Why People Are Leaving the Church

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, hello. Welcome to The Table podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture. My name is Bill Hendricks. I'm the executive director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center.  

In 2020, the Public Religion Research Institute came out with a study that was entitled Census of American Religion 2020, and it was an unprecedented county by county look at religious identity and diversity in the United States. And the research found that over the last few decades, the white Christian proportion of the US population has declined by nearly one third hitting an all-time low in 2018 of 42%. And white evangelical Protestants, which are the oldest religious group in the country, have experienced the greatest drop in affiliation over the past decade. That's shrunk from 23% in 2006 to 14% in 2020, which leads to the question that we want to discuss today on the table, why are people leaving the church? And to help us do that, it's my deep privilege to welcome and introduce Dr. Sam Perry, who is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma. He also has his PhD from the University of Chicago and is a DTS grad getting his THM in 2008. Sam, welcome to The Table podcast. 

Sam Perry: 

It's a privilege. Thanks for having me. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So we want to get into this whole issue of why people are leaving the church, but even before we jump in there, I always like to get the backstory of how you, well, what was your background? Where was growing up for you? And particularly because you're a sociologist, what piqued your curiosity and an interest in pursuing sociology? 

Sam Perry: 

Sure. So I grew up in a Christian home certainly. My dad went to Dallas Seminary in the late '70s and early '80s. He and my mom met on crusade staff and I was raised in Fellowship Bible Church in Richardson, Texas. And so raised as a Christian certainly, raised in the church by godly parents who love the Lord and were a tremendous example for me. I would say a kind of early interest in the kinds of things that I study now came from my own experience and my family. My parents adopted two African American girls when I was four and six years old, and they were not sisters, but they were both adopted at different times. And because we adopted my oldest adopted sister Beth when I was four, I mean I grew up never not knowing having Black sisters. 

It was just something where this was dinner table conversation for us to talk about issues of race and identity, how people were perceiving us as a family and the various kinds of issues that we faced. Issues of prejudice and in some ways that alienated people in my own family who were from Alabama or from different parts of the country where that was just a little bit more taboo. And so I think I grew up with something of a proto-sociological eye for understanding experiences of diversity and how faith shapes families and communities. Going into college, I was a communications major, I wanted to be a pastor at the time, but I also was just fascinated by sociology because it was asking the kinds of questions that I was really asking myself my whole life about racial prejudice, race relations and faith and those kinds of things. 

I went to seminary at DTS and I had a great experience at Dallas Seminary. I was a New Testament major and it was tremendously fun, learned. I had a passion for research and writing and it was actually at that time I think God was redirecting my own vision of my own gifting, my own understanding of gifting. I'd always loved teaching and preaching, but I think it wasn't until I came to seminary at DTS where I understood that, "Oh wow, I actually really enjoy research and writing and I'm really good at it and I think I have a gift for that kind thing." I was counseled against getting my PhD in New Testament studies by some seminary professors who said, "You may stand a better chance of finding employment..." I don't even know if I should say that, but they said, "You stand a better chance of finding employment if you go some other route." And for me that was easy. It was just I love sociology, I want to pursue that. And I was fortunate to get into the University of Chicago, which is a great program. And now University of Oklahoma was my first job out of grad school, so that's where I've been. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Of course nowadays a college student decides they're going to study sociology. People are like, "What? Do you want to be unemployed?" 

Sam Perry: 

Yeah. Unless you get a PhD in it. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Exactly. 

Sam Perry: 

That's pretty true. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, that's fascinating. So you're a committed Christian. You've had training in theology as well as sociology. Let me ask a question, and in asking this question, I don't mean to insult your intelligence, I mean more to expose my own ignorance, define what sociology actually means and what it's all about if you can? 

Sam Perry: 

Yeah, absolutely. And this is something I'm very cautious in explaining to my own students because I think they come in to my classes with their own perceptions of what a sociologist is and does. And some of that has been my own experience. So I dropped my first undergraduate sociology class because the guy I took the class from, if you Google a picture of Karl Marx right now, I mean the guy looked like Karl Marx and frankly spoke a lot like Karl Marx, or I perceived he was a wild-eyed guy that I felt like was very, and I was a Christian in college. I mean, I felt like the guy was very antagonistic. I felt like he was provocative on purpose. I didn't feel like there was a lot of science to that social science going on. And it wasn't until I actually took some more sociology classes that I said, "Oh no, actually this could be quite data driven and interested in gathering evidence and information about our social world in a way that is productive and helpful." And that is the kind of sociology that I aim to do. 

I tell my students that I am a social scientist, that I am interested in gathering facts and information and data so that I can draw informed conclusions about how the world works. That does not necessarily mean it, and in fact, I should make that case stronger, I stress to my students that if I'm doing my job right, the information that I share should inform your faith, but it really doesn't speak to the empirical reality of your faith. I don't speak in terms of ontological or epistemological truths. That's not the job of a social scientist, my job is to speak to the human side of everything that we experience and what we can gather information about or empirical evidence about. And so that's how I see sociology as opposed to say something like psychology, which is focused primarily gathering information and data about how the human brain works and interaction with others. Sociology is far more interested in gathering data about society and the collective and the aggregate and how social systems and social environments shape the individual and vice versa. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Yeah, I was going to ask how sociology contributes to a particularly Christian understanding of the world. 

Sam Perry: 

Yeah, I write about that all the time and hopefully I'm persuasive enough to sell what I do a little bit. But I think sociology contributes to a Christian understanding of the world in that I think we get lost as Protestants and evangelical Protestants. I think we come with our own cultural predispositions to think in terms and also as Americans. We tend to value the idea of the individual as somebody who is almost in isolation and somebody who is an agent and making decisions on their own and that God deals with on an individual basis and their own personal faith journey. Sociologists, I think come with a perspective of we're all embedded in relationships and contexts and those relationships and social context and those experiences shape the interiority of our lives and they shape our expectations and they shape our culture. 

I would say sociology has the most to contribute in terms of how Christians understand culture and understand the cultures that end up shaping us and the decisions that we make. Also, sociology powerfully shapes our understanding of human demographic processes and transitions that are powerfully shaping our own religious reality today in the United States in ways that we often don't understand. And sociology also contributes an understanding of social structure and that is how the organization, the structural organization of our relationships, the rules, the resources, the laws and policies, they shape our own experience as individuals. And so I think we would be remiss as Christians if we did not acknowledge a lot of the truths that I think a sociological perspective can bring to the table without becoming. And I think I get the question a lot, or at least I have, not so much anymore, but I've gotten the question before of, "Wow, you're a sociologist, so when did you lose your faith?" Or something like that. The implication being something like, "I can't imagine a sociologist and a committed believer being the same human person. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Being in the same body. 

Sam Perry: 

Yeah, and I think that is because of an assumption of sociology that is unfortunate, that assumes all sociologists are secular leftists or something like that. And it also comes I think with an unfortunate assumption that all committed Christians must be right wing Republicans. And yes, if that is what you believe, if that is what you understand as a Christian believer, if that what you understand by a sociologist, then I get why you would feel like those two things in conflict. But there is a lot that of diversity among sociologists and Christians that I think that is understood rightly. I think both can be good sociologists. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So by the name which includes social. It sounds to me like sociology forces us to get beyond our individual perspective. It reminds us that we are in relationships with a whole world of people, whole society of people, whole culture of people. And by stepping back to take that more coordinated, the collective view, we often can see things that we would miss if we're simply in our own self-absorbed perspective and just taking care of what's in front of us. 

Sam Perry: 

I think that's not only just to remind us, but I think it should correct our paradigm to understand human beings as fundamentally social creatures, that there is no hypothetical individual living off on their own like a person who is raised by wolves without the influence of their parents and their community and their environment. And there are not only the influences of our kind of immediate community, but there are layers upon layers of social influence, both within our global and national and familial community-based context that all have something to say about the kind of people that we end up being and that we contribute to in our own ways. And so that isn't to say that human beings don't have agency and matter of fact, this is one of the constant sociological conversations. To what extent do human beings have agency and contribute to their own futures and to what extent is there a social structure that is so determinative in the kinds of things we end up being? And there's an appropriate middle, complicated kind of nexus of individuals making decisions and empowered by God to be agents and to make voluntary choices, and at the same time doing that within a context that constrains a lot of those choices and their information. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's fascinating. Well, today we want to focus that inquiry specifically on the choices that people make, whether to identify as Christians or not. And what's interesting is that fewer and fewer people are doing that. The number of religiously unaffiliated Americans so-called "nones" is actually on the rise now and it hovers around 23% to 25% of the population. I'm curious to the extent you're in touch with that development, and if so, what's behind those numbers? How do we have the percentage of Christians diminishing in the big picture while people of no faith or not necessarily not of faith, but not of the Christian faith or any other designated religion, seems to be growing now upwards to quarter of the population and particularly among younger people? 

Sam Perry: 

Yes. I think there's a lot of information out there, and so I'm happy to share the available data, what I think social sciences are able to be concerned with broader aggregate surveys and the kinds of trends that we see. I will say I think a truth that needs to be brought up, and we're not remotely the first people to ask that question, but I think a great book that I want to plug here. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Thank you. 

Sam Perry: 

Back from the early '90s, Exit Interviews from Bill Hendricks is on my shelf. An important truth that you, I think, drive home from your own interviews toward the conclusion of the book is that there is no one reason that people leave the church, and there are multiple stories. And people are individuals and each individual has their own kind of story and experience and so we should be cautious about speaking so confidently in the aggregate that we just explain away everybody's experience. I think that was an important point to recognize in your book, and I think it's still true 30 years later subsequently. 

I think some new developments though in terms of this process, one, we should observe that what is taking place in the United States is actually a delayed process of what has gone on in western societies for a long, long time. A gradual process of secularization and not just secularization as in the institutions of our society are gradually becoming disestablished or disconnected from any kind of religious faith, but that individuals are, say attending church less or more likely to identify as nothing in particular. We don't see a really rapid rise in say, atheists and agnostics. I mean, I think Gallup has come out with some recent data to suggest that has seen an uptick recently, but other data sources don't suggest that this has been driven by atheists and agnostics. It's been more people just disaffiliating and saying, "I'm nothing in particular." It doesn't necessarily mean that they are. 

And as I think as you point out in your book 30 years ago, what we're seeing now, I mean it's similar in that we don't necessarily see that people are not praying or not interested in spiritual things or that they don't believe anything at all. Actually, the percentage of Americans who believe in life after death has stayed flat right, it's right around in the seventies and it doesn't move and it doesn't even move among young people. So that is almost a core belief that does not change, but we do see a disconnect from say formal religious affiliation and that being a leading identity. So there's a couple of things going on there. 

One that I think is a relatively, I don't mean a new development, but I think one that we are now coming to grips with, and this is just becoming clearer, is something called the backlash hypothesis. And that is a result of... If I could back up a little bit, if we could think of secularization in terms of our religious identities becoming less salient in terms of the primary identities that organize all of our other identities. So it used to be the case where, I mean Americans were divided up into Protestant, Catholic and Jew, and these were central identities and not only just Protestant, but the denomination that you were involved with, these were important identities. You were a member of the Methodist church and that was something that mattered to you and it distinguished and you didn't marry Presbyterians or something like that. You know what I mean? It was something that was a central organizing identity, and those kinds of identities cut across politics in ways that they do not now. I have some data on this that I share with my students. 

In the 1970s, there was a nearly identical percentage of evangelicals in the Democratic Party as were in the Republican Party, you stood to be just as likely to be an evangelical among the Democrats as among the Republicans. What has taken place within the last four decades, within my own lifetime is that there has been an increasing process of political sorting to where our political identities and our ideological identities, liberal, conservative, Republican and Democrat have become the primary identities that are organizing all of our other social identities and that includes religion to where you've got conservative Christians who are becoming more, not only just aligned with the Republican Party or conservative politics, but everybody knows it. That's becoming something that is common. White conservative Christians are Republicans. They tend to vote that way, and that's how they identify. 

What that has brought about among young people in particular, and that has actually been a variety of different studies, you can see this in a variety of different data sets. You can see in an experimental data, you can see it in survey data that follows people over a period of time, that young people are making a conscious choice as they go into college. And young people tend to be a little bit more progressive in their views and in the society that we grow up in. And young people are making choices about the kind of people that they're going to be religiously throughout the rest of their lives. And they are saying, "Well, if being a Christian means being a right wing conservative or the kind of person that my granddad is or my parents were, then I'm going to go a different direction. This is something that I'm going to disengage from. I'd rather be something else." And so we can actually track that over a period of time. And that is, in fact, what we have seen is young people in particular are choosing their politics before they choose, and this is happening across America, but they choose their politics before their faith identity solidifies in terms of how they want to be moving forward. 

They go to college and it's not just college, it's about coming out of your parents' household. And they engage in the traditional process of what we call institutionalized deviance, where they go to church a little bit less because they're young people. They're out from their parents shelter and historically they always came back, they got married, they got families, they got plugged into middle class life, they came back to church. And that was just kind of a pattern that reproduced itself. 

Nowadays because of this kind of political backlash thesis, you have young people who are saying, "If that is what religion is and I have to be that..." And you actually have people who are saying that, "... then that is not the kind of faith experience that I'm interested in." And so they don't walk away from any kind of faith or religious belief, but they walk away from formal affiliation in a way that I think has long-term consequences and that has long-term consequences to the extent that they are raising their kids now in a family that is not connected to. So it's a cyclical thing and it actually becomes something that is self-reinforcing. The more young people walk away now, the more likely they are to have smaller families, but also raise their families disconnected from church and all to where that's just never been something that these young kids have experienced at all. And it's something that is foreign to them, and it becomes something that's self-fulfilling, not a self-fulfilling prophecy, but something that's cyclical and it ramps up. 

Bill Hendricks: 

It feeds on itself. This term "nones" is so fascinating to me because in all of this research that the sociologists do, demographers do, they talk about people who identify as Christian or non-Christian or atheist or whatever, and then people who identify as "nones". I don't know. To me there's a certain sort of inherent contradiction of terms there. My identity is none. I'm not this, I'm not that, but there's no sort of positive affirmation of here's what I am and here's what I do believe and here's what I stand for and here's what I'm committed to. And I get the feeling that there's just a lot of people out there that as you point out, they've looked at what they've been offered and say, "Well, that's not it for me." And from there it's a smorgasbord, all bets are off on where they're going to land if they land. And so there's a lot of people just wandering around. 

Sam Perry: 

Well, I think that category of nothing in particular, or the nones is actually a good indication of what I'm talking about. So as young Americans, other identities are now taking the place of what used to be our primary identities, and that was religion, family, community. Now it's become nationalized politics, and that is who you are, where you fall along that spectrum. So you have a situation in which these people, they aren't self-consciously secular people. In other words, if you ask them, "Are you a secular person?" They might not say it, they might even know what to do with that because it's no longer a master identity to them, it's just something that they don't think about a lot. They would rather emphasize other identities in their own lives because they don't feel connected to a formal religious organization. Matter of fact, they're feeling kind of soured on that. 

Some of it may be, as you pointed out in your book 30 years ago, I mean, I've conducted surveys with my own undergraduate students about their own religious journey and where they are. And some of them do point to scandals or some kind of moral failure in the church that they feel turned off by. My guess though is that I think for a lot of them, the process of identity transition takes place a lot sooner. And they look at scandals in the church as a convenient, "Oh yeah, that's reason enough. 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's the excuse. 

Sam Perry: 

That's reason enough, that's justification enough for me to feel good about this slow drift." In fact, I've asked students, those students who have said that they are less religious now than they were as young people before college, I asked them, "Was it a conscious decision for you to move away from your religious faith or was it more of a slow unconscious drift?" And about two thirds of them say it was more of an unconscious drift in a way. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And that mirrors that C. S. Lewis line about very few people suddenly decide, I'm not going to believe in God anymore. It's a slow drifting away. 

When we look at these macro trends... Well, let me ask this question first because it's the question I'm sure people in your shoes always get asked, and I suppose it's a bit of a trick question. In talking about these things, I hear people say, "Well, the real problem is social media." And I often wonder, so is social media the cause here that's accelerated something that was there? Or is it actually more of a symptom of what was going on elsewhere and just happened to show up with the technology in time to catch that wave? 

Sam Perry: 

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean it's both. I think it's both an amplifier of trends that have already been taking place because I mean, what I've been talking about, and it's both an amplifier and it's a symptom, and I'll speak to both of those. So it's an amplifier in the sense that the broader sorting trends that we have seen, I think people respond on social media because social media is very polarized and it gives a false impression that Americans are a lot more polarized than they are. There is all kinds of talk about social media being an echo chamber where you hear these kinds of really only one-sided narratives and that kind of thing. Really what social media is very good at because it's only the loudest, most polarized people who consistently post on social media. So for example, Twitter or something like that. Most people don't post on Twitter. Most people lurk on Twitter. Most people are just reading what's going on. 

If you're only reading and not really contributing because you're a moderate and you don't really care and you're not really you don't really care, but you don't have strong opinions or you don't feel informed enough, is what you're hearing is you're only hearing the most dogmatic and angry and polarized and loud megaphone voices talk about how these two groups of people hate each other and how these two groups are polar opposite and there is no middle in between them. And so what that becomes is it becomes a powerful sorting mechanism to say, "Okay, who do I identify with and which tribe is my kind of people?" So social media has amplified that organization where politics and identity now sort where you are religiously, especially among for young people. 

So if you have any kind of religious faith convictions and you are somebody who subscribes to traditional views on family or those kinds of things, well then you quickly learn that there is only one group for me and everybody else is anathema and they're blind and they're Luciferian, I think is the most recent word. And if you have more progressive views on those kinds of things, well then you learn quickly. I have no more place any longer among religious Americans. My group of people is the liberal church or progressive whatever, or just seculars in general. So social media in that sense has amplified the sorting and they've have catalyzed it in that way. But social media is also a symptom of our broader addiction to inattention. And it is a way that capitalism has, I think, leveraged some very foundational tendencies that we as human beings have to enjoy distraction and to play around on our phones like their slot machines and get likes and retweets and to build identities and test our identities on social media. 

I mean, it's one of those things that, one of my previous books was about how conservative Christians, how committed Christians experience pornography in their own lives. And one of the things that I found in that study was that evangelical Christians are just as likely to be on their phones and on social media and all and connected to the internet as anybody else. They are no less likely to be on the internet, to be online, to be at their phones constantly. And so, one of the problems that Christians face, even with say struggles with pornography is the fact that conservative Christians are just like everybody else in that we are always almost like cyborgs attached to our phones. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Always wired. 

Sam Perry: 

And if it wasn't pornography, it would be some other kind of click addiction. It would be social media, it would be posting things- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Online games. 

Sam Perry: 

... it would be scrolling. Yeah, mindlessly scrolling and that kind of thing. And part of the connection or the challenge of detaching young people away from say, pornography is actually a broader problem with detaching them away from just addiction to screens and clicking in all of the things that compete for your attention. So that is a symptom of a broader problem. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Wow. I mean, I was going to ask you and you're kind to mention a book that I wrote 30 years ago, but I must say after I wrote Exit Interviews, and then I don't know, 10 or 15 years later, the Reveal Study comes out from Willow Creek and I read through that. I'm like, "Huh, I kind of said that 15 years ago." And then we get to the Barna Study, 2019 church dropouts have risen to 64% and Pew Research. And I'm like, "Okay, so this is a trend that's been going on a while with people drifting away from churches." I guess the question then, it looms, why has the church not been able to turn this around? I mean, it's not like this is a new thing that we're just figuring out. There's been a big backdoor to the church for quite some time but it doesn't seem like anything's really stemmed that tide. And I'm just curious if you have any research or thoughts about why that might be. 

Sam Perry: 

So I think one of the challenges, and I think a great new book that has just come out recently by a religion journalist, Bob Smietana. Yeah, I'm not even sure of Smietana, but it's called Reorganized Religion. Want to make sure I get that right. I'm listening to it on Audible right now and he covers all of these kinds of broader trends, Reorganized Religion. I'll read the subtitle, the Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters. And he's done all of these interviews and he looks at a lot of data. He's a great religion journalist. The last name is S-M-I-E-T-A-N-A, Bob. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Thank you. 

Sam Perry: 

And one of the observations that he makes, and I think this is a thought-on observation, is what has been going on? Sociologist has been observing this as well. What we're actually seeing, there has been a trend in church... I mean, Dallas is on the forefront of this of course, but with the Walmartization of congregations to where mega churches are growing, the phenomenon of satellite churches. And I know they've tried to suppress this a little bit by spinning these things off and giving these things pastors in individual community, kind of like the village, [inaudible 00:32:49], like Bethlehem and Minnesota and other places. But it doesn't change the fact that a smaller number of churches are now housing a larger number of Christians and the mom and pop churches, those small community churches that were in your local community are now being driven out and they're no longer a thing. So it's kind of a big box phenomenon. 

On the one hand, you could see this as a positive that more and more people are able to go to these churches, they provide great programs, they have great resources, they obviously, I think wise people are at those churches too. I don't mean to trash those places. And yet it is obviously easier within those larger megachurch contexts to be anonymous, to be a free rider, to be a taker, to come and not invest. I do think you have some churches, I think Watermark is an example of that, that holds as a standard of church membership. For you to be a member you have to re-up every year. You have to be involved in service, you have to be in a community group. I think that is a way that people try to fight this tendency. 

But I think all that to say in our hyper-connected, very, very busy lives where my kids are involved in five different things a piece, and we're running them to and from everything, and church just becomes one more thing. To the extent that I'm not really connected personally, my identity is not connected with that community, and I'm very anonymous and I'm kind of on the fringes, then it's easy for me to put that down and just walk away and get involved in something else. I think that has been going on for a long time now. And I think Covid certainly threw gasoline on that fire, because it just created a two-year window almost in which people- 

Bill Hendricks: 

Figured out they had other options. 

Sam Perry: 

They got the taste on Sunday, what it's like to sleep in and do other things and go fishing and travel out of town and travel for soccer or kids or whatever. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And the convenience of watching the service in your pajamas. 

Sam Perry: 

I'm sorry, I don't have to tell pastors this, but I mean obviously that comes at the cost of people saying, "Well, I think I'm just going to kind of keep doing this," and "I've disrupted my pattern and now I have another pattern." And I think that has really not only long-term consequence, not only consequences for those people's immediate spiritual lives, but the lives of their children and their children's children, as this becomes a generational thing where people are no longer growing up active in their faith. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So as we're having this conversation, it's occurring to me that the role of sociologists in our culture may be not dissimilar to what the role of journalists in an earlier time was, which was basically, "We're just given you the facts, here's what happened, and we're just reporting what's actually going on." But at the same time, I can't imagine that you as a sociologist merely want to be sort of a spectator and a reporter and let the chips fall where they may. And do sociologists ever get to the point where they're going, "In light of these facts, here's some things you might want to think about doing." And I guess where I wanted to go was, as we've talked about this decline and people leaving churches, and again, particularly younger demographics, any thoughts you have about the implications of this? If we apply it down, back to smaller unit, here's an individual family, a couple trying to raise their children or even a single parent trying to raise their children, that sort of scenario. And then of course, here is a pastor and he may be in a multi-staff church, but that leadership team is thinking, "Man, we got to shut the back door here. What are we going to do?" Any thoughts about what we might offer to parents and to church leaders? 

Sam Perry: 

Well, that's great. I think that's a great question. I mean, it is one of these challenges because I think some of these challenges that churches face, they didn't create, you know what I mean? So it's unfair in some ways to say, "You pastors, you faith leaders, you seminary professors, you need to solve the problems that are broader, even global challenges that now face these faith communities." And in some ways it is not a situation in which we can as churches go back to some other time where it was just better. Actually, it is adjusting to a new reality. And so that is probably the more important question of how do we adjust to this new reality? 

And there are some things that we can correct. And so I don't mean to just say, throw my hands up in the air. There are some things that actually I think are certainly proactive, but how do we adjust to this new reality where we undeniably live in a more secular society, that there are frankly just more options. And so I don't know if the best option is to do the Benedict option and just to create these kinds of, that is, I think, antithetical to the evangelical identity that we want to be forces for good, that we want to be people who are shaping the world in a positive way and with the gospel, with love, with our own families and mission that Jesus said that we're not supposed to be taken out of the world, and we're not supposed to be of the world. We're supposed to be into the world. So what does it mean to be into the world now in this new context? 

In many ways I think we have to take a good hard look. I mean, I think one of the things that is undeniably driving young people away from the church is I think an uncritical conflation of politics and religion in ways that this is not to say that Christians ought to be politically agnostic or disengaged. I've never said that and never want to imply that Christians have to check their politics or not bring their faith into their own political values. Of course they do. But to the extent where it is becoming a common truism that if you are a committed Christian, you vote this way always and you have no other options and you don't question who is the leader. It's just kind of like you don't question the coach, you're just a part of the team. That I think is problematic because I think people read that and they make decisions about Jesus before they actually get a chance to encounter Jesus people. I think that's a hugely problematic thing culturally. 

I do think there is a reinvestment that needs to be made in authentic faith communities and families raising those kinds of resources. I think megachurches and megachurch culture needs to reconsider what kind of trends that they're a part of and how we have, I think, built monuments to egos and broader movements rather than investing in smaller communities that may not be so financially rich, and yet they are more nimble to be able to meet the needs of families and invest in those kinds of communities in more proactive ways. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, I know one issue that young people in particular, again, you would know the facts of this better than I would, but at least everything I see and read, an issue that's very much a hot button is justice issues, could be human trafficking, it could be racism, it could be economic injustice, all kinds of possibilities. But it does seem to me that first of all, the Bible and our Lord had a whole lot to say that speaks to justice. And that seems like a good place to start with some meaningful conversations and even action steps to show again, let's just say nones, which are quite possibly kids who grew up in a Christian home and now they've kind of drifted away. But if somebody said, "We're doing something related to justice, you might be interested in checking this out. We want you to at least get your voice in the conversation." Might be some interest in maybe there's more here than I thought. 

Sam Perry: 

Yeah, absolutely. I think that should emerge as a part of the Christian identity in a way that it now is perceived as something that is more optional, that some churches are into. Some churches are into justice, other churches are in small groups. It's something that is just kind of like a fad thing or something that they're into that season, "This year we're into justice." 

Bill Hendricks: 

That's not going to work. 

Sam Perry: 

That is not going to work because people immediately acknowledge that that is a tack on, that is inauthentic, that's not something that is a core part of their identity. I'll put it this way, I think this is a good way to put it. So if I were to talk to a group of, I think really committed pro-life Christians and I were to say, "The hardcore pro-life thing is not a winning issue for you guys. It's a minority view and this is something that the wider culture is going to frown upon." I think they would respond with, "We don't care what the rest of the world thinks. This is right. This is a part of our identity. This is who we are. We are pro-life." And I think we need to move to that kind of understanding of a Christian's commitment to say justice issues, is that whether it's popular or not, whether the progressives or whether society or whether the media picks up on that and notices and they give us applause for it, and the people start coming back because they recognize, whether anybody notices or not. I think it needs to be a part of our identity because that is what Jesus taught. 

And so to the extent that that can actually become a fully formed part of our own community identity, that this is who we are as a people, I think that is not only good for the church because it is something that people will see, but even more important it is because it is righteous. It is Christlike and holy. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, and of course the context in which we have to wrap that is the way that we communicate that also has to be in a Christlike tone so that we don't bring this defiance and this in your face kind of thing. We're going to do what's right and we come across as Pharisees, but more, we do this because this is the right thing to do because this is what our Lord is telling us to do. We're sad that you don't agree, we don't agree with you, but it's a big world and we understand you're not with us, but we're going to do our thing and let the chips fall where they may. And by the way, we're going to pray for you and we're going to love on you, and we're going to do what we can to help you flourish just like we're trying to help ourselves. 

Sam Perry: 

And that right there, I think Bill, is a commitment not only to the ends, but to the means. And I think both of those are central because I think it is unfortunate that I think committed Christians, I think especially, have gotten a reputation for this within the last 10 years of being willing to sacrifice the means to accomplish the ends and to say whatever gets the job done and we're going to be willing to do that. And I think that has been a disaster. 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's been a losing strategy for sure. 

Sam Perry: 

It absolutely is. I mean, it's something that you end up making a Faustian bargain to say, "If I can just have that victory that W, then I'm willing to compromise in this area." And it is something that I think if we are committed to, I think as you're describing, a vision for certainly values and justice and all of the things that we believe are central to what it means to live as a Christian in today's world. I think it also requires a commitment to sacrificial love, commitment to turning the other cheek, a commitment to forgiveness and to winsomeness in a way that we believe Jesus did while he was here and he taught. And again, it's not just good because that's a winning strategy. It's good because it's righteous, it would be good if it was a losing strategy. You know what I mean? It would be good if it was- 

Bill Hendricks: 

It's truly the right thing to do. 

Sam Perry: 

Exactly. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So again, for our listeners to The Table, we put together there, we've got to show courage. We've got to stand up for what is right and true and biblical, and then do it in a compassionate way that we're the hands, the feet, the heart of Jesus to the world. And Sam Perry, thank you for bringing your, pardon me. Thank you for bringing your expertise in sociology to bear on this question of why people are leaving the church. This has just been so instructive and insightful today, and I can see we need to have you back for lots of other issues that really need to be considered through a lens of sociology as well as theology. I want to thank all of you for listening to The Table podcast today. Be sure and subscribe to us on your favorite podcast stream and join us the next time for The Table podcast, I'm Bill Hendricks.