As a scholar, he’s charted the decline in religion. Now the church he pastors is closing its doors

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

As a scholar, he’s charted the decline in religion. Now the ******* he pastors is closing its doors

They plan to gather one last time on Sunday — the handful of mostly elderly members of First ******** ******* in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

They’ll say the Lord’s Prayer, recite the Apostle’s Creed and hear a biblical passage typically used at funerals, “To everything there is a season … a time to be born, and a time to ****.” They’ll sing classic hymns — “Amazing Grace,” “It Is Well With My Soul” and, poignantly, “**** Be With You Till We Meet Again.”

Afterward, members are scheduled to vote to close the *******, a century and a half after it was created by hardscrabble farmers in this southern Illinois community of about 14,000 people.

Many U.S. churches close their doors each year, typically with little attention. But this closure has a poignant twist.

First ********’s pastor, Ryan Burge, spends much of his time as a researcher documenting the dramatic decline in religious affiliation in recent decades. His recent book, “The Nones,” talks about the estimated 30% of ********* adults who

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

He uses his research in part to help other pastors seeking to reach their communities, and he’s often invited to fly around the country and speak to audiences much larger than his weekly congregation.

But it’s no academic abstraction. Burge has witnessed the reality of his research every Sunday morning in the increasingly empty pews of the spacious sanctuary, which was built for hundreds in the peak churchgoing years of the mid-20th century.

“It’s this odd thing, where I’ve become somewhat of an expert on ******* growth, and yet my ******* is dying,” said Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University. “A lot of what I do is trying to figure out how much I am to blame for what’s happened around me.”

Burge started leading the congregation in 2006, when “there were about 50 people on a good Sunday,” he recalled. In the years since, he’s earned his doctorate and begun working as a professor. He’s gained a wide online and print readership, in part by converting dense statistical tables into easy-to-comprehend graphics on religious trends.

All this time, he’s continued to pastor the small *******.

“I’m willing to admit that I’m not as good as I could be or should be” as a pastor, he said. “But I’m also not willing to admit that it’s 100% my fault. If you look at the macro level trends happening in modern ********* religion, it’s hard to grow a ******* in America today, regardless of what your denomination is. And a lot of places have way more headwinds than tailwinds.”

The *******’s ********* ******** denomination is part of a cluster of so-called mainline denominations — Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran and others that were once central in their communities but have been dramatically shrinking in numbers. The nation’s largest evangelical denomination, the Southern ******** Convention, has also been losing members.

While there’s no annual census of U.S. ******* closures, about 4,500 *********** churches closed in 2019, according to the Southern ********-affiliated Lifeway Research.

Scholars say churches dwindle for various reasons — scandal, conflict, mobility, indifference, lower birth rates, members shifting to a ******* they like better. To be sure, most Americans remain religious, and some larger churches are thriving while many smaller ones dwindle. Some surveys suggest that the long rise of the “nones” has slowed or paused.

But the nonreligious are far more common today than a generation ago, in the U.S. and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

“If Billy Graham would have been born in 1975 instead of 1918, I don’t think he would have been as successful, because he

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

right as the baby ***** was taking off and America was really hungry for religion,” Burge said.

Things are particularly challenging where communities are shrinking, such as the Rust Belt and rural areas.

Burge hopes his research, and his personal experience, can offer some consolation to other pastors in similar circumstances.

“This is not all your fault,” he said. “You know, in the 1950s, you could be a terrible pastor and probably grow a ******* because there just was so much growth happening all across America. Now it doesn’t look like that anymore.”

Gail Farnham, 80, has seen that trajectory of ******* life first-hand.

Her family began attending First ******** ******* when she was 5. Her parents quickly got involved as volunteers and “never looked back,” she recalled. Like many ********* families in the ’50s, they joined during the booming rise in ******* involvement. First ******** peaked at about 670 members by mid-century, leading to the construction of a large new sanctuary and a suite of Sunday School classrooms.

Farnham went on to raise her own children in the *******, and as the congregation’s moderator, she still holds a top leadership role.

First ******** has had its share of schisms and controversies in the past, but it largely followed the typical arc of many *********** churches, thriving in the 1950s and only gradually losing sustainability. Last Sunday, eight worshippers attended.

The remaining, primarily older members, found a new mission in recent years despite the uncertain future. They joined a program to provide bag lunches for needy schoolchildren. At one point they were providing 300 meals per week.

The closure is “bittersweet,” Farnham said.

“It’s something we’ve seen coming,” she said. ”It’s not a surprise. We’re thankful we’ve been able to serve and meet a need in the community. We turned from being a ******* saying, ”Oh me, oh my, what are we going to do?’ to being a ******* that said, ‘We’re going to serve as long as we can with the best we can.”

Now everyone, Burge included, will be looking for a new *******. “I have been preaching every Sunday since August of 2005 and I need to be a member of a ******* for a while, not up front,” he said.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#scholar #hes #charted #decline #religion #******* #pastors #closing #doors

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up