Losing My Religion

A major research organization has offered some troubling data on the numbers of people globally who are leaving Christianity. Janet Parshall will tell you more in this week’s commentary.

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
In 1991, the rock group R.E.M. released a hit song
called Losing My Religion. While the lyrics play off of
a southern expression that refers to being frustrated and desperate,
according to a major research organization, there really are a
lot of people losing their religion.

S2 (00:17):
Here to unpack present day issues from a biblical perspective
is Janet Parshall.

S1 (00:23):
The Pew Research Center surveyed 36 countries and found that
many people are leaving their childhood religion. They used the
term religion shifting throughout the report, and defined that as
a change between the religious group and which a person
was raised and their religious identity as an adult. They
don't use the term conversion because a person could move
from being religious as a child to now being unaffiliated.

(00:45):
What Pew found was that in some countries, changing religions
is very rare. In India, Israel, Nigeria and Thailand, 95%
or more of adults say they still belong to the
religious group in which they were raised, but across East Asia,
Western Europe, North and South America, switching is fairly common.
For example, 50% of adults in South Korea, 36% in

(01:08):
the Netherlands, 28% in the U.S., and 21% in Brazil
no longer identify with their childhood religion. What Pew found
was that most of the movement has been into the
category called religiously unaffiliated, which consists of people who answer
a question about their religion by saying that they're atheists, agnostics,
or nothing in particular. In other words, most of the

(01:29):
switching is disaffiliation people leaving the religion of their childhood
and no longer identifying with any religion. An example is Sweden,
where most were raised Christian. Yet 29% of adults there
now would describe themselves religiously as atheists, agnostics, or nothing
in particular. Sadly, Christianity stands out as the religion with
the highest net losses due to religion shifting in most

(01:50):
of the countries studied. For example, in Germany, the ratio
of people leaving Christianity to those joining is 19.7 to 1.0,
meaning that 20 Germans raised as Christians no longer identify
with the faith for every one individual who has converted
to Christianity. Pew doesn't offer reasons for people switching out
of Christianity or any other religion, but for followers of Jesus,

(02:11):
this data serves as a major wake up call for
the church to reinvigorate its commitment to evangelism, discipleship, and missions.
Spiritual growth only happens when sound doctrine is taught, where
a passion to reach the lost is paramount, and where
going and telling the good news is a call for
each one to reach one. At the core of those
leaving Christianity is a personal failure to know Christ deeply.

(02:33):
For those who walked away, did they have a vibrant
prayer life? Did they go to church, spend time daily
in the word, and knew not just what they believed,
but why they believed it? Now more than ever, our
mandate must be to know Christ and to make him known.
Those are my thoughts. I'm Janet Parshall.

S2 (02:49):
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In the market with Janet Parshall.