Parsing the Church

As believers in Christ, we are called to be one body and to be bound together in one Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who enables us to walk in love toward each other and the world around us. Colossians 2 states this:
18 Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind,
19 and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.

When it comes right down to it, it is not worldly knowledge that is beneficial to us nor Biblical knowledge that is not rightly applied, it is the relationship with Christ through which we learn the Scriptures and grow in the Lord. We are identified with Christ and what He did for us through His death and resurrection, and if we embrace that, it can be a point of unity - there is much about which we agree in the Spirit, yet we have to be careful not to allow the world's wisdom or spiritual pride to divide us.

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If we have accepted Christ as our Lord and Savior and have been born again, we now belong to the body of Christ, a powerful organism through which God changes hearts and changes our culture. And, we are to be identified not by the labels we wear, but by the name of Jesus. 1st Corinthians 12 states:
12 For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free--and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.

We recognize that local churches throughout the body of Christ come in all shapes and sizes - we belong and participate in our local churches, some wear the name "evangelical," others identify with a particular denomination.  You have evangelical Baptists, Methodists, AME, and other flavors.  

The important thing is not the name of the church or denomination - or lack of a denomination - that you wear, but whether or not you are clothed in Christ.

The Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, has offered some unusual statistics that seem to be outliers in light of statistical data that has been available for the last few years.  A ReligionNews.com article states:

Clergy and other faith leaders will be perhaps most interested in PRRI’s finding that religiously unaffiliated Americans, or “nones” in religion demography parlance, have lost ground, making up just 23% of the country. The complex group — which includes atheists, agnostics and some people who say they pray daily but don’t claim a specific faith tradition — peaked at 25.5% of the population in 2018.

White Christians, meanwhile, have expanded their share of the population, particularly white mainline Protestants. That group sits at 16.4%, an increase from 13% in 2016, whereas white evangelicals — who PRRI delineated from white mainliners using a methodology researchers said is commonly utilized by major pollsters — now represent about 14.5% of the population, down from a peak of 23% in 2006. White Catholics now hover around 11.7%, up from a 2018 low of 10.9%.

The survey apparently doesn't attempt to identify why this is occurring, although PRRI CEO Robert Jones cites what he calls "circumstantial evidence" suggesting that there is a shift from evangelical churches to more mainline denominations.  And, I would submit that self-identifying evangelicals belong to a variety of denominations, not just those that might be considered to be "evangelical."

At GetReligion.org, Richard Ostling, known apparently as the "Religion Guy," offers these thoughts:

Here is the key: This PRRI survey at hand identified Mainliners by what they are not instead of what they are.

The 50,334 bilingual interviews (a huge sample with minuscule margin of error) conducted throughout 2020 asked, "Would you describe yourself as a 'born again' or 'evangelical Christian,' or not?" Non-Hispanic white Protestants who said no were labeled Mainline. The Guy would observe that "born again" can miss Evangelicals raised in the faith who never experienced a specific moment of conversion or Evangelicals who think of themselves under other labels.

Ostling does point out that:

Some might wonder if PRRI's liberal cast slanted its results. After all, founder and C.E.O. Robert P. Jones is the author of "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity." PRRI's survey provided ammo for Michelle Goldberg, a liberal weather-vane columnist with The New York Times, who pretty much identifies evangelicalism as white nationalism and remains "frightened" by the "religious right" even if it's supposedly declining.

Seems to The Guy PRRI's numbers do not lie.

But. The media should understand that this survey catches popular moods and how people identify in socio-political terms as much as by religious belief and practice.

He did refer to a piece by Ryan Burge in his article; and I found another analysis by Burge at the Religion Unplugged website in which he wrote:

The one finding from their surveys that got the attention of lots of people on social media was that Protestants who do not identify as evangelical Christians have risen fairly substantially over the last few years, and now they outnumber the share who identify as evangelical Protestants. But that was immediately met with some skepticism by those who dug into the details of their classification methodology. In short, the question they face is one that all quantitative scholars of American religion face: if you are a Protestant, but you don’t want to be identified as an evangelical, do those people form a coherent religious group?

Burge points out that PRRI employed a strategy in which two questions are posed to respondents. He says, "The first question is about broad religious tradition," and, "Then, respondents are asked if they identify as 'evangelical or born-again' or not. The sorting is done as follows:

If they say that they are Protestants and self-identify as evangelical, then they are evangelicals. But, if they say they are Protestant but don’t identify as evangelical, then they are mainline. Using this approach compared to the denominational strategy can lead to slightly different estimates.

It appears to be a matter of semantics and labels. Yes, there are denominational structures in place and a wide variety of non-denominational churches, as well.  The so-called "mainline" denominations have been in a state of membership decline for a number of years.  But, there may be evangelicals who have chosen to affiliate with those churches.  Keep in mind, "evangelical" is not a denomination - it is a system of beliefs based on how someone interacts with Scripture.  Our standing with Christ is not based on where we go to church, but on whether we are born again and part of His Church.

I do sense another manifestation of the media's delight in reporting the decline of what it refers to as the "evangelicals."  The media and many in politics have used the term "evangelical," politicized it, and weaponized it against the Church.  We should be involved in speaking truth to our culture, and politics is a vehicle that can be used to do that. There will be those who disagree, and unfortunately, we have this trend now where people seek to silence those with whom they disagree. That is certainly not the way of the cross, and we should not be fearful of disagreement, but so convinced about the authority and reliability of Biblical ideas that we can skillfully and compassionately defend our faith.  And, we can demonstrate the work of the faith through us by ministering to the people who are brought our way.