Surprise! Conservative Theology Keeps People in Church
A recent study found that conservative theology (meaning a more literal interpretation of scripture) is a much better driver of church attendance than liberal theology, according to a five-year academic study of Canadian churchgoers.
This isn’t surprising whatsoever and should be a big fat “duh” moment for everyone remotely familiar with Christianity and/or the Holy Bible in the first place.
According to a story at the Guardian:
“If we are talking solely about what belief system is more likely to lead to numerical growth among Protestant churches, the evidence suggests conservative Protestant theology is the clear winner,” said David Haskell, the Canadian study’s lead researcher.
The findings contradict earlier studies undertaken in the US and the UK, which attempted to discover the underlying causes of a steep decline in church attendance in recent decades but concluded that theology was not a significant factor.
The findings corroborate research published in Baylor sociologist Dr. Rodney Stark’s The Triumph of Faith last year, which also found that while liberal Protestant denominations have been hemorrhaging membership for years now, conservative Catholic and evangelical congregations are actually growing, while actually levels of irreligion are holding steady.
“I don’t know what study ever found that doctrine didn’t matter in church growth,” Stark told Conservative Review in an email. “It always matters a lot. Note which churches are shrinking rapidly – all liberal – and which are growing rapidly, all traditional/conservative.”
A 2011 Study by the National Council of Churches also found similar trends among conservative evangelical and Pentecostal denominations.
But why is this? Why are those archaic strains of thought, the ones that Hillary Clinton advisers Jon Podesta, and Jennifer Palmieri mocked as “backwards” in the now-infamous “Catholic Spring” emails? After all, conventional wisdom would dictate that more progressive, comfortable, and permissive brands of Christianity ought to sell better than those whose prescriptions seem out of step with a post-Sexual Revolution society. Wouldn’t it?
Perhaps conservative theology is the key to attendance simply because it is much closer to the truth than all the various strains of modern liberal theology that tells the church to get with the times. After all, if you subscribe to the bible as written, you’d have to believe in all sorts of taboo things like natural marriage and the unborn child’s fundamental right to life. It would make far more sense for someone to avoid all the negative things that come with those beliefs — unless, of course, those beliefs are true.
Perhaps G.K. Chesterton put it best when he said, “We do not want, as the newspapers say, a Church that will move with the world. We want a Church that will move the world.” In order for that to happen, the church, whether Protestant, Orthodox, or Catholic, has to stick to the script, rather than make it accommodate the very world from which it seeks to save souls.
After all, we’re talking about the greatest story ever told in the greatest book ever written. Some watered-down, platitude-laden, post-modernist-friendly, safe space-approved substitute just won’t do.
If what you’re hearing from the pulpit makes little to no claim to absolute truth, why listen? If worship — what we render to God, and how we render it — is not of dire importance, why get up out of bed to a church on your day off? If you’re looking for a social club with a message that makes you fit in with your friends at cocktail parties, why not sleep in an hour and just meet them for brunch? It has to be far more appealing than the coffee and donuts they give you after service anyway.
But that’s the wonderful, transformative thing about Christianity: It doesn’t matter whether or not a belief is socially palatable, contemporary, or popular. It never has. The only thing that matters is whether or not that belief is true. And there is no substitute for the truth, once it is revealed.
Once people find the truth, they’ll suffer all sorts of calumnies and abuses for it. They’ll even die for it, as we’ve been tragically and heroically reminded of by the martyrs of the Islamic State over the past two years. And, yes, you can be for absolutely certain they’ll actually get out of bed and get to church for it. (For more from the author of “Surprise! Conservative Theology Keeps People in Church” please click HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
