I'm always interested in stats, even rough ones, so when I read the following from Peter Carrell, an Anglican who because of his job moves around from church to church congregation regularly, I was intrigued. He noted this about one church he does manage to get to fairly often:
Yesterday, participating in a service at church #1, I was very pleasantly surprised to find yet more new people than when I was there a month ago. I also performed some mental arithmetic: 80% of the large congregation were under the age of 60, with around 50% under the age of 20. By contrast, when I first visited that service several years ago, I would say 80% of the congregation were over the age of 60.
He also makes a comment elsewhere about a'religious' survey that's had some promotion recently:
It seems incredible that researchers could come up with such a conclusion [that religion is set for extinction] when other evidence points in a different direction. For instance the secularization thesis (that Western countries were becoming more and more secular) has found itself undermined by both a rise in enthusiasm among Christians as well as by immigration drawing in active adherents of many faiths.
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