic or Latino Americans, and it's about the average of the bell curve is there for those who are Caucasian or African American.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Do you have a sense as to why, let's say for Hispanic Americans, their rate of dechurching is slower?

GRAHAM: That's a sociological question. If our social scientist Ryan Burge were here, I think if Ryan were here, he would probably say something to the effect that the rate of decline from first, second to third generation Hispanic and Latino Americans of the religion that they were bringing into the country is more sticky than it is for immigrants of other ethnicities.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So that leads me to the next layer here of rates in different age groups. Overall, in the United States, we see younger Americans as reporting to be less religious than older Americans. Is that the same for the actual dechurching?

GRAHAM: So it's complicated. The dechurching that's taking place is hitting every age category in the country.

What's interesting is the rate of churching in counties that are older in nature is worse. However, when you look at the people who are dechurching, they are typically dechurching in the 13 to 30 age range. In particular, 18 to 29 is the time at which most Americans identify as being the least religious, and then it accelerates from there.

Most people identify as being most religious and most likely to attend in the 0- to 18-year-old time frame.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. No, I just want to emphasize an important point that when we speak of dechurching, when the two of you write of dechurching you're speaking about people who no longer, who attend less or don't attend at all.

Or aren't affiliated with any specific church. We're not talking about a loss of faith. That's a not at all what we're speaking about here. I just want to double check that is correct.

DAVIS: In the sociological categories of belief belong and behave. We are studying belonging. That is very important.

The way we defined dechurching for the purpose of our study was someone who used to attend at least monthly and now attends less than one time per year, which doesn't even include those who might just go on Easter or just Christmas. So you could make an argument that the shift is even larger than our study shows, we wanted to be as conservative as possible in the way that we studied it.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. Now you surveyed, what, some 7,000 people, right? Or you used Ryan Burge. I think he's the one who did the survey of the 7,000. Is that right?

GRAHAM: Yeah. So we commissioned the study with Ryan. We did a three-phase study, 7,000 total people over the course of three successively granular studies, zooming more and more in.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, good. I just, I'm always keen to be sure that people understand where the data come from. Thank you for clarifying those things. Now, I have two more groups of Americans that I just want to talk about to see if there's any difference in their rates of dechurching. What about between men and women?

GRAHAM: Yeah, so the rates of dechurching among men and women, it varies. pretty widely depending on which profile that we're talking about. And you should do this, pick up a copy of the great dechurching so that you can get a much more granular look at all of these different profiles. But in the book, we outline four different profiles of dechurched evangelicals, a mainline dechurched profile, and a Roman Catholic dechurched profile.

Those different groups vary pretty widely in terms of their rates of men versus women. You have groups like the ex-evangelicals who are predominantly female, 68%. And then you have groups like the BIPOC group, out of BIPOC people who left evangelical churches, they're predominantly men, 68%. It just depends on which tradition that you're looking at.

As well the dechurching that occurred out of mainline context is overwhelmingly female as well.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. And by the way I actually do have the book. I just think it's incredibly boring for listeners to hear me explain research that our guests have actually done. That's why I'm asking you what may seem like obtuse questions, but it's just so that we can all, and our family of listeners, can have a shared foundation for getting to the big questions about why this matters.

So let me just jump to that. And specifically, through the lens of Americans who either, their faith has diminished somewhat or for Americans who profess no faith, I'd love you to make the case for why this massive drop in churchgoing, in your eyes, really matters for the country. Because there are many Americans out there who might actually see this as a good thing, because the church has become, various churches have become so politicized in recent years and decade that they might see a reduction in attendance as a good thing for the country overall. So why does it matter?

DAVIS: So that's a really good question. And it's going to matter for different reasons. Mike and I would agree with you that there has been political syncretism. And so even as a pastor, there's some of this, our data shows some millions of people who are, a group of millions of people are leaving the church who probably never really identified fully as Christian to begin with.

And on one hand, there's a little bit of a purification of what we really believe and are here to do. But even for people who are outside the Christian faith, I think we have to recognize that if we take the 40 million people who have left the church in the last 25 years or so, that represents a GDP of about $1.4 trillion, which is about $24 billion a year. Now, every year not going to houses of worship and 40% of our social safety net is probably made up by religious nonprofits, and that's going somewhere.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: That great dechurching is about 40 million Americans who've left their places of worship in the past 25 years. Many of them have done so for very deeply held spiritual reasons or maybe even personal breaks with the church that they had been attending.

But one of the major takeaways from The "Great Dechurching" book is that for most of this 40 million who left their houses of worship, it has a lot more to do with the reality of daily life than it does with any political or spiritual reckoning.

(LISTENER MONTAGE)

LILO: I grew up in the Episcopal Church, and I never really pursued it after going off on my own. I think it had something to do with just not having a local church. Because I moved away, and my husband is not religious.

MARTA: I left the Catholic Church many years ago, because I thought it was extremely boring.

TOM: I do not currently attend church because in my town, and I'm sure this is the case for a lot of other medium sized cities, there is not a church with people in my age range.

MAURA: My main reason for not going to church right now is because I'm taking care of an elderly parent, and there is a time conflict and not being able to leave her alone. So my Sundays are filled with caring for my parents.

CHAKRABARTI: Those were On Point listeners Maura in New York; Tom Hauser in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Marta Silva in Pasadena, California; and Lilo in Somerville, Massachusetts.

So gentlemen, this is one of the most surprising things I found in your book. And here's how one reviewer described it. That the major problem driving most people out of church may not be church itself, but it's just how American life works in the 21st century. Talk about that if you could.

Yeah. So probably the biggest surprise that we had going into this study and coming out of it was, there were two storylines that people had. That were the overarching narratives of why people were leaving houses of worship. If your media diet leaned a little bit left, the stories were people were leaving because houses of worship have made major mistakes on things like racism, misogyny, political syncretism, clergy scandal, and clergy abuse.

And if your media diet was leaning a little bit to the right, the story there was people have left houses of worship because of secular progressivism and because of the sexual revolution. And yeah, it was a big surprise for us. The reason why people left were primarily very pedestrian reasons that seemed actually very pragmatic.

And yeah, that was a real surprise for us, to see that it looked like 30 of the 40 million people who left for very pragmatic and, frankly, boring reasons, the other two stories that were there. And certainly, there's millions of people that fit both of those stories.

And the very first, the stories that you guys played here at the beginning of this very much highlight, "Hey, yeah, there's real people here and there's many of them and they've experienced significant hurt"  But then as we saw here from these last four stories, there's also these other people that just, they just had life and there's just the inertia and the patterns and rhythms of American life, just had them getting out of the habit.

The top reason why people left, in terms of dechurching was, I moved. The number two reason overall was attendance was inconvenient. And the number three reasons was that somebody had a family change, a marriage, divorce, remarriage, or those different kinds of things. So I think that you saw that reflected in the gentleman who moved, the person who was taking care of an elderly parent.

So yeah, those are just some of the, we call this in book, casual dechurching as opposed to the, that's 30 million people and then 10 million people who we call dechurch casualties. Dechurch casualties, they left with significant pain. Casually dechurched people left unintentionally.

CHAKRABARTI: Since you found that three quarters of the people who had been dechurched were those casual dechurchers, this is, it goes right at one presumption that I think many of us had about American life, that religion and the formal practice of it was actually integral to what life is.

Or at least at one time was, in the United States. And if so many people are being casually dechurched, does that mean that the church itself has lost its centrality? Or that it wasn't delivering something that made it worth putting forth the extra effort, regardless of how life had changed, to actually attend?

DAVIS: Yeah, I'll start on this, and I'm going to have Mike speak to institutions a bit now. But going back to the origin of our country, we want to address the myth that we are, that we were formed as a Christian nation. When you go back to 1776, I think it was only 17% of people in the colonies were attending church regularly.

If you consider the constitution compared to some of the colonies, say, Connecticut, for example, that talks about Jesus in their constitution, our constitution was the watershed document into secularism in the West. So we believe we certainly wouldn't want to return to a 17% belonging from where we are now at, say, around 49% of the country.

Certainly, our high watermark was the 20th century. Mike, why don't you speak to institutions and how that plays a factor?

GRAHAM: So I think when you look at, I don't know if you guys saw the Gallup study. That 13 of the 14 institutions in the United States over the last 15 to 20 years have all eroded in terms of the public's trust in those institutions.

So this would be everything like the president, to the Supreme Court to Congress to media technology. And these different kinds of things. The only institution in American public life that has increased in the public's trust is the United States military. And so I think these things speak to the ways in which, culture and society continues to reform and reshape itself.

I think a lot of this is downstream from the ways in which technology, the way information, comes to us and the ways in which, you know, our information diet, kind of, we received those things. Everything is, in '69, you had the moon landing. And I think 80% of Americans watch that live on their television or radios.

You had 9/11, which was probably the last time we had, aside from a Super Bowl, more than half of Americans watching something that was a same, in common touch point. People's information diets are fractured, and we have everything, even journalism itself, moving from, in some ways, from major newspapers and radio outlets like NPR down to the kind of the Substacking and following various personalities, podcasts, and these different kinds of things online.

So I think that those things are really challenging the ways in which institutions are formed and shaped. And the role of institutions in American public life. And so the challenge with that is, churches. Churches are institutions, they're physical places, and in order to do most of the things that we need to do, in order to worship, those are physical things.

And so I think the American public's tolerance for being around people who have differences, and of opinion or differences of perspective, or even differences in tribe or affiliation. That tolerance seems to be waning and classic. And this has presented really, significant challenges for classical liberalism.

CHAKRABARTI: This is so interesting because, okay, there's a lot that you said there, and I want to dig into it a little bit. First and foremost, I will completely acknowledge that not just in some way, but in major ways, media and internet have moved very far towards, away from institutions and towards narrowly focused sites or groups who are just out there to do one thing, whether you agree with them or not.

I don't want to water that down. But secondly, so you're talking, both of you are talking about major changes in life overall. The internet is access to information that perhaps people just never had before, different points of view, et cetera, which may either strengthen or weaken their relationships with their church.

You've written about that extensively, but also just the church, churches themselves not being able to keep up with these changes. I wonder if another way of looking at that is that churches have not been able to maintain their relevance in people's lives, with all of the sort of social and cultural changes that you talked about.

And again, this reviewer in The Atlantic wrote an amazing article about your book and he also pointed to a culture of workism in America as replacing the kinds of meaningful feedback that people used to get from church. Your thoughts on that?

DAVIS: I think this is a great question. And this is why the '90s was such an inflection point.

When you look at dechurching and how that's when all of this really hit a tipping point. So you have four factors that I can go through very briefly. The fall of the Soviet Union was a massive deal. Because before the end of the Cold War, to be American was synonymous for being Christian. I can remember a time when I was young, and I'm not that old, when if someone said, "I'm not a Christian," the next question might have been, "Are you a communist?"

So after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was freedom to be able to say, "I'm not a Christian." Then you have the Internet coming into our schools and libraries predominantly, at that point in the '90s, you have things happening like the advent of the Internet cafe. So you have these aspects, but then really at the close of the nineties, when you have 9/11.

Our national enemy overnight goes from the godless atheists to the religious fundamentalists. And so there was another reason for people to say, "If that's what religion is, I don't want to be a part of it." And so what you saw in the '90s were people dechurching more on the secular left, more in Roman Catholicism and mainline.

But now you fast forward to where we are now and dechurching is happening on the secular right at twice the pace, almost catching up in the full number of those who have dechurched on the secular left.

CHAKRABARTI: That, okay, so let's take that to the next phase then. Where are they going instead?

DAVIS: Go ahead, Mike.

GRAHAM: Yeah, so I think in terms of the secular right, it's no great surprise from 2015 to present that, I think for some people, there's been a revealing. You know the word apocalyptic. Not talking like 2012, the sense of the term, but the actual definition of a revealing.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah.

GRAHAM: So I think one of the things that's been interesting about the Internet is that with the advent of the like button and all of the dopamine that comes in that, it's incentivizing people to be increasingly more honest and particularly as social media becomes very algorithmically driven, people end up with people who are seeing what they're posting in ways that creates a feedback loop. And so that feedback loop is then incentivizing people to become more honest on more controversial topics. I remember growing up, religion and politics. Those were not supposed to be things that we discussed in public.

But in the advent of social media, you now have this incentive structure for people to share their thoughts on those things. And so I think those things have generated people, having greater honesty about what are their actual perspectives, not just with respect to political affiliation, but even down to policy matters.

And people want to use these platforms to exert influence, the digital megaphone. So where I'm going with that, and where I'm going with that with respect to the secular right, is I think for some people, and not everybody, but I think for many people, what's occurred is people are being more honest about what are their biggest wants and what are their biggest fears. And I think for some people, the politics flag was maybe flying higher than the Jesus flag. And I think in the '90s, that was more revealed on the secular left. As people left from mainline. And to some degree, to a lesser degree, Roman Catholic traditions.

And then out of evangelical churches, I think many people, probably the political flag was flying higher than the Jesus flag there. And so now, the constant, do you find, do you want to go to church where you have to sit next to the pews from somebody who votes differently, that votes differently than you?

Wouldn't you rather go to a political rally where you feel like maybe you have more solidarity, from either a civilizational level, ethnic level, or in terms of just the constellation of wants and fears that you have. So I think in many ways, we've experienced from 2015 to present an apocalyptic event.

In the sense of the revealing of where people are really at.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, this is a really important point, and I'm going to quote Ryan Burge, who helped with all of the data gathering for your book. He was quoted in the New York Times And by the way, Ryan is, he's actually a pastor as well.

I want to be sure to emphasize that. But he was quoted in the New York Times as saying politics has become the master identity. And he looked at Iowa in particular. And he said, Iowa, for example, is culturally conservative, non-practicing Christians at this point, which is exactly Donald Trump's base.

And then in this story, the New York Times story, there was a very, like you said, revealing quote from an Iowa voter, Sidney Hatfield who says she was raised as a Baptist, she prays to God every night, but doesn't go to church anymore, has attended a lot of Trump rallies because, and here's her quote, "He's the only savior I can see."

Now, I want to ask you that not from a, what does that mean politically? Because I think we've done a million shows about that, but I want to ask you about what that means for the church or for churches themselves, when there are a lot of people who profess a profound faith, but they're putting, like you said, politicians up as having equal, if not greater rank than Jesus and God, whose teachings are supposed to be the thing that provides the spiritual fulfillment in the church.

Some could say that the church brought it on itself, or churches brought it on themselves, beginning in the '80s with the wedding of evangelical Christianity and right-wing republicanism.

DAVIS: I definitely think the rise of the religious right and some of the political syncretism that you saw in the '80s and '90s has had some fallout.

And I think it's logical fallout. Anecdotally in our own church, just so you know, there was a big push in 2020 by a contingent of people for me to authorize the handing out of right-wing voter guides in worship in November of 2020. And my response was, "Guys, this is not why we're here. Jesus is not on the ticket."

We have a hope that is greater, but I do think that the fear and confusion that our culture was experiencing, it revealed some places, or those who are Christians, where we might not be actually looking to Jesus as our real secure hope, as our true purpose and meaning. So I see, I think, unfortunately, we saw some of that play out as well.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: As I said at the top of the show, when we asked you for your stories, about why you're no longer attending your houses of worship, we received one of the highest numbers of responses we have ever received.

So here are some more of what you had to say.

(LISTENER MONTAGE)

AMANDA GOODE: I grew up in a pre-Royal Baptist church and noticed very early that they didn't practice what they were preaching. We had people who were obsessed with homosexuality and condemning that. While brushing their sexual and physical abuse of their spouse under the rug. We had church elders who could not afford their medications. And as a congregation, we ignored it. But man, we sure could raise money for some decorative grass for outside in the church. That was their important thing.

LIZ BROWN: I was raised as a Catholic, and I was very aware of how sort of invisible women were to the church. I was just becoming very aware of how women are treated as second class citizens.

EMILY SINGLETARY: More recently, we have stopped attending. What really drove my decision was seeing the way that Christians reacted to Donald Trump. I was very disheartened to see people put him on a pedestal and create an idol out of him. Christians are not supposed to have idols, of course. And it especially bothered me that so many of them did not see the hypocrisy in that.

CHAKRABARTI: So those are On Point listeners Amanda Goode in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Liz Brown in Bourne, Massachusetts, and Emily Singletary in Cary, North Carolina.

CHAKRABARTI: Now Pastor Davis and Mike, I want to get a deeper understanding from you about maybe through a certain contradiction, there's actually a way forward to welcome more people back into church.

And that is this, that we touched on this a little earlier, that American life has changed so much. Not just socially, but I think in people's own, the pressures put on them in your composite characters in the book, you talk about, for example, a working mother who just does not have time to go to church, when Sunday rolls around. Because there's so many other demands on her.

And the focus on work also as a place for spiritual fulfillment, right? Being defined by what one does. But then there are the economic pressures too, right? Like you have to be able to work and save enough for retirement or cover your health care, pay your rent, et cetera. That these things take up a lot of spiritual and emotional space.

But of course, my view, and please do correct me if I'm wrong, but church was supposed to be, or could be, one of the antidotes to those kind of pressures in life. That here was a space where one could share fellowship and community with others. And in fact, receive relief from those pressures.

First of all, is that an accurate understanding of part of what church, part of what church is supposed to be able to provide for people?

DAVIS: Oh, I couldn't agree with you more. And one of the things that we found that was surprising is that dechurching is hitting the lower educated, lower income the hardest. Because this is who the life transitions hit the hardest, when there's not a safety net, when divorce happens, or someone becomes a single parent.

However, that happens, without that kind of financial safety net, they're the ones who have to work longer hours and more unusual hours. Actually, only 3% of evangelicals with a master's degree in our study had dechurched. So certainly, there's an economic piece to this. But as we find our identity increasingly in work.

It moved us away from the, I would say, God given, not just advice, but command that we need to take a day and rest. And we need to take a day and come together and worship and experience that community. It's what we were designed for. And so it doesn't surprise me that you would see this downward spiral.

The more we get drawn into one thing and away from what I, and, most Christians would say we were designed for.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. There's something very particularly American about this challenge before churches, because let's acknowledge the truth. In Europe, there's been a massive amount of not just dechurching, but loss of faith.

So it's not uniquely American, but the American aspect of it is that we do live in a culture and an economy that's incredibly focused on the self. And church, by supposing to be a place where one is brought out of themselves should be the antidote to that, as you said.

But I was reading that some theologians say the problem is that churches have actually tried to focus on how an individual can cure him or herself. With the teachings of Jesus. Whereas what they should be doing is saying, "No, the cure is not the focus on you. The cure is coming out of yourself and being more attentive to community."

DAVIS: Yeah, so Mike and I actually both lived in Italy for some time. I lived there for five years doing church work, so we've gotten a glimpse of Europe. And certainly, everything you're saying is right. The difference between America and Europe is that their churches were connected to their state, which makes us different.

Sociologists have long referred to the United States as stubbornly religious. Because generally the more economically developed a culture is, the less religious they are, but with the United States, and Israel would be an exception as well. That just hasn't held true. So there's ways that we're on Europe's track and ways that we aren't.

But when you come to what you just described is what we would call, I think Christian Smith is the one that coined this moralistic therapeutic deism, live a good life. And God in a general sense exists for your own therapy. And you even see a lot of Christian sermons trending toward, even going back to your word, relevant.

Obviously, there's a good way to be relevant that Jesus intended. And then there's a way that we just want to be relevant to the culture, to be able to fill up the seats. And that's what's given way to churches that would feel more like Coldplay in a Ted Talk, with maybe some more pop psychology than gospel and higher level of anonymity.

Which erodes at both the training and discipleship. And the community that we need.

CHAKRABARTI: I've been mentioning this Atlantic Review for a long time, but it was written by someone with a lot more personal practice and faith than me. So I'm leaning on it a little bit. This is from Jake Meador who wrote last year about your book in The Atlantic.

And he pointed out that maybe churches should actually be asking more of their congregants, in terms of, this is not a place where we're just going to focus on you and your troubles, but we're going to actually ask you to step outside of that and give more of yourself to the fellowship that you might find here within these walls. And then also to the community in which that church resides.

That seems to be a hard ask in America, given all the other, the forces that we talked about that might be operating against that.

DAVIS: I thought Jake did an amazing job with that article and you just look at the contrasting messages. America tells you have it your way. You deserve this. How do you become happier?

How does life become easier? Jesus says that our call is to die to our old self. And to live for him because he lived the life we never could and died and took God's wrath in our place, that we might have eternal life. So Jesus's message isn't just one of giving of yourself, it's dying to yourself, for what you have been made in him, for those who have faith.

And so I just, the contrast between the average American message and the Christian message, they are starkly different. And the more that we synchronize the two, the more that we pervert both.

CHAKRABARTI: And how, so how would you do that?

DAVIS: In what way? Can you flesh that question out a little more?

CHAKRABARTI: Sorry. So how does, how to bring the sense of what Christian faith is supposed to be to make it more relevant?

I keep using that word, but relevant for people such that they would come back.

DAVIS: And we would, I'll start and I'll let you take over, Mike, but we would say that the churches that are holding to a Nicene Creed Christianity, so these are the basic tenets of faith, who are doing that in a Christ winsome way, with some measure of accountability and transparency the way that it was designed to be, those churches in America are growing right now.

They're doing very well. Churches that would push against technology as a replacement for church, but as a way to bring people into the community of the church.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. What you just said reminded me that I'm sure a lot of people perhaps lost their habit or willingness to physically go to church because of the pandemic as well.

They were kept out of churches to begin with, and maybe that was all it took to stop having it be a regular part of their lives, their weekly lives, the act of going to church. I don't want to have forgotten to mention that, but I'm trying to, we've done shows in the past that have to do with, that people are seeking community in different ways. Because they're desperate for it now, because of all the factors we've been talking about.

But again, I come back to this idea that a church has been and can be a place where that sense of community and spiritual connection is achieved. But I've heard a lot of people say one of the problems that they have is that it's contained within the bubble, within the walls of that church, that the church itself isn't serving the broader community as much as it once was. Whether it be housing assistance, food, et cetera all of the social services that you talked about Pastor Davis, they're seeking more of that. So that the evidence of the relevance and importance of the church is not just contained on a Sunday morning, but that it is seen to be a positive and pervasive force in the community at large.

GRAHAM: Yeah, this is something, Meghna, that I am super passionate about.

When you look at different Christian traditions, certain traditions are stronger on information, truth, doctrine. Other traditions are stronger on emphasizing the individual's experience of the Christian life and the Holy Spirit. And what those things mean, at the emotional level.

And then there are other traditions whose strength and emphasis are on what does this mean in terms of human flourishing and the public good of culture and society. And what I want to say is that the Jesus of the Bible has a story that's not just true. It's not just good. It's also beautiful.

And when we actually go back to the text and we look at the kingdom that Jesus has, and the one that he's doing. In his perfect life, his substitutionary death and his resurrection, he's not just accomplishing salvation for us in dealing with our sin and giving us his righteousness.

He's also bringing redemption, if we all go back to that classic, that classic Christmas carol, as far as the church is found, as far as the curse is found, Jesus is bringing redemption. And so I do believe that when we as Christians in this country can put the kingdom of Jesus first, that allows us to love our neighbor as ourselves.

It allows us to love our enemies, and it allows us to live in the sacrificial way that he did. In Jesus's kingdom, the last is first. And the first is last, and this is the opposite of the American story. And so we have an opportunity to be radically countercultural and really care for people, particularly the least of these people who have really fallen through the cracks and people who are suffering and who have tremendous pain.

If you're listening to this and you have experienced tremendous church hurt. I just, I want to draw your attention back to the beauty of Jesus himself. In John 6:66-68, the disciples are having an interesting conversation with Jesus.

And, some people have left, have stopped following Jesus. And Jesus has this interaction with his disciples. And one of his disciples says, "Well, Jesus, where else would I go? Who else has the words of life?" And as a pastor, for 15 years, I've seen a lot of things and experienced a lot of pain myself.

I'm probably very much at risk personally for dechurching, given the things that I've seen in terms of church hurt and pain and those different kinds of things. But who else has these words of life in this kingdom that's so radical and so countercultural, where else can I go and sit next to people who have all different sorts of ethnicities and identities and even tribal or other affiliations.

But yet together, we can worship together, and that Jesus transcends all of those differences. And these are things that can bring our community together. Jesus is the horse. Everything else is the cart.

CHAKRABARTI: I'm actually so glad that you said it that way, because we got messages from listeners who basically said the same thing.

That it's not, it's not their faith, that question, but their belief in whether or not the institution of the church or churches will ever practice what they actually preach, right? Not just because of all the scandals and the horrible abuses, but just in terms of what they're hearing or how the church itself behaves within the community.

And I just want to give Sarah from Los Angeles a voice on this. She still identifies as a Christian, she's been so her whole life, but she told us that she left the church because it no longer seemed to reflect the Jesus she had learned about growing up.

SARAH: You're going to hell for this, you need to repent for that, and I just don't feel that is the Jesus I know, it's not the God that I know, it's not the Christianity that I have come to find and was raised in.

And I would personally, honestly, I would love to go back to church. I would love to be able to go and learn the gospel from a liberal minded perspective. I just, I'm not finding it.

CHAKRABARTI: So we've only got a minute to go and I'm really sorry, time flies with these really interesting conversations, but do you think that more churches will be able to do what Sarah is talking about?

What you've both mentioned, about going back to basics or not?

DAVIS: Let me just first say that hearing these stories are heartbreaking. And if they can hear me right now, I would say it sounds like in most cases you should have left that church, but it doesn't mean you have to leave the church.

And what we've seen in our study is over half of the people who have left church are willing to come back, if they can find the true expression of Christianity.