“Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. That’s something like 12 percent of the population, and it represents the largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history.” Religious abuse, moral failure of church leaders, and the pressures of culture that lead to deconstruction of faith all contribute to “dechurching.” Surprisingly, research reveals a less apparent reason driving the statistic cited above: a slow drift away from church participation.

In this episode, Autumn and Hunter discuss an Atlantic article by Jake Meador that examines this slow drift. Meador suggests a response to waning participation in American churches. He states that churches in our cultural climate must call their people to a more committed, robust, interdependent way of being the body of Christ.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

"The Misunderstood Reason Millions of Americans Stopped Going to Church" by Jake Meador

"The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?" by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, et al