The problem is that church leaders haven't grasped the power of cultural trends in technology, education and economics that are fueling sharp declines in statistics linked to dating, marriage and fertility, said Brian Willoughby of the Brigham Young University School of Family Life.

"The key word is ‘tension,'" he said. Among the Latter-day Saints, these numbers are "not falling as fast" as in other groups, "but our young people are feeling tensions between the patterns they see all around them and what they hear from their parents and religious leaders.

"We are seeing the same changes — only moving slower. The average age of people getting married is rising. Fertility rates are declining. ... We can no longer assume that religious young people are some kind of different species."

It's urgent, he added, for congregations to "start making a more explicit case for marriage and family. Our young people know that marriage is important, but they don't know specific reasons for WHY it's important."

The result is what some researchers call the "marriage paradox." Young people continue to express a strong desire to "get married at some point," but they place an even higher priority on other "life goals," said Willoughby.

"Marriage becomes a transition in which they fear they will lose freedom or success. ... They hear everyone saying: ‘You go to these schools and get these degrees. You get job one that leads to job two. Don't let anything get in your way or get you off track.' With this kind of head-down approach, serious relationships can be a distraction on the path to success. ... The heart isn't as important."

Thus, marriage isn't disappearing, but the population of young adults choosing marriage is shrinking — especially among those with little or no commitment to religious life. In a study published in 2020, Willoughby cited several reasons this matters, noting that married millennials report:

• Relationships that are more "satisfying and stable" than those living "in other types of committed relationships."
• Significantly lower levels of depression, with better exercise and health trends.
• Better access to health care, insurance and retirement benefits.

In Latter-day Saint congregations, said Willoughby, young women and men are asked to serve in parallel leadership networks, working side by side, week after week. This offers opportunities to spot potential spouses with shared beliefs and goals.

But there is one big problem: "More single men tend to drop out of the faith. Often, the ratio of women to men is way too high when it comes to young adults who are serious about marriage."

Meanwhile, researchers are learning that more and more young men are struggling to master the kinds of basic life skills that make them attractive to women seeking marriage partners, said sociology professor W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"I think quite a few women would be happy to meet a man at church and marry him," he said. "But they are still going to want to know: ‘Is this man taking care of himself? Is he gainfully employed? Can he take care of a family? Is he decisive about the issues that matter the most in life?'"

At the same time, many religious leaders need to understand that many of today's dangerous trends in mental and physical health are linked to the growing cloud of digital screens that dominate modern life, said Wilcox.

This is especially true with the social media programs that shape the lives of teenagers and young adults.

"Churches have to find ways to encourage men — single and married — to turn off the internet and their video games and get their acts together. ... And let's face it, it's harder to make major course corrections in life when you're in your 30s," he said.

"All of this will require churches to do a better job of encouraging marriage, sanctioning marriage and helping young people prepare for marriage. ... This has to go beyond the old games-and-pizza approach to youth work and what usually passes for ministries with single adults."

• Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.
• First published by Religion Unplugged. Republished with permission.
• Part II of II. Part I was published in the previous edition of CathNews.

What if American women asked their live-in boyfriends to stop playing video games, leave their couches and run errands?

In the "Saturday Night Live" sketch "Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends!" guest host Selena Gomez asked her helpless boyfriend of three years, played by cast member Mikey Day, to buy her eyeliner and two shallots.

This man-baby ends up in tears with a big bag of onions and "a blush palette for African American women." The frustrated girlfriend says she may need a mid-morning glass of wine.

There was wisdom in that comedy, for pastors willing to see it, said sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"There's a whole class of young men who are not flourishing personally and professionally," he said, reached by telephone.

"The systems have broken down that help raise up attractive, successful men. Churches used to be one of those support systems.

"The future of the church runs through solid marriages and happy families. The churches that find ways to help men and women prepare for marriage and then encourage them to start families are the churches that will have a future."

The crisis is larger than lonely, underemployed and internet-addicted men. Rising numbers of young women are anxious, depressed and even choosing self-harm and suicide.

The coronavirus pandemic made things worse, but researchers were already seeing dangerous signs, noted San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, in a recent Institute for Family Studies essay. She is the author of the book "iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us."

"Something began to go wrong in the lives of teens about 10 years ago," she noted.

"At first, I had no idea why teen depression was increasing so much. … But then I noticed some big trends in teens' social lives: They were spending less time with their friends in person, and more time online.

"That tends not to be a good formula for mental health, especially for girls, and especially when that online time is spent on social media."

"Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center study found that most single U.S. adults, even before the coronavirus, were depressed about dating and building relationships.

"This past February, 70% of those surveyed said "their dating lives are not going well."

The survey summary noted, "A majority of single Americans overall are off the dating market — 56% say they are not currently looking for a relationship or casual dates, up slightly from 50% in 2019.

Among the 44% who are currently looking, 32% say they are looking only for a committed relationship, 16% are looking only for casual dates, and about half are open to either a relationship or dates."

It's logical to link these numbers with U.S. birth rates, which have been falling for more than a decade.

During the pandemic, the fertility rate experienced its largest single-year decline in 50 years, to 1.6 per woman, then rebounded slightly to 1.7 in 2021 — well below the population replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman.

These trends should be of special concern to clergy, since religious faith plays a pivotal role in deciding who gets married and who does not, according to Brian Willoughby of the Brigham Young University School of Family Life.

When researchers study "the raw number of marriages in the U.S., a clear and unique pattern emerges," he wrote for the Institute for Family Studies. "Despite steady population increases each year, the number of marriages has been decreasing over the last 20 years."

What does religious faith have to do with this?

"Recent findings confirm what I and others have been noting for several years," he added.

"Marriage is slowly becoming an institution mostly utilized by the religious, who continue to view marriage as a symbolic representation of lifelong commitment to one's partner. While non-religious couples certainly value commitment and still get married, more and more non-religious couples are opting for long-term cohabitation, while an increasing number of individuals in the U.S. and Europe are electing to remain single."

• Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.
• First published by Religion Unplugged. Republished with permission.
• Part I of II. Part II will be published in the next edition of CathNews.

It isn't that I know nothing of sports; I just haven't kept up much.

Even though I haven't been that guy as a sports fan, Donna and I went to see Moneyball while it was in theatres a few years back. Now, almost everyone thought it was a movie about baseball—or about Brad Pitt—but it wasn't. At least not at the core.

Moneyball was all about statistics—analyzing players' performance, then selecting and playing those players based upon advanced stats. Home runs, hits, runs scored, and RBIs were recreated in aggregate, often using cast-off players, rather than one superstar player. It was a revolutionary approach to the game, and it was based on a statistical foundation.

Statistics, of course, aren't limited to sports. What about those of you who are investors? Do you research the performance of a company that you are thinking about investing your money in? Sure you do.

What about those who have an important and possibly dangerous surgery coming up, do you want to know the odds of a successful surgery and recovery? Of course. Very few people want to go into it with no idea of the possible outcomes.

Numbers and statistics are part of our daily lives. Pastors and church leaders should embrace them as part of ministry.

How then do we use them?

Before I share how we should use statistics, let me share why some uses fail. Statistics shouldn't be used to change a priori assumptions. For instance, we should not stop trusting scripture simply because someone may get up and say 74% of people believe the Bible isn't what we think it is, so let's stop believing it. The truth is that the Bible is authoritative regardless of what others say.

Also, statistics shouldn't be used to determine how we do ministry. For instance, just because someone gets up and says that 90 percent of the church plants today implement the Launch Big model, doesn't mean we should implement the same model in our next church plant.

Statistics shouldn't be used to change our definitive beliefs nor determine how we do ministry. But they can be used in the following ways.

Statistics help define reality

Have you ever heard the statement, "facts are our friends"? It's true. Statistics can be our friends in helping us determine reality. Statistics provide us information on people's thoughts and behaviours. In short, they give us a starting point. For example, one research project showed the majority of people in the 7,000 subject churches were not using their gifts.

For many pastors and leaders, this would have come as a shock. Others may say, "That explains a lot." Either way, it helps pastors and leaders understand reality both for themselves, their church's leaders, and other members.

Statistics help teach people

Beyond defining reality, statistics can be used to help people understand how the church is engaging or not engaging. Research can demonstrate how the church thinks and why the church responds to certain issues.

Research is often a tool pastors need to use to change a church's opinion. If a pastor says, "We should build a gym to help the community" the church might question the expense. But, if the pastor says, "Ten percent of the population within 3 miles of our church are under 17 years old, and most of them have nothing to do after school. If we built a gymnasium we could run multiple ministries to meet their needs and maybe open their hearts to the gospel." Those statistics paint a different picture that help many understand why the cost might be worth it.

Statistics help leaders make strategic decisions

The first use of statistics helps us define reality by giving us a base and foundation. The second use of statistics helps us teach people, especially our leaders and members. The third, and probably most important, use of statistics is that they help us make strategic decisions.

If churches understood that one of the reasons why people weren't using their gifts was because they didn't know how the leaders could then make strategic decisions as to how they should teach their people how to use their gifts. As a result, churches could offer classes, produce material, preach a series, or write a blog series on spiritual gifts with the goal of reversing the statistics by changing the reality.

Statistics can also help determine what staff member to add next, when and where to have small groups, how many groups can be started each new semester, or how demographic changes should change outreach efforts.

In short, statistics are a great tool to assist pastors and leaders in being more effective and leading their churches or organizations to be more effective as well.

• Ed Stetzer, Ph.D., holds the Billy Graham Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton College, serves as Dean of the School of Mission, Ministry, and Leadership at Wheaton College, and serves as Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center. His writings on this blog, and on social media, are his opinions and do not necessarily represent the institutions and organizations where he serves or with whom he affiliates.

There is no evidence in the results of local anti-Semitism or Islamophobia in the form of a trust deficit displayed towards Jews or Muslims compared to mainstream Christian denominations.

But there is some evidence of moderate disproportional social prejudice towards non-mainstream Evangelical Christians, with nearly four in ten of the population distrusting them.

The conclusion does not demonstrate that hate towards minority religious groups does not exist in New Zealand.

Media reporting both before and after the Christchurch shootings clearly indicates that it does.

The Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria Business School conducted the survey.

Colmar Brunton collected data for the survey from 1000 people aged 18 and over and interviewed them online.

The survey was designed to provide a representative picture of the New Zealand population aged 18 and over.

Quotas were applied at the sampling and selection stage for this online survey.

Results were also weighted to be representative of New Zealand by age, gender, ethnicity and region.

They emphasised "living in New Zealand" as the survey was not interested in identifying New Zealanders' trust in, for example, worldwide Catholicism or Islam.

While the survey is by no means a classical random survey, those who conducted it believe that the results provide a good picture of the relative trust of the population.

Participants were asked to rate their level of trust in 8 different "religious groups".

One of the groups was "atheistic/agnostic."

A "mean trust score" was obtained from this data.

The variance between the highest score of 3.2 (Buddhists) and the lowest score of 2.7 (Evangelicals) was 0.5.

In terms of the mean trust score, that difference is of a size that statisticians describe as medium.

The remaining scores ranged from 3.1. for Jews, Hindus, Atheists/Agnostics and 3.0 for Protestants, Muslims and Catholics.

This range does not create a statistically distinguishable difference between them.

Headlines such as "Buddhism most trusted religion in New Zealand", while attracting attention, are rather hard to give any meaningful explanation to.

Source

• nzherald.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• Image: newsweek.com

That constitutes about 60 percent of the populace, independent Mormon demographer Matt Martinich told RNZ. But the number of "active" Latter-day Saints is much lower.

"It's more like about 20% because about two thirds of the members of the church in Tonga don't regularly attend church or they identify with some other religious group even though their names are still on the church records." Continue reading

Data from the Vatican's Central Office for Church Statistics show that the Church in Europe grew by two percent between 2005 and 2014.

Although 40 percent of the continent is Catholic, that figure has not changed in nearly a decade, the report noted.

The same report revealed that the number of baptized Catholics around the world has already reached 1.27 billion or 17.8 percent of the global population, an increase of 157 million.

It means that the Church is growing at a faster rate than that of the world's population on every continent apart from Oceania.

Highest growth of the number of baptized Catholics was seen in Africa, where Catholics increased by 41 percent, followed by Asia, where the Church grew by 20 percent.

The percentage of baptized Catholics as part of the general population remains highest in North and South America where they "make up almost half" of the world's Catholics, the report said.

"It is a great joy that the number of Catholics and the number of vocations continue to increase, especially in Africa and Asia," said Father Fernando Domingues, head of the vocations branch of the Church's mission charity, Missio, in Rome.

The priest, however, noted that the number of priests is still disproportionate to the needs of the local Catholic community.

Sources

National Catholic Register
Christian Today
Breitbart.Com
The Tablet
Image: Breitbart.Com

In the previous census in 2011, "Catholic" was the top option, with "no religion" at the bottom of the list, below a large "other please specify" box.

The change came after rationalist and sceptic groups lobbied the Australian Bureau of Statistics, following the 2011 census.

The groups argued the change would improve accuracy.

In the 2011 census, 5.4 million people picked the "Catholic" box and a total of 13.1 million Australians (61.1 per cent) indicated their religion was some type of Christianity.

Meanwhile, 4.7 million (22.2 per cent) of Australians picked "no religion", or wrote down agnosticism, atheism, humanism or rationalism.

The next Australian census is in 2016, with results being known the following year.

A change in the percentage of people affiliating as Christians could impact Australian government spending programmes, such as school chaplaincy services.

When a similar change was introduced into the New Zealand census, the country's Christians lost their position as the majority and the number of people recording no religion jumped from 35 per cent to 42 per cent, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Placing the 'no religion' box at the top of the list could swing the results significantly, according to Associate Professor Roger Wilkins at the University of Melbourne, who produces the annual Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey.

"People are looking for the first option that they think they can fit into . . . those sorts of people who are not strongly committed one way or the other are particularly prone to being influenced by the order of responses," he told Fairfax Media.

Managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Lyle Shelton, said the order of answers on the census form was irrelevant, but he did expect to see a continuing decline in the number of Christians.

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: ID blog

Family First national director Bob McCoskrie is questioning the reasoning behind the move to introduce a new gender category.

He says it only fuelled gender-identity politics.

"I've seen even trans advocate group say that it's open to harmful misuse or misinterpretation, so when those groups themselves are saying that it's problematic, then I think Statistics NZ are going to realise just how problematic the whole issue is."

He said Statistics New Zealand should stick to what is objective and measurable, namely male and female categories only. Continue reading

The other two are France and the Netherlands.

These are some of the predictions made by Washington-based think-tank, Pew Research Centre, in a recently published report.

The report predicted that by 2050

• In the Asia Pacific region, the proportion of freethinkers will decline from 21% in 2010 to 17%
• The proportion of Christians in New Zealand will decline from 57% to 44.7 %
• The proportion of unaffiliated in New Zealand will reach 45.1%, making this category the largest "religion," by a whisker.
• In North America the proportion of people unaffiliated with any religion will increase from 19% to 23%
• In Europe the proportion of unaffiliated will increase from 17% to almost 26%.

These projections, which take into account demographic factors such as fertility, age composition and life expectancy, forecast that people with no religion will make up about 13% of the world's population in 2050, down from roughly 16% as of 2010.

This is largely attributable to the fact that religious "nones" are, on average, older and have fewer children than people who are affiliated with a religion.

Listen to Radio New Zealand's "The Panel" discussion, Decline of religion

Other predictions include:

• 40 million people are predicted to switch to Christianity, while 106 million are predicted to leave.
• The number of Muslims will grow from 1.6 billion in 2010, to 2.76 billion by 2050.
• The growth in those choosing Christianity will grow far slower, rising from 2.17 billion, to 2.76.
• The percentage of Christians remains at 31.4 %, while the percentage of Muslims rises from just 23.2% to 29.7%
• Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion - though increasing in countries such as the United States and France - will make up a declining share of the world's total population.
• The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in 2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they are today.
• In Europe, Muslims will make up 10% of the overall population.
• India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia.
• In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050.
• Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion in the United States. Muslims will be more numerous in than people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion.
• Four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The number of countries with a Christian majority is expected to decline from 159 to 151 by 2050.

Pew's researchers took six years to analyse information from about 2,500 data sources, including censuses, demographic surveys, general population surveys and other studies.

Source

• PewResearchCentre
• Pewresearch.org
• channelnewsasia
• Radio New Zealand
• Radio New Zealand
• Image: The Huffington Post

It was an 18th birthday present, and he wanted to wear it straight away. But, as a teenager "mucking around … wasting potential" in west Auckland, he was dressed up with nowhere to go - but church.

"I just turned up. And I pretty much haven't missed a Sunday since."

It's a "funny story", he knows. "But when I got there, it was just real. I was connecting with God, I felt His presence, and I felt that was what was missing. Out of that, faith became personal for me."

But that service was "nothing like this", Cameron agrees, nodding his head towards the source of thumping bass on the other side of the wall.

We're sitting in a changing room at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua, which is serving as a makeshift green room - complete with a rider of Phoenix juices and scented candles - before Cameron takes to the stage to give his sermon as lead pastor of Arise Church.

"Sermon" may not even be the right word for it. An Arise service is part rock concert, part variety show, part stand-up gig ("To quote from Bruce Almighty…").

It's hard at times - like a five-minute tangent when Cameron pulls a pastor on stage for an impromptu rendition of the Frozen theme - to pinpoint just how and where the Bible fits into this slick, enormous production.

There are volunteers to guide you to a car park and a seat in the stadium; a 14-piece band, featuring seven enviably confident and well-dressed young singers; a camera crew, a smoke machine, a big screen.

God works in mysterious ways, and many of them demand a multi-plug. Continue reading.

Source: The Wireless

Image: Arise Church

Statistics from the 2013 census released on 5 May show that in 2013, the median age at first marriage was 30.1 years for men and 28.6 years for women - up from 27.3 and 25.2 years in 1993.

Although the median age at first marriage has increased over the last 20 years, most of the increase occurred before 2004 and the median age has remained relatively constant since then.

In 1971, when marriage rates peaked, the median age at first marriage was 23.0 years for men and 20.8 years for women.

Other Key Facts

Marriages

• Fewer New Zealand residents married; New Zealand residents registered 19,237 marriages in the December 2013 year down from 20,521 in 2012. Between 2003 and 2012, the annual number of resident marriages averaged 21,108.
• Of the 19,237 marriages were registered to New Zealand residents 209 were same-sex marriages.
• There were 13,312 first marriages, 5,825 remarriages, and 100 couples (both same-sex and opposite-sex) who transferred their civil union to a marriage.
• The general marriage rate was 10.9 marriages per 1,000 not-married population aged 16 years and over.
• An additional 2,416 marriages were registered to overseas residents - of these, 146 were same-sex marriages.

Divorces

• 8,279 married couples were granted divorces in New Zealand.
• There were 9.4 divorces for every 1,000 estimated existing marriages.
• Annual divorce statistics do not give a complete picture of the number of marriages ending in divorce.

Analysis of divorce statistics by year of marriage shows that just over one-third (35 percent) of New Zealanders who married in 1988 had divorced before their silver wedding anniversary (25 years). This compares with 32 percent for those who married in 1978, and 26 percent for those who married in 1968.

Civil unions

• 187 civil unions were registered to New Zealand residents - of these, 121 were same-sex unions.
• 46 civil unions were registered to overseas residents.
• 40 couples dissolved their civil union.

Source

• Statistic New Zealand
• Image: Great-Marriages.org

According to statistics from the California-based Wine Institute, the Vatican consumed 74 litres of wine per person in 2012.

This is about double the per capita consumption of Italy as a whole. A standard bottle of wine is about .75 litres, so the Vatican annual consumption was the equivalent of 105 bottles per person.

Italian press reports attribute the wine intake to the Vatican having older residents who are overwhelmingly male, are highly educated and tend to eat communally - all factors that tend to lead toward higher wine consumption.

Some believe the use of wine for Communion also contributed to the figure, but this was dismissed by other commentators.

Another factor is the Vatican's small size that makes it easy for per-capita figures to be distorted by the activities of a small group, or in the case of the Vatican, a single supermarket that sells wines almost tax-free.

Other microstates, including Andorra (46 litres per person) and the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, off the coast of Canada (44 litres per capita), still fall far short of Vatican levels.

Luxembourg, another small country - though with a population of 535,000 that's many times that of the Vatican's estimated population of 800 - is second on the list, with a per capita consumption of around 56 litres.

France and Italy each have a little more than half the per-capita consumption of the Holy See in 2012.

In 2011, the Vatican's per capita wine consumption was 62 litres.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Guardian
• The Independent
• Image: Topnews

Details of the declines have been revealed for the first time by the compilation of statistics for these sacraments over the past century.

The figures were compiled by the Latin Mass Society, whose chairman said they "show unambiguously that something went seriously wrong in the Church in England and Wales in the 1960s and 1970s".

Continue reading

The Church Census, which will cover all churches of all denominations or none, will be taken in March-April.

New Zealand's 72 Census Districts will be covered

Massey University's associate professor of history, Peter Lineham, says there is no formal register of churches.

‘‘It's quite amazing, we just don't know.''

Sample surveys done by Massey University and Bible Society New Zealand have shown 14 per cent of New Zealanders go to church weekly and 20 per cent go at least once a month.

Source

• FarifaxDigital
• Baptist

Williamson was talking about a new section for statistics about Maori that has been launched on the Statistics New Zealand's website, with versions in English and Maori. Print copies can be ordered

He said that in many cases, people's opinions are not borne out by facts and he hopes this resource will help clear up misconceptions.

Everything from agriculture to cultural identity can be found in one section called Te Ao Marama 2012.

The government statistician, Geoff Bascand, says the new section provides a snapshot of Maori in New Zealand and gives an insight into their well-being and development,.

Most of the information already existed on the site, but it was often difficult to access or understand.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• Radio New Zealand
• Image: Te Ao Marama