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Special Report
Religion Highlights of 2012
Reports to the contrary notwithstanding, secularization is not the wave of the future.
Secular elites like to insist that America and by implication the world is growing ever more secular. The evidence is doubtful at best. In 2012 a much trumpeted Pew study showed a record number of Americans professing to be religiously unaffiliated, with 20 percent declared as “nones.” Although the same study showed about the same percentage of Americans attending church regularly as have for the last 80 years, it was widely heralded as proof of accelerating secularization.
A massive Gallup survey of over 300,000 Americans published in December 2012 rebuts the secularist claims of triumph. Gallup found 77 percent identifying with Christianity, with 5 percent identifying with non-Christian religion, and 18 percent unaffiliated. The Gallup report, called “God Is Alive and Well,” suggests that “religion may become increasingly important in the years to come” in America. It cites an aging American demographic prone to be more religious. It also suggests that as “religiousness is significantly related to wellbeing and health,” more Americans, especially “aging baby boomers,” may “look to religion as a positive component of their way of life.” Even “business and government leaders may take these correlates of religiousness into account in their quest to increase employee wellbeing and lower healthcare costs,” Gallup speculates. So take that secularist triumphalists!
Gallup also predicts an “extension of the current trends toward unbranded, nondenominational, more free-form religious expression,” with “significant implications for the future of traditional mainline religious groups that are slower to adapt to change.” No doubt. The implications for imploding old line churches is already quite clear. The rise of the religiously unaffiliated mostly reflects the collapse of old denominational forms of liberal Protestantism.
Secularist triumphalists have also celebrated the 2012 election result for supposedly proving the political irrelevance of Evangelicals and traditional Catholics. But white evangelicals were a record percentage of the electorate, the largest religious demographic, and higher than in 2004, which had provoked some secularists at the time to warn of impending theocracy.
Despite premature secularist claims, 2012 was a significant year for religion in America and the world, further proving that religion is effervescent and hardly receding. Here are a few of the top religion stories of the last year.
The Obamacare HHS insurance mandate requiring religious institutions such as hospitals and schools to cover contraceptives and abortifacients has generated an almost unprecedented joint sense of purpose between Roman Catholic and Evangelical leaders and institutions. Colleges from both traditions, including evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois, are litigating against the mandate. And even many Evangelical leaders like megachurch pastor Rick Warren who typically avoid the culture war have strongly denounced the mandate as an assault on religious liberty.
Along with Obama’s support for same sex marriage and abortion rights, the HHS mandate likely suppressed the Evangelical Left during the 2012 presidential election campaign. Groups such as Jim Wallis’ Sojourners, along with many other liberal Evangelicals, largely were low profile during the 2012 elections, starkly contrasting to 2008 when prominent liberal Evangelicals excitedly supported Obama. Wallis himself was openly apathetic, and some prominent Evangelicals, like Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, publicly criticized the HHS mandate. The Obama campaign, after having courted Evangelicals in 2008, largely ignored them in 2012, realizing they could win without them.
Leaders of the otherwise increasingly liberal-leaning National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) have stood against the HHS mandate. But NAE had its own contraceptive controversy this year after quietly accepting pro-choice foundation grant money under the auspices of reducing unplanned pregnancy. A foundation official appeared on an NAE-sponsored panel during a prominent Evangelical event in Washington, D.C., prompting a World magazine exposé, and NAE’s renouncing future such grants. The brouhaha illustrated the struggle of some liberal-leaning Evangelicals to shift left without offending their own constituency.
Exemplifying a more traditional Evangelical perspective, a North Carolina ballot measure defining marriage as between one man and one woman received public support from famed Evangelist Billy Graham, who appeared in full-page newspaper ads urging passage. Similar ads with Graham’s name failed to sway later votes in more liberal states. But the wide North Carolina victory for traditional marriage showcased how conservative Evangelicals remain a potent force, premature obituaries notwithstanding.
America’s third largest religious body is the United Methodist Church, which has long been liberal and fast declining for decades. But its uniquely global membership includes surging African churches that flexed their muscle at this year’s governing General Conference by effectively tabling efforts to liberalize on marriage and sex. One Methodist theologian afterwards pronounced that United Methodism is no longer mainline, which means American liberal, but global. The United Methodists also defeated, with African support, anti-Israel divestment, as did the Presbyterian Church (USA) by a more narrow margin, illustrating the limits of anti-Israel activism even in leftist religious circles. In contrast, the Episcopal Church demonstrated the spiral of old line churches by affirming transgenderism at its General Convention.
Responding to global religious persecution, American Evangelicals and Catholics, and some old line Protestants, were increasingly outspoken. Of special concern this year was a Christian Pakistani girl accused of blasphemy and an Iranian pastor, both imprisoned but ultimately released after international pressure. The Iranian pastor has since been jailed again. In northern Nigeria, Islamist terror group Boko Haram killed over 750 Christians in 2012. Amid the “Arab Spring” and the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, Coptic Christians in Egypt and other religious minorities elsewhere in the Middle East are increasingly vulnerable.
Almost certainly religion will fill the headlines of 2013 no less than 2012, secularist claims to the contrary, as most of the world and most of America remain persistently religious.
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (45) | Leave a comment
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Al Brooks, BleedingHeartlib | 12.31.12 @ 6:54AM
In a world of existential threats, you waste our time with insignificant issues such as abortion and all the rest. With the serious problems you whine about every day at AS, you fret about gays, guns, abortion?
It only makes sense as philosophy-- not politics.
c. j. acworth| 12.31.12 @ 7:51AM
Who put a gun to your head and made you read the article, Al? For that matter who makes you come to this site at all? Here's a tip for you, one that I use all the time on this site and others as well. In between the two large buttons on your mouse is a third, smaller one. It's called the scroll button, a veritable miracle of modern science. Give it a try and you'll see how much indigestion ot will save you. Happy New Year.
spike59| 1.2.13 @ 5:37AM
to over 1 million American infants, abortion IS an 'existential threat', you moron
Tina B| 1.2.13 @ 10:37AM
Yes, Spike, my thought exactly. God bless you.
Al Adab| 12.31.12 @ 8:20AM
One thing we know, His kingdom will endure with or without our personal or governmental support. He judges the nations and while they, our kingdoms, may fall, His remains eternal for it is not of this world.
Brooksie: Those issues are symptomatic of the larger issue.
May all of you have a wonderful, prosperous New Year while pursuing much happiness.
Drunken Sailor| 12.31.12 @ 10:50AM
Same to you Al! Here's hoping much good fortune and fine aged Scotch find it's way into your presence.
CJW| 12.31.12 @ 1:22PM
DS and Al
Happy New Year
Drunken Sailor| 12.31.12 @ 1:41PM
And to you and all my other compatriots at this site. Especially the banned ones.
Bring back TLP
Al Adab| 12.31.12 @ 1:56PM
No more contest?
D/S: When the fireworks wake me at midnight, perhaps I'll pour a small scotch and lift a glass to you. Prospero anno nuevo.
Drunken Sailor| 12.31.12 @ 2:14PM
And a prosperous new year to you and your's.
Tina B| 1.2.13 @ 10:40AM
Al, you, and your wise counsel, were one of the first who drew me here a couple of years ago. The Lord be with you, and yours, in this new year and always.
Appleby| 12.31.12 @ 8:58AM
The problem with those who claim religion is So Yesterday is that they habitually poll only people between the ages of 18-24, who are, they believe the Only People Who Count. The first time one of these looks into a bassinette and sees his or her firstborn child, that "We Are Secular" poll number clicks down by one.
PJ| 12.31.12 @ 9:19AM
Absolutely agree with you. I know of a few people who found organized religion when their 1st child was born.
It would be interesting to find out what about those individuals who choose not to marry &/or shack up & never have a child. Do they also find religion? I think you seem to have, but are you typical or atypical?
BTW: Happy Blessed New Year!
Appleby| 12.31.12 @ 9:25AM
I spent five years trying to adopt a child or children. The last year, when a girl from our law office actually came through the office begging someone to adopt two little girls whose mother had run off with a salesman and whose father was suicidal, the director of the State adoption centre said that because I'd lived in several different states, I PROBABLY HAD OUTSTANDING FEDERAL WARRANTS AGAINST ME. My two nephews (aged 7 and 11), whom I had been helping to rear, wanted to write her letters telling her where she got off, but at that time I accepted the fact that God had other plans for me. So in a way, despite my not having my own children, I found God again through them. I often wonder what happened to those two litle girls. I hope they found Ozzie and Hariett who'd never lived outside the State of Georgia to adopt them.
SUBVET| 12.31.12 @ 11:29AM
Applequeen...........no answer to Matthew 6:14-15
Appleby| 12.31.12 @ 2:07PM
I agree with it. However, forgiveness is not an UNDO button, any more than abortion is. Once upon a time a little boy took a hammer and a box of nails and pounded the nails into his mother's antique coffee table. When Mother yelled at him and spanked him, Junior went in and pulled out all the nails. "I pulled out the nails, Mommy," he said proudly. "Good for you," said Mommy. "Now go pull out the holes."
SUBVET| 1.1.13 @ 11:59AM
Appleby.....you missed the point, Jesus gives a startling warning about forgiveness: if we refuse to forgive others, God will also refuse to forgive us.
Whenever we ask God to forgive us for sin, we should ask ourselves, "Have I forgiven the people who have wronged me ?'
If my memory serves me TLP apologized for his comment to you openly here on TAS. When are you going to be a big girl and reciprocate.
Those here at TAS understand TLP's passion and somtimes he uses terms and words to get his point across that may come off a..... little off "color".
As vetern's in the heat of the battle we sometimes try to carry the flag so high that we often forget that not everyone has the same focus.
My prayer for you is that you find it in your heart to forgive a passionate worrier like TLP.
McClain | 12.31.12 @ 9:56AM
The difference between the Creator, pre-atonement and post-atonement is somewhat like the difference between the Great and Terrible OZ, and the kindly old man behind the curtain.
God created man, and by extension all of us, to have a personal relationship with Him, an intimate personal relationship of the sort lifelong friends or spouses (should) enjoy.
The secularists will never know the man behind the curtain because they're obsessed with disproving the existence of the Great and Terrible OZ.
When the curtain falls on the final act of our human drama, I will face the man behind the curtain and be forgiven. The secularists who spent their lives largely attempting to ridicule the Great and Terrible OZ will find themselves standing before the One they never believed existed--or if agnostic, didn't know existed, and even if He does exist, want nothing to do with him.
For the Christian, we have no past, but the a-theist has no future. For them, this is all there is, so expect them to revel in every perceived "victory" over "religion" and allow them to bask in their presumed intellectual superiority.
Appleby| 12.31.12 @ 10:22AM
Well said!
SUBVET| 12.31.12 @ 11:37AM
Appleby...........christian you say you are, if you think TLP has wronged you maybe you need to forgive him "openly".
"For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins". Matthew 6:14-15
Free....TLP
CJW| 12.31.12 @ 1:21PM
I thought TLP did apologize.
Free TLP
Appleby| 12.31.12 @ 2:11PM
If he did apologize, I never saw it. And remember, the Pope forgave the man who tried to assassinate him, but he did not declare him Not Guilty nor did he instruct the jailers to let him go free.
CJW| 12.31.12 @ 3:25PM
So you equate political hyperbole on an anonymous internet site with the KGB/Bulgarians conspiring in the shooting of the Pope and nearly causing his death... You are one pompous Canadian... Sounds like you asked AmSpec to ban TLP?
SUBVET| 1.1.13 @ 12:04PM
See my comment above.........your answer troubles me.....the Lord set us free are you larger than HIM.
J.C.Eaton| 12.31.12 @ 11:27AM
Whenever I come across one of the "God is Dead", or some less Draconian variation, I think of Matthew:"Thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hell will not prevail against It."Bring it on Satan.
C. Vernon Crisler | 12.31.12 @ 12:04PM
"77 percent identifying with Christianity"
And yet we still get Obama and socialism. Wasn't it Martin Luther who said he'd rather be governed by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian?
PJ| 12.31.12 @ 1:56PM
Evil has a way of slyly slipping in when no one is watching.
deedle| 12.31.12 @ 2:35PM
C.V.C. those that voted are the Uninformed. Don't have a clue about what is going on!
Seapuss| 12.31.12 @ 12:28PM
Many liberals claim to despise religion, but they actually practice one. Their religion is called Equality Worship (a/k/a Radical Egalitarianism).
If you want to see into the heart of a liberal, read 1 Kings 3:16-28. The liberal is the one who says, "Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it." She is the one who lies, cheats, steals, and is willing to kill for the sake of equality.
The lesson of the Judgment of Solomon is that the desire for equality is perverse and sick, and seeking to have equality enforced by the sword of government is the height of tyranny and injustice.
Dimitry_Aleksandrovich| 12.31.12 @ 1:00PM
I don't think there can be any doubts that in many parts of the United States we are seeing a "Post Christian America". That's not to say that in places like the San Francisco Bay Area you won't find thriving and growing evangelical congregations or committed Roman Catholics who pray the rosary every day or a Russian Orthodox Cathedral where pilgrims regularly come to see the remains of St. John Maximovich and pray he intercedes before God on their behalf. Yes you can find all of these in and around San Francisco, but my assertion that this region is Post Christian means the political and cultural elite of this region are militantly Post Christian and it is extremely difficult to maintain or grow a Christian society in such a secular environment. Of course Rome was not a Christian environment when Christianity spread there, but in Rome there were Christians martyred for their faith and martyrdom most assuredly will plant the seeds of faith for future generations. The same could be said of Russian Christians martyred by the Soviets. To this day more Churches are rebuilt and built from the ground in Russia and more and more Russians are embracing the great Orthodox faith or their ancestors.
The greatest threat to Christianity is not violent persecution but rather the acceptance by Christians of the worldly, materialistic, anti-Christian society around them.
PJ| 12.31.12 @ 2:01PM
" To this day more Churches are rebuilt and built from the ground in Russia and more and more Russians are embracing the great Orthodox faith or their ancestors."
Where did you hear that? I was led the impression that they were also having a Christian decline except for a few places in Siberia.
Dimitry_Aleksandrovich| 12.31.12 @ 8:04PM
Under the communists churches and monasteries were destroyed or worse turned into museums of atheism or even Soviet police stations. Now many of those churches have been rebuilt or restored and the Russian Orthodox church is once again visable in the hospitals, the orphanages and the military. Many Russian intellectuals, academics, scientists even generals and high level politicians have embraced Orthodoxy. The faith is far from ded in Russia. In the past two decades it has experienced a rebirth. Without Orthodoxy there is no Russia.
Petronius| 12.31.12 @ 1:06PM
The so called atheists really don't give a rat's rear about who believes what. They already have open ended (?) license to fornicate. They bitch at Christians because they don't want the stigma. The only thing that makes a person civilized is Self control. If you want to be known as that, exercise some of it. The Holy See will never repeal the Commandments they don't like. And they can't be stopped from sinning. But I'm damned sick and tired of paying the bill for the results of Their behavior.
Dave Williams| 12.31.12 @ 1:46PM
Happy New Year to all you true believers, and here's something for you to mull over:
"Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: 'My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly. That stranger is a theologian." -- Denis Diderot
You're all probably nice people (although I'm sure this post will probably get some pretty nasty comments), and I hope you see your way this year to disregard your knee-jerk reliance on the Bronze Age folk tales of goatherds.
Appleby| 12.31.12 @ 2:13PM
Dave, you're not the guy who used to play hockey for the Toronto Maple Leafs, are you? Sorry your team will never win another Stanley Cup until all those who won the last one (in 1967) are dead.
dominic1955| 12.31.12 @ 2:14PM
Well, boys, I guess we pack up all the bibles and Tammy Fae Baker records and send them off to the burn pile. Davie here said our religion is just knee-jerk reliance on goatherd folk tales and since he's one a them edjuhmakated folk, he must'a been sure as shootin', ooh-wee!
Al Adab| 12.31.12 @ 2:38PM
Well Dave, Diderot? We know how well the French revolution turned out. That aside, Christ (BPOH) lived during the early Roman Empire and Mohammad (BPOH) died in 632. Hardly bronze age. Happy new year to you nonetheless.
Pecos Pete| 12.31.12 @ 2:39PM
Oh boy! I sure wish Tim was here to comment on this one.
BBT!
RonRonDoRon| 1.1.13 @ 3:48PM
Diderot should have tried constructing an analogy based on something that he actually knew something about. A person trying to find his way through a forest at night using a candle would see his way better by blowing out the candle and restoring his night vision.
McClain | 12.31.12 @ 2:44PM
//[T]he United Methodist Church's......uniquely global membership includes surging African churches that flexed their muscle at this year’s governing General Conference by effectively tabling efforts to liberalize on marriage and sex. ]//
This should enlighten (if that's ever possible) leftists who assume Christianity is a "white man's" religion. Across the globe, whites are a distinct minority among Christians.
McClain | 12.31.12 @ 2:48PM
As I told my children, if secularists attack you, they attacked Yeshua before you. And he said that if you deny him before men, He will deny you before the Father.
On the other hand, when the secularists pat you on the back and sing your praises..... stop whatever it is you're doing and flee.
McClain | 12.31.12 @ 2:48PM
As I told my children, if secularists attack you, they attacked Yeshua before you. And he said that if you deny him before men, He will deny you before the Father.
On the other hand, when the secularists pat you on the back and sing your praises..... stop whatever it is you're doing and flee.
axbucxdu| 12.31.12 @ 9:34PM
"...The Obama campaign, after having courted Evangelicals in 2008, largely ignored them in 2012, realizing they could win without them."
Can any of the once intrepid journalists at TAS, perhaps Bethell or RET himself, explain how this alien interloper won, without the help of this group and that? I don't personally know anyone that will admit they voted for this moron, but there, right as rain, there he is. How? Do they still award Pulitzer's?
Mnestheus| 1.2.13 @ 2:17AM
Among the highlights Mark neglected:
In 1965, there were 58,000 catholic priests in the United States . Today they number less than 38,000,
In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained in the United States. In 2002, the number was 450.
Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700. Two-thirds of the 600 seminaries operating in 1965 have now closed.
In 1965, there were 179,954 women in Catholic religious orders. By 2002, that had fallen to 75,000,with an average age of 68.
in 2005 it was 68,634 and the average age of a Catholic nun is today 68.
In 1965, 3,559 young men were studying to become Jesuits. In 2000, the figure was 389.
In 1965, there were 912 seminarians in the Christian Brothers. In 2000, there were only 7.
The number of young men studying to become Franciscan and Redemptorist priests fell from 3,379 in 1965 to 84 in 2000.
Almost half of all Catholic high schools in the United States have closed since 1965.
In 1958, a Gallup Poll reported that 74% of Catholics then attended church on Sundays.
In 2000, the rate was 25%,
KS| 1.2.13 @ 9:34AM
Mnestheus, I'm not disputing your statistics, but what is your source?