Religion Unplugged

2 days ago | religionunplugged.com | Aaron Earls

When thinking about the number of people attending their church each week, the experience of the average pastor is vastly different from that of the average churchgoer. The most recent Faith Communities Today (FACT) study revealed seven in 10 U.S. congregations have 100 or fewer weekly service attendees. The average U.S. congregation sees 65 people gather each week.

4 days ago | religionunplugged.com | Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans

Your view of the health of American Christian congregations and of their clergy may very much depends on the angle taken: Up from the orchestra or looking down from the balcony. One thing seems evident: In a country in which Christian affiliation has declined (though there are signs it has stabilized) many Catholic and Protestant clergy face significant challenges: including shrinking congregations, political divisions, financial stress and the need to adapt worship for new generations.

5 days ago | religionunplugged.com | Paul Prather

(OPINION) Over the past few years, I’ve written occasionally about a well-documented drop in church attendance and affiliation among Americans. There are indications that free-fall may have stabilized. In February, the Pew Research Center released its third Religious Landscape Study, a mammoth project that over 17 years has sampled more than 35,000 randomly selected respondents each time it’s been conducted.

1 week ago | religionunplugged.com | Ryan Burge

(ANALYSIS) So far, I’ve taken a really good look at how three Christian groups voted in the 2024 election: evangelicals, mainline Protestants and Catholics. But there’s another group that I haven’t examined yet: Black Protestants. Whenever I post a graph that contains a category for Black Protestants, I always get a comment or two asking why they are their own group. Let me briefly answer that before diving into the data.

1 week ago | religionunplugged.com | Vishal Arora

China is operating a vast network of “colonial” boarding schools across Tibet that forcibly removes children—including those as young as four—from their families, a new report released Wednesday claims. The report, published by the U.S.-based Tibet Action Institute, says the system is designed not for education access but for political assimilation, cutting children off from their language, culture and religion.