Given that the “liberal churches are losing members because they’re liberal; conservative churches are growing because they’re conservative” argument is invoked every so often here at MSP, I thought people would be interested in this article from Religion Dispatches analyzing some of the problems with that claim.Â An excerpt:
Hout and Fischer released a study this year with Mark A. Chaves, which seemed to show that the trend continues. Their original findings have been partly confirmed by the Pew Forum, which found in 2012 that the nones overwhelmingly saw religious organizations as â€œtoo focused on rules,â€Â â€œtoo concerned with money and power,â€Â andÂ â€œtoo involved in politics.â€ Not on the list: a desire for a stricter moral code. Along with another major study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, the Pew Forum found that Americans without religious affiliation strongly identified with the Democratic party and liberal social positions.
All of which tends to indicate that Hout and Fischer were right when they said that disaffiliation is driven by a rejection of the religious right. It seems perverse to say that members of liberal denominations show their displeasure with religious conservatism by walking away from their own churches, but that seems to be exactly whatâ€™s happening.
On the surface, this might seem like a point in Eberhardtâ€™s favor. â€œOrthodoxâ€ churches keep their members in line; liberal ones canâ€™t. But how then to explain that the most liberal of the liberal denominationsâ€”the Unitarian Universalist Associationâ€”is in fact growing? For that matter, one might argue that Catholics have more to lose by alienating liberals than they have to gain by growing conservative families.Â The bishops seem to have decided just that when they put together their â€œCatholics Come Homeâ€ aÂ d campaign showing a â€œkinder, gentler versionâ€ of the faith.