Some might draw that conclusion looking at data from the 2023 census.

Reporting the results, one media headline said, "More than half the population has no religion".

It went on saying that the proportion of people with ‘no religion' has increased from 48.2 per cent in 2018 to 51.6 per cent in 2023.

So that's 2,576,049 people who claim no adherence to religious faith.

The number of people who identified as Christian (NZ's largest ‘faith' grouping), supposedly dropped from 36.5 per cent in 2018 to 32.3 per cent in 2023.

The Covid effect

During the Covid period, government implemented lockdowns, then mandatory vaccine passes for attending church services - alternatively limiting attendances to 50 people. It created considerable attrition.

A roll-on effect remains evident. Former church attendees found smaller, informal gatherings to their liking, never making their way back to corporate denominational worship centres.

Of course that preference wouldn't necessarily show up in a census as a retraction of faith, but it could account for people stating they'd left an organised expression of Christian faith.

The census ‘revelations' surprised me.

From where I sit, in many contexts I see churches letting their light shine and growing - though an imperfect work in progress, the true Church in its broadest sense remains bigger and more dimensional than any census could ever accurately disclose.

Many of us for example, aren't aware of numerous hui throughout the motu where faithful Maori believers worship Ihu Karaiti (Jesus Christ).

Not to mention the generation of spiritually hungry young people embracing authentic Christianity for truthful answers to the hopeless vacuous secular humanism that's rife today.

The future

I see a significant future for the Church. I understand people claiming zero interest in religion.

An important distinction sets true Christianity apart - Jesus did not come to inaugurate a religion. He is God's provision to save humanity from its lost sinful state. Continue reading

• Murray Smith is a journalist for Cambridge News

Earthquake-prone churches are common and so are smaller congregations.

Declining attendance

The most recent data on religious affiliation from the 2018 census shows 48.2 percent of us have no religion.

The "nones" group is growing: the 2013 census says 41.9 percent reported "no religion", while in 2001, the census found 29.6 percent said they had no religion.

These figures are borne out by the 2019 New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study. It found about 14.4 percent of New Zealanders attended church at least monthly, compared to 20-25 percent in 2009.

Religious historian Peter Lineham says some faiths are coming together to share facilities.

But he doesn't think the decline from 20-25 percent to 14.4 percent is correct.

Church attendance has been "relatively steady, but relatively ageing - and that's been going on since the 1980s" he observes. While New Zealand's traditional Protestant Church congregations are declining, it's mostly because of the ageing congregations and the numbers not replenishing.

However, it's hard to "get a fix" on how active the more contemporary churches, like the Pentecostals, really are.

That's because we see some massive examples of the 'mega churches' and we know a lot of the children and grandchildren of Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians are probably going to a Pentecostal church.

Migrant populations

Ethnic makeups of various church congregations have changed, Lineham says.

The arrival of Filipino and the extraordinary role the church plays in their community means Catholic churches - especially those near hospitals and in the north of the North Island - are bursting at the seams.

He says Filipinos and other new migrants are filling Catholic pews, but that Pakeha attendance probably follows similar patterns as other traditional churches in New Zealand.

"No other congregations have quite the advantage of the Catholics of being a world-wide Church so that new migrants get picked up" he says.

He's also noticed the presence of Indians and Africans in the Anglican churches. There's a big Korean presence in Presbyterian churches as well as Pasifika populations - the latter are also highly visible in Methodist congregations he says.

Joining forces

Big denomination mergers began in the 1970s with the Uniting Churches.

These churches still exist, but they are facing a crisis now as most of them involved small country churches or churches in new suburbs joining together, Lineham says.

He thinks most country churches will probably close unless they're being preserved for historic reasons and, longer term, most religions will focus on the bigger towns.

Church assets - like valuable land - are being held close. People don't want to sell those assets to help other denominations.

The assets are being released, but very slowly.

However, the Royal Commission into Abuse in Church and State Care has led to assets already being sold to pay compensation.

Some churches are already selling assets for this purpose. The Catholic Church is paying up to $50,000 to victims. The Anglican Church, $100,000.

Overall it seems that costs are up, congregations are changing and the future looks somewhat challenging.

Source

• RNZ

More and more people aren't answering surveys, either by phone or online. Reaching a small minority population like Latter-day Saints is notoriously difficult.

So they resurrected an old-school methodology — sending 80,000 physical postcards to randomly selected households in the Mormon Corridor — and supplemented with targeted Facebook ads to a Utah audience.

Both methods led respondents to take an online survey that was then weighted to be representative of the LDS population.

After they removed late and invalid responses, they had a sample of 2,625 current and 1,183 former Latter-day Saints.

Our Zoom interview about their findings has been edited for length and clarity.

1. Former LDS Church members are more likely to be LGBTQ.

In the survey, only four percent of current members identified as LGBTQ, compared with 18 percent of former members.

"There's a million questions to be asked there about why there's a four times difference between current and former," said Coates.

"One theory is that if you're LGBT and you're in the church, it's not 100 percent compatible, and you're going to leave. And so obviously that means there's going to be a lot more former Latter-day Saints.

Undoubtedly there is a component to that. Or it's possible that people that leave the church and then begin to identify as LGBTQ for whatever reason.

We don't know, because the survey did not explore any of that level of detail. That's the next level."

2. Few have a traditional belief in God, without any doubts.

The 2023 Current and Former Latter-day Saint Survey repeated a long-standing question from the General Social Survey about belief in God.

Comparing the current and former members, the differences in belief are stark: Among current members, more than 7 in 10 say they "know God really exists and … have no doubts about it."

That's more than six times the rate of certainty about God among former members.

Cranney pointed out in an article in Times and Seasons that most former members do "still have some kind of belief in something higher," but they're less likely to know without a doubt that God exists.

"Their belief in God is characterized more by ambiguity than a firm belief one way or another," he wrote.

In this, they're similar to the nones in the general population of the U.S., while current members resemble the General Social Survey's "religionists," the most devout Americans.

3. Their moral priorities look very different.

One of the most groundbreaking aspects of the survey Coates and Cranney devised was that they utilized Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory (MFT),

Their aim was to try to understand whether current and former Mormons emphasised different aspects of morality.

MFT measures values such as fairness, loyalty, authority, care and purity. In Haidt's research, liberals tend to stress fairness and care but put less emphasis on obedience to authority or being loyal to a particular tribe.

Former Mormons, it turns out, have much in common with liberals in the general population, with high ratings for care and fairness.

Meanwhile, current members look more like conservatives, but with a particularly high emphasis on purity/sanctity — something former Mormons do not stress much at all.

"That was surprising, how defined that difference was," Coates said.

"Current Latter-day Saints are off the charts on purity and sanctity. And for former members what's interesting is that in in-group loyalty, they're significantly lower even than the liberals."

Cranney said that makes sense. "This is a relatively high-tension faith that, oftentimes to survive, has had to have fairly strict binding norms.

People who have decided that it's not for them are going to score lower because they have rejected those very intense binding norms."

4. They are more likely to have been divorced.

For survey respondents who were still members of the LDS church, the divorce rate for first marriages was 18 percent, while for former members it was 39 percent. The former members' rate is closer to the national average for divorces in the United States.

Coates said the rate of temple divorces is especially low, between 14 percent and 20 percent, while "marriages between members that are not sealed in the temple are closer to the national rate of about half of marriages ending in divorce."

5. They have smaller families.

Coates cautions that the data on this is still provisional because accounting for age will make a major difference in the findings.

But in terms of the raw numbers, he says current Latter-day Saints appear to have almost one child more per family (3.4 children) than those who've left the church (2.5 children).

6. Many say they left the church because of historical issues.

The top three reasons for leaving were:

1) history related to Joseph Smith;

2) Book of Mormon; and

3) race issues.

However, Coates says he is somewhat skeptical, comparing these questions to asking divorced couples why their marriages failed. He says it's difficult to know what potential conscious or unconscious biases are at play.

"We think this portion of the survey is only useful in answering the question ‘What do former members prefer to respond when asked on a survey why they left?'" he said.

7. The vast majority have no interest in returning to church activity.

More than four out of five former members say that returning is "very unlikely," with an additional 10 percent saying it's unlikely.

A majority has very negative feelings about the church. "Three out of 4 said they dislike or strongly dislike the church as an institution," Coates reported.

In brighter news, "they had a neutral to positive disposition toward the people."

Cranney performed a regression analysis to see if he could isolate predictive factors that might shed light on which former Mormons were most likely to return to church.

"The one thing that is associated with being more likely to say that you'll return to the church is if you are married to a member," he said.

That situation describes about a fifth of the former LDS sample: 20% were married to believing members, and 30% were married to fellow former members.

8. Most don't join another religion after leaving.

Seventy percent of the former members selected "none" when asked to describe their religion now.

However, Coates observed that the actual percentage could be even higher, because an additional 19 percent chose "other" and then hand-wrote responses that were sometimes compatible with "none."

"They're not joining another religion," Coates said.

"It's possible that means they're Christians without a congregation, but the question only asks ‘Hey, are you affiliated? Do you identify with a religion?'

And no, they don't. I think that was our intuition about former Latter-day Saints, so that finding didn't surprise us."

• First published in Religion News Service
• Jana Riess is an author of many books. She has a PhD in American religious history from Columbia University.

We don't intentionally walk away during the summer months, but between vacations and camp drop-offs and lazy mornings and opportunities to see family and friends, we tend to tie our church attendance to the school calendar.

Come September, we have to remind ourselves why it's worth it to nudge our teenagers out of bed on a day when they could sleep in.

Why get dressed and head out the door to listen to a choir and hear some prayers and sit through a sermon when we could be hiking in the woods?

We keep going to church for all sorts of reasons.

There's the community. We love the intergenerational relationships that don't come anywhere else.

Eating chicken salad and grapes around plastic tables in the basement gives me a sense of connection to all sorts of people I wouldn't know otherwise.

I want our congregation to pray for us when we are in crisis. I want to have a reason to serve at our local soup kitchen.

I look forward to seeing whatever child dons the star costume in the annual Christmas pageant.

There's also the spirituality. I want our kids to be immersed in a tradition that goes back thousands of years.

I want to step away from the to-do list of my life and enter a literal sanctuary at least one time each week.

I want access to the things that psychologists say bring healing to our bodies, minds and souls — singing together, caring for one another, receiving forgiveness.

And yet.

Our kids have birthday parties and soccer games on Sundays. And I would love to get some sleep and take a nice long run or read the paper or drink a cup of tea without any rush.

I understand why people walk away when they encounter abuse or hypocrisy within the church.

I resonate with Perry Bacon's recent essay where he writes about his discomfort with the social conservatism he found in some churches.

I understand why people would wonder if there is a place for their doubt and disbelief amidst creeds and prayers and praise songs. I understand why we might substitute church with community service and support for social justice.

Sometimes church is boring. Sometimes it feels superficial. Sometimes it seems irrelevant. But every September, when we walk back in those doors, I remember why we are there.

I don't return because it makes me a better person. I don't return because I always believe. I return to church every September because church reminds us of who we are in relation to Jesus.

Christianity rests upon God coming to us in the person of Jesus, to let us know that we are loved and cared for and healed and saved and invited to participate in all the goodness and beauty and grace and joy and love and peace of who God is. Forever. In and through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

Theoretically, that connection to Jesus could happen in the comfort of my own home or with access to a sermon podcast or a livestreamed service.

Except Jesus said we find him where two or three of us are gathered together (Mt. 18:20).

He said he is present in and among the people I am least likely to encounter in my everyday life (Mt. 25:34-36), and I often encounter those people at church.

At church, I am both taught about Jesus and given an opportunity to live as he lived: to slow down and listen to people who are oppressed; to upend social structures; to reject power and position; to move toward the ones in need without judgment; even, sometimes, to love my enemies.

The intergenerational community and spirituality I find at church is intimately connected to an encounter with Jesus himself.

I encounter Jesus in the woman with an intellectual disability who is reading Ezekiel and teaches me about glory.

I glimpse the risen Christ in the couple who have been fighting lately and who take the bread and the wine with shoulders slumped in grief.

I remember the one who rules this upside-down kingdom of God when a child interrupts the sermon from the back pew and when an elderly widow has a panic attack and needs us to gather around her to pray.

The Apostle Paul wrote that Christians are the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27), in which each individual member plays a crucial and connected part. We encounter Jesus more fully when we gather together.

It is well-documented that thousands upon thousands of Americans are leaving church. I suspect the reason has to do with some combination of busyness and disbelief and hypocrisy and politics.

But I also wonder whether those of us who are entrusted with the life of Jesus have forgotten or neglected to carry him with us when we walk out the doors of the sanctuary.

Alan Kreider writes about what he calls the "Patient Ferment of the Early Church." He explains that the early Christians didn't try to tell people about their beliefs.

But they did live those beliefs through hospitality, generosity, miraculous healings and sacrificial love.

Those early Christians went to church because of Jesus. And then they lived out the life of Jesus in and among their neighbours. Their patient love changed the world.

At the end of the day, I go to church because it is only there that I publicly remember, reenact and celebrate the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the one who showed us what it is like for God to be alive.

For God to be one of us.

Every Sunday morning, I am invited yet again into the life that is really life. And then I am sent back out in love as one small but significant member of the Body of Christ.

• Amy Julia Becker is the author of four books including her most recent, "To Be Made Well: An Invitation to Wholeness, Healing, and Hope." She hosts the "Love Is Stronger than Fear" podcast.
• First published in Religion News Service. Republished with permission.

The contrast between ageing congregations and young students is stark. Equally striking is the contrast between relatively youthful school staff and ageing church leaders.

Twelve months ago, with the Plenary Council final assembly still fresh in my mind, I reflected in Eureka Street that if church renewal is to take place, then Catholic schools must embrace and actively support church reform.

My own recent engagement with Victorian Catholic school principals convinced me then that their status, credentials, and ties to young people gave them a pre-eminent place in any such reform.

Twelve months later, in July 2023, as the Synod on Synodality first assembly came closer, another wider speaking engagement with almost 2,000 staff of a dozen Victorian Catholic secondary schools over three weeks, confirmed my belief.

These staff, including but not restricted to leaders and team members in Catholic identity and religious education, have crucial responsibilities and unparalleled opportunities in their daily contacts with teenagers, whether Catholic or from many other backgrounds.

My presentations covered topics like Pope Francis and the Universal Church and the Church in Australia.

If the outcomes of Pope Francis' 2023-2024 Synod on Synodality, based on the themes of its Working Document, are to penetrate more than skin deep into the Catholic community, schools must be at the forefront.

If not, the Synod will be a wasted effort and a missed opportunity. It will be wasted because it will not catch the attention, much less the enthusiasm, of the next generation.

The task is challenging. Students in Catholic schools represent the face of the present and the future. They are extraordinarily diverse in terms of ethnic and faith backgrounds.

The vast majority, reflecting official surveys of the wider Catholic community, are 'unchurched' in the sense of not being regular churchgoers outside of school.

Teachers are confronted, but not really surprised, by the dismal official figures (6 percent) of church attendance for their former students, Catholics aged 20-34.

They themselves represent the equally dismal official figures for church attendance of those aged 35-60. That applies to the Catholic teachers.

The anecdotal evidence offered to me by the school communities and by various priests was that 10 per cent church attendance may be generous.

The universal Church's 'experiment with synodality'

Yet the Catholic identity of the schools, often expressed though different charisms, remains profound, even if the challenges posed by student and staff diversity are enormous. These staff development days were couched in beautiful liturgies and inspiring messages from school leaders.

Notably our schools are more open and inclusive than our parish and diocesan churches are. They are a sign of where the church should be on matters like inclusion and there is no going back.

These schools occupy a world in which value statements such as 'all faiths, genders, sexualities and cultures are respected, accepted and welcome' are predominant.

Outdated church teaching about sexuality and gender is implicitly and explicitly rejected. Most students and staff would have it no other way.

The challenges that I threw out were often tossed back at me through tough but respectful table-talk and public questioning.

Occasionally my openly pro-renewal stance was thought disrespectful to church tradition and teaching.

For some panellists and respondents my message of dramatic church decline in Australia was too dark and hopeless; for others my own hope in what I called the universal church's 'experiment with synodality' was too optimistic because they thought change was impossible.

They could see little sign of reform happening around them; and made clear that even when there were signs of progress it was happening much too slowly.

Frequently I was asked when the church would accept equal rights for women. The general tone of voice was that the church should just get on with it because the status quo was indefensible.

Often, I was specifically asked when the church would allow women priests.

My response that the best we could hope for in the short to intermediate term was the introduction of the female diaconate was hardly satisfactory.

When I presented as a breakthrough by Pope Francis the fact that there would be 54 women among the 363 voting members of the Synod in Rome in October my audiences still wanted much quicker progress on gender equality.

Catholic secondary schools are a parallel universe as far as the diocesan and parish churches are concerned.

Their staff take no pleasure in the decline of the latter and recognise the implications for their schools; but, even in the middle of World Youth Day (which some current students were attending as had some staff on previous occasions) they could see no obvious ways of halting the decline.

Some staff could see a future in which the school rather than the parish was the heart of the church. But one teacher told me to my face that my suggestion that schools were the future of the church was not just unlikely but 'vacuous'.

Most staff, teaching and non-teaching, welcomed an opportunity to enhance their own learning by discussing present developments and future aspirations for the church.

They are at the coalface where church and society meet, and they taught me a great deal about the real world of schools and church.

• John Warhurst is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University and former member of the Plenary Council. His visits to Catholic secondary schools were hosted by the Principals Association of Victorian Catholic Secondary Schools.
• First published in La Croix. Republished with permission.

The study published by Anglican evangelical mission agency CPAS is based on church attendance figures at Easter this year.

CPAS found that, although in-church Easter attendance was three-quarters what it had been at Easter 2019, many people were also attending online. When the two groups were added, attendance was about the same.

The figures show the vision of a "mixed-ecology" Church of England is right and "realistic", the authors say.

The study examined data submitted immediately after Easter by four dioceses — Lichfield, Oxford, Canterbury and Rochester.

Analyst Dr Bev Botting and church-growth consultant the Ven. Bob Jackson analysed the data.

They found a wide variety in the numbers attending individual churches: attendance at many had fallen dramatically, but at others it had grown.

They concluded: "Decline was not inevitable. Some churches showed that it is possible to grow congregations post-Covid, and it is possible that onsite numbers will increase further by October once the threat of Covid has reduced further.

"It was always likely that the shock of Covid lockdowns would be a blow to all churches but an opportunity for some."

The study also found the number of churches offering online services had fallen over the previous six months. About 44 percent still offered some online provision over Easter, usually on YouTube.

Online attendance added more than one third to those churches' Easter attendance figures.

Churches that did not offer online services were the only ones to show a drop in total attendance.

The fall in "onsite" attendance between 2019 and 2022 in churches also offering Church at Home was the same as other churches. This may mean people are treating online attendance as an additional option rather than an alternative, the authors say.

"That online attendance continues to be so significant, even when the buildings are fully opened, suggests that it will continue to play a significant role in the future churchgoing mix."

Although this was the first Easter without Covid restrictions for three years, there was another small surge in cases of a sub-variant around Easter, so the study was still not carried out in "normal times".

Of the 755 churches that submitted attendance figures, small churches showed stronger post-Covid recovery in in-church attendance than bigger churches. In many instances, the congregation had grown.

The "Smallest" churches are defined as having fewer than 25 in the congregation, while the "largest" ones have over 200 people.

In 2019 larger churches had only 69 per cent of their 2019 attendance, while the smallest averaged 188 per cent. This was true in each of the four dioceses.

"There have been fears for small churches emerging from Covid — will their elderly congregations have died, fragmented or been unable to reconvene?" the report says.

"With their technological edge and younger profiles, perhaps larger churches will have had the strength to withstand the lockdown better. The Easter onsite attendance numbers however suggest the exact opposite", it continues.

Describing the online attendance at Canterbury Cathedral as "phenomenal" — the authors say the figures for Easter Eve and Easter Day outnumbered the 2019 Easter figures across the whole diocese.

They therefore removed them from the broader analysis to avoid skewing the overall picture.

The Cathedral's YouTube Easter service had 47,000 views, representing at least 30,000 people.

The Cathedral also played host to people who had joined online services during the pandemic. Some "even flew across the Atlantic to attend in person the Cathedral that had become their own online", the authors say.

The study concludes that churches should continue to develop their online services.

They should also "invest in the old-fashioned pastoral basics of a team making lists and visiting" the authors say.

In particular, the churches should visit families who have been slower to re-engage with church after the lockdowns.

Additionally, dioceses should invest in support for larger churches that are struggling to recover numbers and offer technical support to parishes to develop high-quality online provision, the authors recommend.

Source

• Church Times

But there has been little or no rise in the number of people attending in-person religious services over the past six months, while the number of those watching services online has also remained steady.

The survey of 10,441 U.S. adults taken March 7-13 showed that only 27% of respondents said they attended services in person this month (compared to 67% who typically do). Back in September, when the coronavirus was still surging and hospitals were reaching capacity numbers, the percentage of those attending in-person religious services was 26%.

Likewise, those streaming services online remained steady: 28% in September 2021 and 30% today.

Pew researchers suggested the plateau in in-person religious service attendance could rise if the pandemic continues to recede or drop if a new coronavirus variant emerges.

Watching services online will likely continue to be higher, they said, than it was before the coronavirus outbreak began in early 2020.

Religious scholars are now beginning to field studies to determine the long-term impacts of the coronavirus on religious service attendance.

Scott Thumma, a sociologist who recently began a five-year study of how congregations have fared during the pandemic, said his initial findings show a modest increase in in-person attendance from last summer to November. (The project relies on data from religious congregations rather than individual attenders.)

"We're not going to know the full impact for quite a few years," said Thumma, who directs the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. "People are still hesitant to go back. Clergy are still struggling with convincing people to come back. A lot of people are either content to not go or rely on online services."

In the Pew survey, 21% of adults who said they attend religious services monthly said they have not gone back to in-person services and attend online only.

Only 5% of respondents said their places of worship were still closed. Respondents across all categories reported a rise in the number of congregations holding services as they did before the pandemic.

Black Protestant churchgoers stood out as the Christian group most likely to have watched religious services online or on TV in the last month. This group with deep religious commitments was more likely than evangelicals and mainline Protestants to say they watched online services in the last month, in keeping with other studies that suggest Black churchgoers are far more cautious in protecting themselves from the virus.

The survey did not contain enough respondents from non-Christian faiths to report their worship habits separately.

The survey also showed that the share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who said their churches were open as before the pandemic was roughly double the share of Democratic congregants who said the same (58% vs. 27%).

• Yonat Shimron is a RNS National Reporter and Senior Editor.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Many regular worshippers have been attending only monthly since in-person services resumed this summer, a new study suggests.

For its report Changing Church, the Evangelical Alliance surveyed 552 church leaders and 1676 church members, over ten days in October.

Congregation sizes varied from fewer than 50 people to more than 150; both smaller and larger congregations reported a decline in attendance.

Most churches are now offering in-person services, although many also continue to offer online services.

Average attendance has fallen by 32 per cent, the study finds; but much of this could be because worshippers attend less regularly rather than not at all.

Of individual respondents, 92 per cent reported attending church services weekly before the pandemic, compared with 68 per cent last month.

Fortnightly and monthly church attendance, however, has increased by 16 per cent; four per cent reported that they attended church at least once in the past month.

Just three per cent said that they were no longer attending any church.

The decline in regular attendance is also reflected in volunteering and financial giving.

Nearly two-thirds of church leaders reported a reduction in both and most expected a further decline in giving over the next few months.

Youth and children's ministry has also been significantly reduced from pre-pandemic levels.

A quarter of churches reported that they were no longer offering youth ministry, and 17 per cent were no longer offering any children's ministry.

The lead theology researcher at the Evangelical Alliance, Rich Powney, said: "The Church continues to face a changing, and at times challenging, landscape.

"Yet this is also an opportunity to reflect and reset, to ask strategic conversations and hold formative conversations as we learn some lessons from lockdown.

"As we do this, let's pray that we all remain committed to making Jesus known through our words and actions."

The research was conducted by the Evangelical Alliance in collaboration with Eido Research and the Christian-giving charity Stewardship. Continue reading

• Rebecca Pavely is a writer for Church Times

This has been my family's experience at St Rita Catholic Church most Sundays since the pandemic began.

Some weeks, there's barely enough standing room in the vestibule.

When other churches were shutting their doors, ours remained open. Sure enough, the faithful flocked.

I recently asked one of our three priests, Father Nicholas Schierer, what explains St. Rita's dynamism.

He was in front of the church greeting parishioners, and I'd been outside for a few minutes, bouncing a whiny 10-month-old while my wife wrangled our other children in one of the back pews.

More than a few mums and dads were outside with me.

It's another sign of a thriving parish: The dissonant choir of kids, which often drowns out the priest and competes with the organ in volume.

Father Schierer smiled.

Ordained to the priesthood in 2018, he was assigned to St. Rita's in the fall of 2020, after the boom had begun.

He immediately saw what drew so many people, saying that the parish practised what it preached.

The church says Holy Communion is the "source and summit" of our faith, he told me, so we moved heaven and earth to make the sacraments available to the people of God.

Father Daniel Gee led St Rita's through the worst of the pandemic.

As the pastor in charge of the parish since 2010, he had no intention of limiting access to the Lord.

In March 2020, following a statewide mandate, the local bishop banned public Masses. Father Gee complied, moving St. Rita's Mass online.

Yet in-person Mass was the only part of the parish he shut down.

Along with two other priests, Father Vincent Bork and Father Karol Nędza, Father Gee continued to hear confessions every day of the week.

He also instituted a daily eucharistic adoration, giving parishioners a chance to be in the presence of Jesus Christ.

When the bishop allowed outdoor Masses in May, Father Gee immediately began celebrating them in the parish parking lot.

Virginia began reopening in June 2020, at which point churches were allowed to hold indoor services at 50% capacity.

Father Gee's approach was simple: "Everyone who wanted to go to Mass could go to Mass," he tells me.

To squeeze people in while complying with the law, he increased the number of weekend services by half.

Parishioners could come to one of two services held on Saturday evenings, as well as every hour from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday.

That's nine Masses total two Latin, two Spanish, five English.

Father Gee says the busy schedule "nearly killed us," but the parishioners welcomed the return to Catholic life.

While the faithful came rushing back, it wasn't only the usual crowd.

With other parishes shrinking the number of Masses or requiring sign-ups for limited slots, Catholics travelled to St Rita's from throughout Northern Virginia.

One family told me they drove from Great Falls, 35 minutes away in light traffic, and another from McLean.

Even my non-Catholic parents started joining us most weeks.

People heard about the church that kept the doors open, and that's where they wanted to be.

Nationwide, in-person church attendance is as much as 50% lower than it was two years ago.

Yet Father Gee estimates Mass attendance at St Rita's is as much as 20% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Other parishes have since fully reopened, but many families have opted to stay here.

Collections for the poor also have gone up, while other parishes have seen declines. "If you're not having Mass, you're not getting money to help the most vulnerable," says Father Gee.

Other signs of life abound. Continue reading

• Stephen Ford is a parishioner at St Rita's Parish, North Virginia.

Their support of the government's Covid measures is contingent on and only justified by, "the emergency situation as it exists at this point in time."

While all the bishops are fully vaccinated, they are concerned about others, particularly the most vulnerable while they adapt to the Covid world.

Moving forward, the bishops are keen New Zealand adopts rapid antigen testing.

Rapid antigen testing could offer non-vaccinated people less restrictive options within the employment, social, hospitality, religious and recreational sectors, they say pastoral letter issued last week.

Acknowledging the Covid restrictions, the bishops invite Catholics to embrace creativity in meeting the need to be unified as the Body of Christ.

"One of the things we have learnt over the past 20 months is that our identity as communities of faith is not ultimately defined by an inability to physically gather."

In their statement, the bishops note, with concern, the intolerance for Covid restrictions - especially the lockdown created ones - that give rise to the possibility of divisions developing in the community; they ask people to show ‘restraint and discipline': showing love, care and respect to people whose decisions are different from ours is in line with Gospel values.

"We know that the tensions emerging around vaccine mandates and the My Vaccine Pass are creating lines of division within families, faith communities, friendship circles and places of work," they say.

To ensure people can attend Church gatherings safely, feel connected, welcome and included without prejudice while remaining within the confines of the current legal requirements, the bishops have decided:

• In line with the traffic light system, Masses will be provided for fully vaccinated people using the My Vaccine Pass.
• Parishes, perhaps in conjunction with neighbouring parishes will provide opportunities for Mass, subject to Government-mandated number restrictions, for those who are not fully vaccinated.
• All those involved in public-facing ministries relating to church services and parish ministries need to be fully vaccinated at fully vaccinated Masses.
• Priests who are not fully vaccinated or who do not wish to declare their vaccination status will not be able to preside nor attend vaccinated-only Church events.
• When asking a fully vaccinated priest to preside at a service open to both vaccinated and non-vaccinated, parishes and priests need to give due consideration to any specific health conditions a priest may have which could make him more susceptible to the health consequences of being infected by Covid-19.
• Similarly, all church workers (whether paid or voluntary) involved in home-based pastoral care visitations need to have regard for the vaccine status of those they are visiting, along with their own health conditions which may make them more susceptible to the health consequences of being infected by Covid-19.
• Current restrictions on holy water, social distancing, Holy Communion in the hand etc remain.

Source

• NZ Catholic Bishops

This coming weekend may represent the fewest people engaging in corporate worship in the last two millennia.

This is uncharted waters for those in church leadership.

Many pastors and denominational leaders have struggled with questions related to the immediate concerns facing the church.

Issues like: How do we take our service online? or How do we take care of the elderly and vulnerable members of our faith community?

While it's key that pastors do their best to tackle these immediate concerns, at some point thoughts may begin to drift further out.

It's crucial that pastors begin to think about the long term.

Specifically, is COVID-19 going to lead to a long-term shift in church attendance?

Survey data related to an event like this doesn't exist

This weekend represents the fewest people engaging in corporate worship in the last two millennia. Many pastors are struggling with what they cannot control; the unknown.

In order to take an educated guess at what the future may hold, we can work with the next best thing—panel data.

A panel survey asks the same people the same series of questions over a long period of time as a means to detect how behaviour shifts and to identify the possible causes of those changes.

I have panel data that was collected in 2010, 2012, 2014. It offers an illuminating glimpse into how church attendance changes over time.

The first impression from the graph is that there is a lot of shifting in church attendance in just two-year periods.

Many people changed their frequency of church attendance from 2010 to 2012 and then changed their behaviour again by 2014. There are portions of the population that are more consistent, however.

The thick blue bands on the right side of the graph indicate the lack of movement among people who never attend church services. When people are out of church, they are unlikely to return. Note also that the size of the never attenders increased over a four-year period of time.

There are also thicker bands of movement among those who attend church weekly or more than once a week. That indicates a general sense of stability—frequent attenders don't alter their behaviour, either.

The overall shifts come into starker relief when just observing the changes from 2010 to 2014. The rows going down the left side of the above graph are individuals' self-reported church attendance in 2010 and the size of the bars going left and right indicate where those groups ended up in 2014. Continue reading

Attendance frequency measures how often a person comes to church.

For example, an "active" member was once considered someone who came twice, or even three times a week.

Today an active member is considered someone who comes twice a month.

Many reasons exist for this decline—from travel sports to the demise of cultural Christianity.

Not every reason is bad.

Some may be inching their way into church for the first time.

Others may be returning to church after years of being absent. People don't jump back into the church; they tiptoe. However, in most cases, it's congregants fading away that is the issue and this trend has an impact on all of us.

The church feels smaller but is actually larger

Consider a church that has four hundred people attending four out of four weeks.

This church has an average weekly attendance of four hundred.

Take the same church with the same people but change only the attendance frequency— lowered to two out of four weeks.

The church's average weekly attendance is now two hundred.

The true size of your church could be double the average weekly attendance, if not higher. Many will wonder "Where is everyone?" on a Sunday morning, but pastors and church leaders will experience an increased ministry load.

As attendance frequency declines, the congregation will feel smaller while getting larger.

The people coming less frequently still email, call, and set up counselling appointments.

They still ask pastors to do funerals and weddings and come to the hospital.

Spiritual disciplines become weaker

As one discipline goes, so do the others.

People who attend church less frequently are also likely to read their Bibles less, pray less, and share their faith less.

Communication becomes harder even as the methods of communication increase

In a past era, the church used the Sunday morning gathering to communicate. Then

• bulletins became popular
• churches started to utilize newsletters mailed to homes
• slides on screens started
• email newsletters become prevalent
• social media and texting services followed

At our church we use no less than twenty pathways of communication.

Over-communication becomes important in an era of decreased attendance frequency.

Congregational loyalty declines

Along with a drop in congregational loyalty, church hopping becomes even more common.

When people come less often, they tend to be less loyal to a particular congregation. When they are less loyal, then it's easier to switch churches. Continue reading

• Sam Rainer (pictured right) serves his local church as a pastor, writer, publisher, and researcher.

The synod says the rules will be amended to say morning and evening prayer need only be held at "at least one church within a benefice, which might include multiple parish churches.

"Each service shall be said or sung distinctly, reverently, and in an audible voice."

The change, which will also apply to Holy Communion services, has been made to regularise what is already a standard practice in parishes with small and declining congregations in rural areas.

Most rural priests have multiple benefices, with some in charge of up to 20 churches. The old rules required them to maintain regular services even if only a handful of worshippers turned up.

Bishop Pete Broadbent, who is leading a task group simplifying and modernising the rules governing daily church life, says the move is intended to bring canon law in line with practice.

"At the moment if you have 12 parishes you need a special dispensation [from the bishop] not to hold morning and evening prayers in every church," he said.

The change will make "honest people" of clergy, who were already flouting the technicality of the law.

"People can't look after loads of parishes, but [canon] law doesn't recognise that reality."

The legislation allows schedules to be set within a local context alongside other forms of worship, a church the spokesperson noted, while pointing out:

"Morning and evening prayer continue to be the heartbeat of church life and, whether urban or rural, communities are prayed for on a daily basis.

"The Church of England now has a great variety of services throughout the week, with midweek services increasing in popularity."

The legal change was unanimously supported by bishops and clergy. Among lay members of the synod, two people voted against it and one abstained. It will now be sent to the Queen for royal assent.

Source

• The Guardian
• Christian Today
• Image: Christian Today

Previously there were two hours of free weekend parking in the CBD. Now the parking fee will be $2.50 per hour.

The parish priest of St Mary of the Angels, Fr Conroy SM, told CathNews that the new charges will have a significant impact on those attending Mass in the Boulcott St church.

St Mary of the Angels is one of 16 Central Wellington Christian congregations that will be affected by the new regime.

Conroy said a joint submission was made by the churches to the committee but they were unsuccessful in getting any concessions.

On Thursday Roger Wigglesworth from Wellington's Anglican Cathedral of St Paul told councillors at the City Strategy Committee parking fees will lead to there being fewer people in churches and reduce the church income.

He suggested alternatives such as parking-exempt labels for churchgoers during services, which was offered by the Auckland and Queenstown councils.

This led to Councillor Brian Dawson putting forward an amendment in which Sunday parking charges would start at 10 am in recognition of the number of Wellingtonians who attend church services.

He said he was concerned for the elderly who had difficulty using public transport. He was "not interested" in giving free parking to people going to Arise Church because many were young and could catch a bus.

Councillor Fleur Fitzsimons warned the amendment would set a dangerous public policy precedent.

"I don't think this council should pick particular religions we like or places and subside their attendees with parking.

"The legality of this is questionable, particularly given the comments about Arise Church and the comparison made."

The Chair of the City Strategy Committee, Councillor Iona Pannett, was appalled the matter was even brought up.

"I do not see how we can single out a Christian community, when there are other faiths and I think this has been done on the hop, with no analysis, and I do not think this is acceptable," she said.

Dawson's amendment was lost with a vote from the mayor tipping the scales against the move to have part of Sunday morning parking free.

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

A new Pew Research Center study offers a survey of 4,729 Americans telling us precisely why they do (or don't) attend religious services. Read more

It also influences how generous the donations are.

The report says "Most strikingly, those attending religious services once a month or more make an average annual religious contribution of $1,848, while those attending religious services less than once a month donate $111."

Drawing on data from the University of Michigan's Philanthropy Panel Study, the report found giving to religious causes amounted to close to a third of all charitable giving in 2016.

It says researchers found that households attending religious services every week or more are 28 times more likely to give to religious causes than those that never attend.

Nonetheless, about one in ten households that never attend religious services still give to religious institutions. However their donations are smaller. On average these households donate about $67 annually.

In total, the research discovered religious institutions received $122.94 billion in 2016. This accounted for 32 percent of charitable donations.

These donations more than double the amount received by educational institutions, which rate as next highest sector within the not-for-profit sector. In total this sector received $59.77 billion in donations.

Source

• Giving USA
• Crux
• Image: givingusa.org

Published in May by researchers from Vanderbilt University, the study found that middle-aged adults who attended religious services at least once in the past year were half as likely to die prematurely as those who didn't.

Using data from a National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the study's researchers examined 10 biological stress markers among 5,449 men and women aged 46 to 65.

They then compared those markers with respondents' self-reported religious service attendance and found a correlation between religious service attendance, lower stress and longevity.

The study adds to mounting scientific findings on the subject.

A far larger study, of 74,534 women, published last year found that attending a religious service more than once per week was associated with 33 percent lower mortality compared with women who never attended religious services.

A documentary probing recent findings similar to these aired on many PBS stations Friday and Saturday (July 7 and 8) — another sign of growing awareness of these studies' significance, especially for older adults.

But even as the studies pile up and the literature appears close to conclusive, many questions about the association between religious service attendance and health have yet to be answered.

For one, people attend religious services for all kinds of reasons. What is it about services that might impart better health? The prayers? The social connections? The coffee and cookies?

And does religious attendance account for longevity, or something else? Could it be that people who attend church, synagogue or mosque happen to lead healthier lifestyles?

Maybe they are on the whole predisposed to eat well, exercise regularly, engage in safe sex and drink alcohol in moderation?

How about people who bond over shared interests — say, knitting or poker, or devoted volunteers in literacy centers, or animal rescues?

Has anyone studied whether these group members have lower mortality rates? Continue reading

Sources

• Crux article by Yonat Shimron of Catholic News Service / Reuters
• Image: Conservative Country

He says they just expressed it in different ways.

He said while baby boomers and their children were the ones most likely not to belong to a church because they struggled with the institution of church and its formality, "They still have a sense of the unknown, the mystery, the wonder of life. They may still have a sense there may well be a God, or not know what it is but a power greater than us."

He says he understands the public's scepticism of religion and its leaders because of inappropriate conduct and behaviour across denominations.

"There is no excuse, every leader who preaches the Bible needs to adhere to the Bible."

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: Sunlive.co.nz

"These buildings are simply too opulent, too empty and too expensive to maintain, something akin to an aging grandmother still living in a mansion when just one room would do," said a report on Spiegel Online.

There are churches standing empty even in staunchly Catholic Bavaria — the home of Pope Benedict XVI, the report said, and one has been closed even in the famous pilgrimage site of Telgte, near Münster, which has a shrine of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The situation for Catholic churches is particularly bad in the Ruhr region of western Germany and in northern Germany, places that saw an influx of refugees from the former German lands of Silesia and East Prussia after the Second World War.

Now many of these regions' small Catholic churches, often built in an unappealing modern style, are at high risk of being demolished.

In Hildesheim diocese, one out of every two churches is on the endangered list, while in Essen diocese 83 churches are slated for demolition and another 13 have already been torn down. The situation is the worst in Wilhelmshaven, where six out of nine Catholic churches are slated to be destroyed.

The archdiocese of Berlin is offering for sale on eBay "a church in a popular residential area" in the city of Brandenburg, and websites have sprung up to market unwanted pulpits and altars.

Yet many church properties do not find a buyer. Most churches have cold floors and high ceilings, and lack kitchen facilities, so even give-away prices are often not enough of an incentive. The Maria Goretti Chapel in the small northeastern city of Demmin, for example, costs just $NZ31,500, but no one wants to buy it.

Thomas Begrich, head of finances for the Evangelical Church of Germany, the country's largest federation of Protestant churches, said it closed 340 churches between 1990 and 2010, and "it may be necessary to give up an additional 1000 buildings".

Source:

Spiegel Online

Image: Spiegel Online

Banks of lights pulsate in waves of colour, and cameras project images on to three monstrous screens. And there is plenty of noise from a seven-piece electric band, bolstered by a retinue of backing singers. A lead vocalist, blonde, lithe and liberal in the use of facial contortions, hammers out her stuff.

Not a rock concert, but a church service. It's 10am on a Sunday and it's show time at the City Impact Church on Auckland's North Shore. The only thing missing in this 2000-seat auditorium is the dry ice.

It's big and flash enough to film New Zealand's Got Talent here. That was on Wednesdays and Thursdays - when Rachel, Jason and Ali sat in the bit down front that is now the Sabbath-day mosh pit.

Where once the NZGT judges passed judgment on the array of talent before them, now the voice of authority is coming from onstage.

"Hello, Church!" shrieks the blonde. Cue the first in a series of oft-repeated performances from the floor: a sea of arms waved above heads in jubilant salute.

Young arms are held high. Hesitant arms clearly belong to newer recruits. Arthritic arms challenge themselves to reach beyond their shoulders.

After 30 minutes of rousing decibels and volcanic anthems, senior Pastor Peter Mortlock appears on stage with the Bible in one hand, a giant microphone in the other. He's smart in a green shirt and dark suit. If his followers had just one hand held high before, their efforts are doubled now.

"Not an hour goes in my day without thinking about Jesus!" he bellows. Mortlock and the blonde songstress work as a well-rehearsed pair: a soundbite from the pastor is followed by an affirmation from the singer.

"Who's looking forward to the second coming of Jesus?' he roars, to plenty of applause. This, after sharing with his devoted audience the story about how he gave his life to the Lord and how he's just come back from a trip to Fiji - see, there are the holiday photos on the big screens showing him and wife Bev with a glass of wine. Continue reading

Sources

• Geraldine Johns in The New Zealand Herald

• Image: Anglicans Ablaze