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The Great Religion Singularity: McLaren’s Reflections on Howard’s Research

by Darren M. Slade, PhD

Editor’s Note: This article is a review of Brian McLaren’s “Conditions for the Great Religion Singularity,” which in turn is a review of Ken Howard’s research paper, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity.” We almost titled this blog post, “The Church’s Frightmare,” given the coincidence (if you believe in such things) that it would post on Halloween and the fact that the death of institutional Christianity can be a scary thing for we who are its adherents to consider. Indeed, after reading the original article, one clergy colleague quipped, “I’m so glad I’m retiring this year: this is just depressing and scary.”

You’ve heard of the “Great Schism.”

You’ve heard of the “Great Awakening.”

You’ve heard of the “Great Emergence.”

And now, the church has entered a new era of
dramatic destabilization and deinstitutionalization…

THE GREAT RELIGION SINGULARITY

Can you imagine the death of Christianity? Can you imagine a world without the Christian Church? For many anthropologists, the death of Christianity is merely an eventuality like it has been for most human religions throughout time. 1

But for many believers, the death of Christianity is an impossibility. They are incapable of imaging the total annihilation of the Christian Church. And why not? New research suggests that the human brain is quite literally incapable of imagining (or even preparing for) its own death and annihilation, though it can easily conceive of other people’s demise.2 So, the death of something as integral to one’s identity as religion is likely to be just as hard to imagine. Yet, this may prove extremely problematic for the Christian religion, especially since the Pew Forum just announced that Christianity is still in rapid decline while religious “nones” are quickly increasing.3

If things continue unchanged and unchallenged, then the death of institutional Christianity is precisely what will happen. And believers won’t have to imagine it. They will be forced to live through it. 

Brian McLaren, Author/Speaker/Activist

Since the publication of Kenneth Howard’s 2017 article, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity,” there has been an increasing demand to understand the root causes and historical foundations for why institutional Christianity is, in a word, dying.4 What Howard’s research indicates is that the percentage increase of new Christian denominations and worship centers is actually outpacing the plateaued percentage of Christian believers around the world. The inference being that churches and denominations are fragmenting (i.e. internally dividing due to conflict or other factors) faster than they are growing.5 At its current rate of disintegration, institutional Christianity will have fragmented itself into near extinction by the end of the twenty-first century, having been reduced to miniscule and, thus, financially unsustainable and culturally uninfluential congregational tribes (the “religion singularity”). 6

Activist and author, Brian McLaren, has termed this era, “The Great Religion Singularity,” in his 2019 article, “Conditions for the Great Religion Singularity,” which provides a contextual explanation for why the demise of Christianity is directly linked to the Church’s moral failures.7

Here, McLaren employs the Buddhist “law of interdependent origination” to discuss ten factors that have led to institutional Christianity’s religion singularity. Each condition falls under two main categories: either a lack of rapid adaptability in religious institutions or the moral failure of institutional leaders. The ten conditional factors include authoritarian centralization, betrayal of the religious founder’s non-violence, a history of unacknowledged atrocities, military imperialism, white supremacy, scandals, reaction against scientific inquiry, doubling down on dualism, integrated and change-averse institutional systems, and paralysis and nostalgia.

These factors in large part reveal that it would be hypocritical for present-day Christians to be judgmental toward others. According to Ron Sider’s research, by most traditional Christian indicators of immorality – such as divorce, premarital sex, adultery, and self-centered materialism – “born again Christians” are no better than the general population, and more likely to express racial bias and spousal abuse than the average American.8   Sider’s findings are confirmed by PPRI’s more recent releases of the American Values Atlas, which finds significant numbers of conservative white evangelicals holding racial stereotypes of African Americans9 and denying that white nationalism is problematic. 10 As McLaren writes, the moral failure of Christians and Christians leaders “has made claims of one religion’s spiritual supremacy over others literally incredible and ethically reprehensible.”11  

To read McLaren’s full article on “The Great Religion Singularity” in Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, click here or on the image below:

To read download and read the full article on “The Religion Singularity” in International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society, click here or on the image below:

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Darren Slade is research director for FaithX and general editor of Socio-Historical Exploration of Religion and Ministry. Darren curates relevant research for the FaithXperimental blog and the FaithX website.

1 See for example, Jack David Eller, “Is the Disintegration of Christianity a Problem—or Even a Surprise?,” Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry 1, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 29-38, https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2019.vol1.no1.04.

2 Y. Dor-Ziderman, A. Lutz, and A. Goldstein, “Prediction-Based Neural Mechanisms for Shielding the Self from Existential Threat,” NeuroImage 202 (August 2019): 116080, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116080.

3 “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.”

4 See for example, Darren M. Slade, “Religious Homophily and Biblicism: A Theory of Conservative Church Fragmentation,” The International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society 9, no. 1 (2019): 13‒28, http://dx.doi.org/10.18848/2154-8633/cgp/v09i01/13-28.

5 Cf. C. Kirk Hadaway, “Is Evangelistic Activity Related to Church Growth?,” in Church and Denominational Growth, ed. David A. Roozen and C. Kirk Hadaway (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1993), 169‒87.

6 Kenneth W. Howard, “The Religion Singularity: A Demographic Crisis Destabilizing and Transforming Institutional Christianity,” International Journal of Religion and Spirituality in Society 7, no. 2 (2017): 77‒93, http://dx.doi.org/10.18848/2154-8633/cgp/v07i02/77-93.

7 Brian D. McLaren, “Conditions for the Great Religion Singularity,” Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry 1, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 40‒49, https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2019.vol1.no1.05.

8 Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 27‒28.

9 See the statistics in Robert P. Jones, Daniel Cox, and Rachel Lienesch, Who Sees Discrimination? Attitudes on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Race, and Immigration Status: Findings from PRRI’s American Values Atlas (Washington, DC: PRRI, 2017), accessed April 5, 2018, https://www.prri.org/research/americans-views-discrimination-immigrants-blacks-lgbt-sex-marriage-immigration-reform/; Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, 24‒26; Christian Smith, Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 209‒12, 221‒22; Douglas R. Sharp, “Evangelicals, Racism, and the Limits of Social Science Research,” Christian Scholar’s Review 33, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 240‒45; and Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, Pbk. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. 69‒91.

10  See the statistics in Robert P. Jones, Natalie Jackson, Diana Orces, Ian Huff, Oyindamola Bola, and Daniel Greenberg, Fractured Nation: Widening Partisan Polarization and Key Issues In 2020 Presidential Elections: Findings from PRRI’s American Values Atlas (Washington, DC: PRRI, 2019), accessed October, 2019, https://www.prri.org/research/fractured-nation-widening-partisan-polarization-and-key-issues-in-2020-presidential-elections/.

11 McLaren, “Conditions for the Great Religion Singularity,” 41.

FaithX Research – Vital Congregations Report 2018 just released

FaithX follows research relevant to those experimenting with new ways of organizing and being faith communities. When we find relevant research, we curate it here on the FaithXperimental blog and provide a link to download the full publication. We also post it on the Research section of the FaithX website.

The latest research of interest is the Vital Congregations Report – 2018, authored by Linda Bobbitt and published by the Congregational Vitality Project of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Here is the research abstract:

What does a congregation mean when they describe themselves as spiritually vital? How does a congregation become vital? What is the relationship between vitality and sustainability? Does the answer depend on the faith tradition? This study asked leaders from 10 different faith traditions to answer these questions. We found remarkable similarities across all traditions while also discovering the unique perspectives of each. Their answers illustrate distinct understandings about the way people interact with God and different perspectives of God’s promise of hope for the world.

Click here to download the Congregational Vitality Report and explore these answers.

[Read more…]

Give or Take: A Practical Real-World Experiment – and You’re Invited

by Ken Howard

I’m planning a real-world experiment in the social impact of giving and taking, and I’d like to invite your participation.

30 years ago, I designed a structured group experience to test a two-part hypothesis:

Part A: There are three kinds of people in world (I’m not the first to make this observation):

  1. Givers: People who give without thought of getting.
  2. Takers: People who take without thought of giving.
  3. Exchangers: People who are willing to give, but only if they get equal value in return.

Part B: It is better to give, than to take…or exchange. Not just better for the soul, but actually more productive.

The structured experience was called Stock Exchange. It involved dividing a large group of people into teams, giving them a task to complete, and inviting them to attempt to complete the task successfully in three successive rounds with different instructions on how the teams were to behave toward each other.

The task was simple: gather a specified number of four different colors of poker chips, knowing that the facilitator had distributed to the groups exactly the number of poker chips for all groups to succeed (though not in the amounts each group needed).

The instructions for the three rounds were also very simple:

Round 1 – Taking: Groups were instructed to look out only for themselves. They could ask for, beg for, or steal the chips they needed from the other groups, but could not give or exchange chips. (Do unto others before they do unto you.)

Round 2 – Exchanging: Groups were now allowed to make quid-pro-quo exchanges with other groups. They could only give as many chips as they got. (Do unto others exactly what they do unto you.)

Round 3 – Giving: Groups were instructed to look out not for themselves but for every other group. They were to gather up all the chips of each color of which they had an excess and distribute them to groups with shortages of those color chips. (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.)

Over 100’s of uses, the results of the three rounds have always seemed to follow this pattern:

Round 1: Taking – Everybody Loses: Resource inequalities develop rapidly. Because groups hoard their resources, every group ends up with a glut of one or two chip colors, but a dearth of all the others.

Round 2: Exchanging – Most Everybody Loses: Occasionally a group will succeed in the task but mostly none do, since quid-pro-quo exchanges cannot succeed in addressing resource inequalities.

Round 3: Giving – Everybody Wins: Because every group has every other group looking out for them, hoarding stops, resource inequalities are addressed, and all succeed.

But now I’d like to get a more scientific read on my hypothesis…and I’d like your help.

It’ll be easy as 1-2-3. All you have to do is:

  1. Click here to download Stock Exchange.
  2. Try it in your organization.
  3. Send me the result using the form below.

When I publish the results, you and your organization will be listed in the acknowledgement!

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Give or Take Experiment Report Form

  • Thank you for participating in our Give and Take Experiment. Please use this form to submit your results.
 

Verification

14 Facts About Church Starts

fact

By Ken Howard

In yesterday’s post, I identified seven common myths about church plants and church planting and did a little myth busting.

Today I’m going to go the other direction. I want to share with you 14 Facts about church planting.

While I made an editorial decision not to clutter up the narrative with data and sources, please rest assured that all of the statements of fact in this series based on solid research from a variety of sources. I will provide the sources on request.

FACT #1 – Church plants tend to show more vitality than other churches. Church plants tend to have above average levels of vitality: higher percentages of attenders valuing the outreach emphasis of the church, higher percentages of attenders inviting others to church, and higher levels of belonging and commitment to the vision and directions of the church.

FACT #2 – Church plants tend to be more effective at outreach. Church plants have a greater percentage of newcomers than churches engaged in street evangelism, churches conducting “seeker” services for the unchurched, churches conducting mission activities at schools, and churches offering social services such as training or support programs.

FACT #3 – Church plants tend to be more effective in reaching newcomers to church life.  Church plants reach a significantly higher percentage of newcomers to church life (i.e., the unchurched) than churches generally.

FACT #4 – Church plants tend to more effective reach younger people. Attendees at church plants tend to be significantly younger than churches generally.

FACT #5 – Church plants are more likely to reach more non-Whites and non-Anglos. Church plants have a higher percentage of non-white and non-English speakers than most established churches. (Obviously, historically black churches, multi-cultural churches, and language-specific churches are exceptions.)

FACT #6 – Church plants are more likely to grow. Churches grow faster in their first five years than any other time in their lifecycle. Over time the difference tends to decrease, as the church plant grows more established, though it can be maintained to some degree if the aging church plant intentionally works to maintain the qualities it had in its youth. Of course, this means that established churches can work to maintain those same qualities.

FACT #7 –Church plants may be the only strategy with the growth capacity to reverse the decline in TEC membership. It almost goes without saying that The Episcopal Church has declined drastically since WWII: a nearly 40% drop in membership, which resulted in the closure of more than 400 established churches. Meanwhile, of the 99 new churches planted in the same period, 69 survive (a 70% success ratio – better than business startups.), with an average Sunday attendance (ASA) of 95. Even more impressive, the ASA of top 10% of the churches planted in that period is 359. TEC’s most recent study of church growth show that more than 50% of church plants were growing vs. less than 20% of those established for more than 100 years.

FACT #8 – Church plants are good for their dioceses. Church plants tend to serve as their dioceses’ R&D departments. They are much more willing to experiment than established churches. They tend to do what the business startup entrepreneurs call Rapid Prototyping (or RP). Think Big – Start Small – Learn Fast (Repeat PRN). Sure much of what we try doesn’t work and what does may have to be tweaked a lot before it works really well. Most importantly, we are less resistant than established church to let things that don’t work die. In fact, my congregation calls it Rapid Iteration Prototyping (or RIP) to remind ourselves that it’s a good idea to let bad ideas die. It’s not that established couldn’t do this kind of experimental thinking – I wish that more of them did – perhaps they just feel they have too much too lose.

FACT #9 – Church plants are good for the established churches around them. It works like this: new church attracts attention. People check it out because it’s new. No church is “one size fits all,” so not everybody finds the new church to be the best fit for them. They may want high church, low church, broad church, want a large church in which they can disappear into the pews. Or the may just not have the energy needed to set up church in a school auditorium every Sunday. Whatever the reason, if there is a good relationship between the church plant and the established churches around it, one of them will benefit. There is almost always a net positive flow (as much as 2:1) from church plants to the established churches surrounding them.

FACT #10 – Church plants are good for the established churches that plant them. Established churches currently involved in the planting of other congregations experience a significantly higher growth rate (more than 10%) than churches generally. Apparently, having children is good for you.

FACT #11 – Church plants tend to be more nimble and adaptable to change. Why? They have to be. They are running lean. They don’t have the luxury of continuing to do something that is no longer working.

Fact #12 – Church plants tend to be more vision guided, mission focused, and purpose driven. Leaders of church startups can not afford to be complacent. The must constantly as themselves why are we here, what are we trying to achieve, and what are the best ways to get there?

Fact #13 – Church plants tend to be more context sensitive and context responsive. As above, they have to be aware of and responsive to their contexts simply to survive. And the same thing that enables them survive also enables them thrive.

Fact #14 – Church plants are more risky but also more rewarding. It’s true. Church plants are inherently more risky than established churches, but only in the short-term. About 30% fail in their first 10 years. But the ones that survive their first 10 years are healthier than established churches in almost every respect. Meanwhile, the long-term rate at which we are closing established churches is much higher. Church planting is an investment in the future of our church. And as any investor will tell you, you can’t eliminate risk without also eliminating reward.

Conclusions

There were actually more than 14 facts about church plants that I could have shared with you. But I’ve got to get back to my day job (leading a mature church startup).

Clearly, church planting is not only a good for the plant itself, but also the established congregations who support it, the dioceses that engage in it, and TEC . I leave it to you to do the cost benefit analysis to decide whether the amount of funding resolution D005 proposes is worth it.

Some of you may think I am a one-trick-pony: that I’m a “church planting or bust” kind of guy. But I’m not against established churches at all. I care about established churches as much as anyone. Many of them are vital and healthy. Many of them grow. But many of them aren’t and many of them don’t. I’m not saying that established churches are bad or can’t be healthy or can’t grow. I’m only saying that if more of them acted like church plants, they’d be a lot healthier and we’d have a lot more growth in our church.

And a Parting Question

I end with this question: If church planting is as effective as it seems, why is it that church planting continues to attract either criticism or passive indifference from our denomination (and others)? Have we lost our passion for the Gospel? Have we lost our dream of the kingdom of God? Have we lost our courage to follow God’s dream?

Note: This article is based on research gathered by a number of people: Kirk Hadaway, Frank Logue, Susan Snook, myself, and others.

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