Why Reading Half a Graph Isn't Responsible Pastoral Leadership

Sunday afternoon I posted on Facebook that the morning's worship service from the 2018 session of the Missouri Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church was by far the most offensive and disturbing thing that I'd experienced all weekend. Several people asked questions about why that was. I'm getting around to answering them, but meanwhile, I want to mention a source used by the preacher, Rev. Jim Preisig. It's a 2015 story from the Washington Post about a Pew Research Center study showing projected worldwide religious trends through the year 2050. You can read the article for yourself here, and I'd encourage you to. It's not terribly long.

I mention it because Rev. Preisig took part of a graph from the article as his starting point--the left graph from the set of graphs presented in the article, shown below.


He took this graph, and the "nearly 40% growth" it showed (if you do the math, it's actually 34.56%), and pulled the following quote to show that the Christian Church wasn't dying:

"Sociologists jumped the gun when they said the growth of modernization would bring a growth of secularization and unbelief, Goldstone said. “That is not what we’re seeing,” he said. “People want and need religion.”

He then told us that this was good news—that the “nones” and the “dones” were just waiting to flood through our doors if we followed his program (which included kicking little old ladies out of the choir because their voices are offensive to visitors).

I point this out because it's not what the article actually says.  

Rev. Preisig failed to present the full finding of the study.  A complete reading of the article and graphs shows the projected growth of Islam outpacing that of Christianity. Populations are growing faster in Muslim countries, and that same graph shows a 72.5% increase in Islam during 2010-2050. The graph on the right shows that by the year 2050 Christians and Muslims will share a roughly equal portion of the worldwide population. Per the article,

“Other than Buddhists, all of the world’s major religious groups are poised for at least some growth in the coming decades. By 2050, the number of Muslims around the world will nearly equal the number of Christians. Pew projections suggest that Muslims will make up nearly one-third of the world’s population of about 9 billion people. “The culture of the West is going to become increasingly nonreligious at the same time the culture in the Global South persists in being religious,” said David Voas of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. “Repercussions will be global.”

I know some of you are probably squirming in your seats right now. I get it. We are used to our way being the "normal" way, so this is an uncomfortable thought, but that's why it's important to talk about.  These are people God also calls Beloved.

For the record, I believe people want and need religion. I believe we are a meaning-making people, and religion provides a way to make sense of the events of life. I believe connection to the life-force that moves the universe, which followers of Christianity have experienced as the Triune God, makes us better individuals and better neighbors. I even share our conference's desire to create "new places for new people" and its vision to reach disinterested folks with the good news of Christ. However, I do not think coddling white, Christian America into believing that that growth will happen in our churches and bring about a return to the prosperity of the past makes for a quality sermon. Comforting as the thought may be, that ship has sailed, and to pretend otherwise is irresponsible leadership, not to mention poor pastoral care.

Further, making our box of acceptable Christian belief smaller by proclaiming that “Jesus is the only way” (or “contemporary worship is the only way” or “traditional values are the only way”…) is neither in the spirit of John Wesley--who admonished, "in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity"--nor an effective strategy if our annual conference is truly serious about “creating new places for new people”. A smaller box can’t fit more people inside of it, and the "nones" and "dones" are going to stay away until we figure out how to welcome our multi-religious, multi-gendered, sexually diverse neighbors and treat them as Beloved.

I am truly saddened and alarmed by the direction I saw our conference leadership take this weekend. It was hidden behind lots of talk of unity, but the stance was regressive. A protective stance has never been what true Christianity has been about. Christianity has never been about calculating the number of churches you can lose in a disagreement and still remain solvent. Jesus was never solvent. True Christianity has never been about choosing the acceptable boundaries past which you will not go. Jesus transgressed every boundary the religious authorities presented, because that’s what it means to create the world through God’s eyes. If we want to follow Jesus we will have to do the same, and it will lead us into places we didn’t want to go with people we’d rather cut loose. That includes Muslims, regressive leaders, and involuntarily discontinued Provisional Elders.