One of those end-of-the-millennium polls found that 52 percent of all Americans pray every day and that 56 percent report that someone in their family usually says grace at family meals (Hargrove and Stempel, www.shns.com ). Is it merely a coincidence that the Faith Communities Today (FACT2000) national survey of congregations conducted at about the same time found that 51 percent of all U.S. congregations gave “a great deal” of emphasis to personal devotional practices in their preaching and teaching and that 54 percent of U.S. congregations gave “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of emphasis to family devotions? Or, does this provide striking evidence that what we do in our congregations does make a difference?
Assuming the latter, then the FACT2000 survey also suggests that old-line Protestants are less likely than persons from other faith groups to pray every day, are less likely to engage in family devotions, and indeed are less likely to engage in any of the home or personal religious practices mentioned in the FACT2000 study. The results for old-line Protestant congregations for a sampling of four of the items can be seen in Figure 1 (below).
The FACT2000 data do not provide a basis to test the common wisdom that regular spiritual practices are essential to a vigorous individual faith. But the study does confirm that the more emphasis a congregation gives to the values of home and personal religious practices the higher the congregation’s vitality and the more likely it is to be growing in membership. These results are evident within old-line Protestantism as well as within other faith groups.
That one would find a significant relationship between religious vitality and personal faith practice at the turn of the 21st Century should not be surprising. Indeed, it is one expression of what I have argued elsewhere is the most profound and foundational of the religious transitions affecting America today. It is the shift in religious authority and vitality from Word to Spirit.
It is not uncommon — indeed it may be most typical — for Americans to think of religion as a collection of beliefs and doctrines, most closely tied to if not directly drawn from a sacred Scripture. The beliefs, doctrines and Scripture are cognitive and objective. Worship in such a tradition tends to emphasize preaching and the style of preaching is expository. This is what I mean by a religious orientation grounded in The Word.
In contrast, we are becoming increasingly aware that many persons practice religion more in terms of a liturgical or personal relationship to God. Such an approach is more experiential and subjective. Worship in such a tradition emphasizes ritual and/or prayer and the gifts of the spirit. If preaching is included it tends to be narrative. This is what I mean by a religious perspective oriented to The Spirit.
One finds evidence for the current shift from Word to Spirit, for example: in Marler and Roozen’s documentation of the societal shift from an objective to a subjective locus of authority, and of this shift’s connection to the increasing phenomenon of “church as choice” (Chapter in Roozen and Hadaway, eds, Church and Denominational Growth); in the seekership in Wade Clark Roof’s baby boom monograph, A Generation of Seekers; and in the worry of Evangelical Christian scholars about a shift from God as Judge to Jesus as Friend. One can make sense of the reasons for this shift when one recalls Robert Bellah’s engaging elaboration of the rise of “expressive individualism” in his well known, co-authored book, Habits of the Heart, and as one reads in just about any post-modern treatise about the breakdown of Grand Narratives and the relativizing of all objective truth claims.
More importantly for present purposes, the shift appears to have favored Evangelical Protestantism over old-line Protestantism thus far and, in fact, the lack of emphasis on home and personal religious practices appears to be one of the reasons that, overall, old-line congregations are less “vital” and less likely to be growing than evangelical Protestant congregations. But what if old-line Protestant congregations emphasized personal spiritual practices as much as evangelical Protestant congregations?
The FACT2000 data allows us to run a statistical simulation that provides a tentative answer. The simulation uses a long-established procedure called “test factor standardization.” In this simulation, we set emphasis on personal spiritual practices for old-line Protestants equal to evangelical Protestants, while keeping all other factors constant. The result, as shown in Figure 2: The percentage of high vitality old-line congregations jumps from 56 to 62 percent; and the percentage of old-line congregations that grow at least one percent a year increases from 45 to 49 percent.
From one perspective, this jump may not seem all that large. But, it does cut the old-line-evangelical vitality and growth gaps in half! Of course, many things contribute to congregational vitality and growth — perhaps most importantly in today’s environment, the style and quality of worship. Nevertheless, the FACT2000 data clearly show that vital congregations not only practice what they preach; they also preach about home and personal religious practice.
There are rumors of a revival in spiritual practices within old-line Protestant congregations. Some, such as Diana Butler Ball, even suggest that it is the long sought path to old-line renewal (The Practicing Congregation: Imagining a New Old Church). The data to test the rumors will have to wait until the fielding and analysis of FACT2005. In the meantime, we need to appreciate the hopeful and empirically hinted change in thinking about the fortunes of old-line Protestant congregations. It is a change from demographic captivity to adaptive capacity.
David A. Roozen is director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and professor of religion and society at Hartford Seminary.
*Text and charts used with permission of Zion‘s Herald, March/April 2005.
