The Great Dechurching
Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?
By Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan P. Burge
Zondervan, 272 pages, $29.99
A couple of years ago, I visited with families in my congregation who had drifted away during COVID. On a warm fall day, I stopped by the home of one family with young children. They had formerly been involved in Sunday school. I had baptized the youngest and given first Holy Communion to two of them. The father had been involved in the finance team, and the mother would bring meals to the sick and new mothers. I told the mother that she and her family were missed and that I would love to have them back. After an awkward pause, she said, “Things changed during COVID, and we like it better that way.”
I have often puzzled over this answer (Does she not believe in God anymore?), but at the time, I was at a loss for words. She and her family are among a growing number of people who are leaving their churches.
Then I heard an interview on NPR with the authors of The Great Dechurching, a book on this phenomenon. Hearing the interview, and finding it compelling enough to purchase and read the book, I recommend it for all clergy who ponder why people are leaving.
Jim Davis and Michael Graham are evangelical pastors in Orlando, Florida. They strike me as very balanced politically and sensitive to issues of race and human sexuality, so Episcopal clergy can see them, if not as allies, at least as sympathetic fellow clerics.
The book centers on the statistic that 40 million people have left the church in the last 25 years. Before leaving, these 40 million people said they attended a church service at least once a month. This startling statistic covers not only those who have been directly harmed by the church (“dechurched casualties,” in the authors’ words), but the far greater number who are “casually dechurched.” In the authors’ estimation, the “great dechurching” is a reversal of the great revivals in American Christianity like the First and Second Great Awakenings.
The authors wanted to ensure that their observations on this subject were based on empirical evidence and not assumptions. They asked two professional social scientists, Dr. Ryan P. Burge and Dr. Paul Djupe, to conduct a survey of 1,000 respondents on why they had left church. The results are fascinating. They suggest that many have left for what might be considered trivial or casual reasons. The survey showed furthermore that many say they would be willing to return to church under the right circumstances.
Drawing on this evidence, the authors write five broad profiles, each typifying a category of those who have left the church:
- cultural Christians who were only minimally committed;
- dechurched evangelicals who were once highly committed and still basically orthodox but have drifted away from the church for multiple reasons;
- “exvangelicals” who have felt harmed in some way by the church, either in the failure of its leadership or in the tone of its teachings about culture, politics, or sexuality;
- BIPOC individuals, a quickly growing demographic of American minorities who do not easily fit into churches’ racially and socially segregated congregational landscape;
- and mainline Protestants or Roman Catholics, whose profiles match considerably.
I suspect many Episcopal clergy will find similarities with dechurched people in their congregation. The authors admit the situation is dire but not hopeless. In the second half of the book, they offer constructive strategies.
The strategies are of mixed value, given the ecclesiastical distance in our respective contexts. Nevertheless, clergy and thoughtful lay leaders will benefit from realizing that dechurching is a larger social trend and not a personal judgment. If we can escape our reactive impulses to people who leave our churches (“They don’t like me”), we may move toward addressing the challenge and developing strategies to address the growing needs of the dechurched, who experience higher levels of loneliness, depression, and spiritual malaise.
The Rev. John Mason Lock is the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Red Bank, New Jersey.
A lifelong Episcopalian nurtured in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, he attended the University of Delaware, where he majored in English and minored in Jewish studies. He received his M.Div. from Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, in 2008. He served as curate for five years at All Souls Episcopal Church in Oklahoma City. He is the proud husband of Bonnie and father of four.
