I just finished reading through the just released American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS 2008) Summary Report by Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar. The findings aren’t too shocking for those in ministry. We’ve witnessed and even battled some of the findings over the last decade. There was a significant decline in the number of American adults who identified themselves a Christian; America is becoming less religious. Those claiming no religious preference including atheist and agnostic continue to increase. While main-line protestant traditions saw a significant decline in self-identification, Baptists realized a moderate decline. I found Table 8 (Age Composition of Religious Traditions 2008) to be disconcerting. Baptists are graying at an alarming rate. Out of all of the religious traditions identified in the study, Baptists have the smallest young adult population by comparison to total composition. This would indicate that Baptists are not attracting younger members for the future. If you’d like to read through the findings, you can follow the link here. If you have problems downloading the PDF file, just follow this link to the report site.
