In 1970, 92% of Americans said they believed in God. We have always been a religious nation, having been settled by refugees, many trying to escape persecution in the nations they came from. The American Frontier was tamed by the Church, which battled with the saloon for the soul of the people taking the nation.

There were reasons Americans believed in God in 1970. We had been embroiled in a Cold War against Communism since 1950, and many had come to believe the nation was on the Eve of Destruction. Moreover, the Jesus Revolution was in full force in 1970. The Baby Boomers may have rejected the cultural values of their parents, but they kept some if their religious ones.

By 2018, the Jesus Movement was a distant memory, psychiatry and self help had taken the place of prayer, and belief in God was down to 65%. What’s more those who knew they were agnostics, atheists and nones had gone from 17% to 26%. Ominously, belief in God had stratified, with each generation becoming less and less interested in God and less and less likely to go to Church.

Before Covid, 45% went to Church monthly, but we know that only 17.7% are attending on Sundays in 2022. 34% of Americans never go to Church. 33% of those born after 2000 have no religious affiliation, and only 8% attend church regularly.

The church in America is dying. 40% of Catholics have considered leaving their faith in the last three years, primarily because of the priest sex abuse scandal. The Christian Church is booming in South America, Africa and Asia, and Christians from those regions are now sending missionaries to the United States.

Anecdotally, as a convert to Christianity in 1971, members of my booming Protestant Church routinely gathered together twice a week, and members seldom missed a service. Two of my children continue at the same Church, now a third the size of what it was in the 1980s. They attend Church twice a month. Their children attend less often, and have little interest in greater involvement with the Church. The pattern is obvious and disappointing.

Knowing that the bottom is falling out, what is the Church doing to continue to be viable 50 years from now? Aside from the moral crisis which has afflicted the entire Church (Catholic and Protestant) this Century, what factors are killing the Church, and how can they be reversed.