The Most Christian Nation on Earth?

Is America still a Christian nation?

Since the early 1950s, the "Most Christian Nation on Earth" has closed over 8,000 churches and lost over 25 million members. According to a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: "The proportion of the (American) population that is Protestant has declined markedly in recent decades."

To say the least. According to Pew, in just the past year the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has seen its membership drop by 5.9 percent to 4,274,855 members. If that trend continues, the Lutheran Church in America will likely be extinct by 2032. Pew also reports that the United Methodist Church saw its membership decrease by 1.22 percent over the past year while the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, has experienced a drop of .015 in its membership since 2011.

While the SBC's membership loss seems paltry compared to the Evangelical Lutheran Church, it nevertheless continues a downtrend in American church membership over the past 60 years. What makes that membership decline so startling is the fact that America's population in 1950 was 150,697,361 compared to 312,780,968 as of January, 2012. (U.S. Census Bureau) Tragically, while America's population has increased since 1950, its Christian population has decreased. Obviously, the biblical gospel not only hasn't been embraced by the majority of those who have joined America since 1950, it has been rejected as a relic from the distant past. 

In other words, Christianity is viewed disparagingly by a growing number of young people today as your grandfather's old-fashioned and outdated religion. What happened? Simply this--the Christian Church in America long ago stopped contending for the faith as the apostle Jude encouraged all Christians to do nearly 2,000 years ago in order to keep the faith relevant to a dark world where falsehood reigned. 

Here's the context of Jude's message: "Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord." (Jude 1:3-4)

Jude's message was also prophetic: that unless the Church stayed awake and paid close attention to what was being preached in her pulpits, deceivers would slip in under the guise of Christian ministers and begin perverting the gospel. And that's certainly happened. In the 1950s, a popular minister named Dr. Robert Schuller--he of the Crystal Cathedral located in Southern California, began teaching that all paths led to God and that Christ died for our self-esteem rather than our sins. Though Schuller was a heretic, he led many people astray by his charming and charismatic personality. And there have been many deceivers since Schuller such as Paul Yonggi Cho, Sun Myung Moon, William Branham, Paul Cain, Benny Hinn, Morris Cerullo etc.

The biblical gospel that stressed God's grace to mankind through Jesus Christ's death on the cross for all sin and his resurrection from the dead was replaced by the false gospels of self esteem, wealth, prosperity and pleasure. As a result, Christians began leaving the church in droves beginning in the 1950s. If Christ was nothing more than a means to wealth, pleasure and prosperity, then you certainly didn't need to go to a church to get that. And as the influence of the gospel waned, crime exploded across America, beginning in the late 1950s.

How do America's churches reverse this trend? Simply by getting back to the biblical gospel that the apostle Paul revealed is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." (Romans 1:16) Had the Christian Church in America not forgotten that 60 years ago, then it wouldn't be so irrelevant today and facing extinction in many places.