The atheist author and advocate David Madison, PhD wrote in March of 2019:
I remain haunted—and terrified—by what I read on a Christian website, not long after the turn of this century: that by 2025, there will be one billion (yes, that’s with a “b”) Pentecostals in the world. That should scare us as much as global warming.
The American sociologist and author Peter L. Berger introduced the concept of desecularization in 1999.According to Berger, "One can say with some confidence that modern Pentecostalism must be the fastest growing religion in human history." Professor Phillip Jenkins published the book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Chuck Colson, citing the work of Jenkins, writes:
As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntingtons betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.
For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.
According to Jenkins, the percentage of the worlds population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.
Professor Eric Kaufmann said of religious demographic projections concerning the 21st century and the future growth of religious fundamentalism:
Part of the reason I think demography is very important, at least if we are going to speak about the future, is that it is the most predictable of the social sciences.
...if you look at a population and its age structure now. You can tell a lot about the future. ...So by looking at the relative age structure of different populations you can already say a lot about the future...
...Religious fundamentalism is going to be on the increase in the future and not just out there in the developing world..., but in the developed world as well.
Atheists, how long will you hide under your beds? Isn't it better to embrace your upcoming defeat and admit that the future belongs to religious believers?
First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.
In their 2010 journal article entitled, Secularism, Fundamentalism or Catholicism? The Religious Composition of the United States to 2043 published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vegard Skirbekk and Anne Goujon wrote:
We find considerable stability of religious groups over time, but there are some important shifts. Hispanic Catholics experience the strongest growth rates to 2043. Immigration, high fertility, and a young age structure will enable this group to expand from 10 to 18 percent of the American population between 2003 and 2043, despite a net loss of communicants to secularism and Protestantism. This will power the growth of Catholics as a whole, who will surpass Protestants by mid century within the nation’s youngest age groups. This represents a historic moment for a country settled by anti-Catholic Puritans, whose Revolution was motivated in part by a desire to spread dissenting Protestantism and whose populationon the eve of revolution was 98 percent Protestant (Huntington 2004; Kaufmann 2004). Another important development concerns the growth of the Muslim population and decline of the Jews. High Muslim fertility and a young Muslim age structure contrasts with low Jewish childbearing levels and a mature Jewish age structure. Barring an unforeseen shift in the religious composition and size of the immigrant flow, Muslims will surpass Jews in the population by 2023 and in the electorate by 2028. This could have profound effects on the course of American foreign policy. Within the non-Hispanic white population, we expect to see continued Liberal Protestant decline due to low fertility and a net loss in exchanges with other groups. White Catholics will also lose due to a net outflow of converts. Fundamentalist and Moderate Protestant denominations will hold their own within the white population, but will decline overall as the white share of the population falls.
The finding that Protestant fundamentalism may decline in relative terms over the medium term contrasts with a prevailing view that envisions the continued growth of “strong religion” (Stark and Iannaccone 1994a). This is the result of an older age structure, which increases loss through mortality, and immigration, which reduces the size of all predominantly white denominations — all of which are poorly represented in the immigration flow. Fundamentalists’ relatively high fertility and net surplus from the religious marketplace is not sufficient to counteract the effects of immigration. Obviously, this could change if significant immigration begins to arrive from more Pentecostalist source countries such as Guatemala or parts of sub-Saharan Africa.
Our work also sheds light on the religious restructuring paradigm, though we do not find a clear victor between secularism and fundamentalism. The secular population will grow substantially in the decades ahead because it has a young age structure and more people leave religion than enter it. The sharpest gains for secularism will be within the white population, where seculars will surpass fundamentalists by 2030. On the other hand, there are important demographic limits to secularism, demonstrating the power of religious demography. The relatively low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of the immigrant inflow provide a countervailing force that will cause the secularization process within the total population to plateau before 2043. This represents an important theoretical point in that demography permits society to become more religious even as individuals tend to become less religious over time.
The Birkbeck College, University of London professor Eric Kaufmann wrote in his 2010 book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? concerning America:
High evangelical fertility rates more than compensated for losses to liberal Protestant sects during the twentieth century. In recent decades, white secularism has surged, but Latino and Asian religious immigration has taken up the slack, keeping secularism at bay. Across denominations, the fertility advantage of religious fundamentalists of all colours is significant and growing. After 2020, their demographic weight will begin to tip the balance in the culture wars towards the conservative side, ramping up pressure on hot-button issues such as abortion. By the end of the century, three quarters of America may be pro-life. Their activism will leap over the borders of the 'Redeemer Nation' to evangelize the world. Already, the rise of the World Congress of Families has launched a global religious right, its arms stretching across the bloody lines of the War on Terror to embrace the entire Abrahamic family.
Dr. Steve Turley wrote:
According to University of London scholar Eric Kaufmann’s detailed study on global demographic trends, we are in the early stages of nothing less than a demographic revolution. In Kaufmann’s words, "religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world." There is a significant demographic deficit between secularists and conservative religionists. For example, in the U.S., while self-identified non-religionist women averaged only 1.5 children per couple in 2002, conservative evangelical women averaged 2.5 children, representing a 28 percent fertility edge. Kaufmann notes that this demographic deficit has dramatic effects over time. In a population evenly divided, these numbers indicate that conservative evangelicals would increase from 50 to 62.5 percent of the population in a single generation. In two generations, their number would increase to 73.5 percent, and over the course of 200 years, they would represent 99.4 percent. The Amish and Mormons provide contemporary illustrations of the compound effect of endogamous growth. The Amish double in population every twenty years, and projections have the Amish numbering over a million in the U.S. and Canada in just a few decades. Since 1830, Mormon growth has averaged 40 percent per decade, which means that by 2080, there may be as many as 267 million Mormons in the world, making them by 2100 anywhere from one to six percent of the world’s population.
Several decades ago, church statistician and demographer David Barrett began to report the surprising news that around the world, the most rapidly growing faith was Spirit-empowered Christianity, marked by clear gospel preaching, belief in the literal truth of the Scriptures, and the reality of God’s presence. (The data were compiled in the prestigious “World Christian Encyclopedia,” published by Oxford University Press.)...
This is confirmed in the new Pew Forum report, which showed that evangelical Protestant churches in America grew by 2 million from 2007 to 2014 whereas the so-called mainline (liberal) Protestant churches declined by 5 million, meaning that evangelical Protestants now make up the largest religious group in the nation. (Although this is not part of the Pew Forum survey, my surmise is that the evangelical churches that are most Bible-based and make the most serious, grace-empowered demands on their congregants are, generally speaking, the ones that are growing rather than declining.
Hispanics and the future of religion/irreligion in the United States
At the 2018 American Atheists convention, the ex-president of the American Atheists organization David Silverman stated:
It is a hard time to be an atheist activist. This has affected us. And it has affected our community...
...it has really affected us. We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before...
We feel the loss. And we feel like we have lost. We feel like we lost the election... We see this cascade of attack coming down at us over and over from all different directions and we feel like it's over. I have heard so many times it makes me sick. It makes me sad. It feels like we lost.
The apathy that follows. It doesn't matter. We can't win anyways. It's useless to fight. This apathy is infecting us. It's hurting us.
And people are reacting to each other now. And so that is causing a division. Lots and lots of division in our movement. Hard, bad division... And that has resulted in a splintering and factioning of the movement that I have never seen before and none of us have.
In other words, we're in a bad situation and it's getting worse.
Google trends shows that American Google searches for the words "atheist" and "atheism" are now below their 2004 levels
In recent times, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS) has been publishing statistics on the growth and decline of adherents for various worldviews/religions and they publish their findings in January of each year. Various Christian groups disseminate their research findings such as the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (IBMR).
In February of 2011, the American Spectator noted concerning a International Bulletin of Missionary Research (IBMR) report:
The report estimates about 80,000 new Christians every day, 79,000 new Muslims every day, and 300 fewer atheists every day. These atheists are presumably disproportionately represented in the West, while religion is thriving in the Global South, where charismatic Christianity is exploding. Over 600 million Christians, including millions of Roman Catholics, are charismatic or Pentecostal.
(As a theologically conservative Protestant, I do understand that not everyone who proclaims themselves a Christian is a bona fide Christian in God's eyes and there are people who are deluded and/or false teachers. See: Matthew 7:23, Matthew 7: 14-15)
In 2012 it was reported there are 800 less atheists each day in the world
In 2012, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (GCTS) reported that every day there are 800 less atheists per day, 1,100 less non-religious (agnostic) people per day and 83,000 more people professing to be Christians per day (see: Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary - status of Global Mission report).
In 2012 an article entitled Atheism in decline by Nigel Tomes declared:
The IBMR publishes yearly figures for religions (and non religions) around the globe. Their latest numbers, hot off the press (Jan. 2012) show some interesting trends.
1. Atheism is in Decline
In 1970 atheists (those avowing there is no God) numbered 166 million worldwide; that was almost one-in-twenty—4.5% of the globe’s population. By 2012 atheists’ number is estimated at 137 million. That’s a decline of almost 30 million. Since world population is growing, atheists’ share declined to less than one-in-fifty—under 2% in 2012. Put differently, every 24 hours there are 800 fewer atheists in the world! Atheism is in decline.
2. Agnosticism is in Decline
In 2000 agnostics (those who “don’t know” if there is a God) numbered 666 million, 10.9% of the world’s people. By 2012 agnostic’s number is estimated at 661 million--a decline of 5 million. In relative terms by 2012 agnostics represent less than one tenth (9.4%) of world population. Every 24 hours there are 1,100 less agnostics in the world. Agnostics are also in decline.
Added together these two groups make up a declining share of global population. In 1970 atheists and agnostics accounted for one-in-five (19.2%) of the world’s people. Based on current trends by 2025 they will represent less than one-in-ten (9.7%). Their population share will fall by half in 50+ years.
We encourage you to examine the entire 2012 article by Nigel Tomes entitled Atheism in decline as it has some encouraging news about the growth of global Christianity.
Also, for those who are interested in knowing more about Professor Eric Kaufmann's work on this matter, he also published a book titled Shall the righteous inherit the earth
In 2009, the book A sceptics guide to atheism indicated: "A worldwide poll taken in 1991 put the global figure for atheists at just 4.4% of the population. By 2006 it was estimated that only 2% of the world population were atheists."
Michael Blume, a researcher at the University of Jena in Germany, wrote "Most societies or communities that have espoused atheistic beliefs have not survived more than a century." Blume also indicated concerning concerning his research on this matter: "What I found was the complete lack of a single case of a secular population, community or movement that would just manage to retain replacement level."
Investigator Magazine had an interesting article published in 1990 entitled 2,000 years of Christian Increase which indicated that historically the percentage of the world population professing Christianity has been increasing.
Comprehensive look at the decline of evolutionism, atheism and agnosticism
New Atheism reported to have little to no effect on atheism evangelism
New Atheism is a new form of militant atheism which started in the period between 2004 and 2007. The New Atheism movement has not had much of an impact in terms of gaining new adherents to atheism. In a March 10, 2008 USA Today article Stephen Prothero wrote:
Numbers lie, but they also tell tales untrustworthy and otherwise. So the key question stirring around the much discussed U.S Religious Landscape Survey released in late February by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is what tale does it state about the state of the union.
For some, the story of this survey, based on interviews in multiple languages with more than 35,000 adults, is the strength of American Religion.
Not too long ago, I wrote that American atheism was going the way of the freak show. As books by Christopher Hitchens and other "new atheists" climbed the best seller lists, I caught a lot of flak for that prophecy. But atheist make up only 1.6% of respondents to this survey....
Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London and author. His academic research specialty is how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics. He was a Fellow in the Religion in International Affairs Program, Belfer Center, Kennedy School, Harvard University, 2008-9. In 2008, he won the Richard Rose Prize of the Political Studies Association for a scholar under 40 years old. He is an agnostic.
Desecularization is the process by which religion reasserts its societal influence though religious values, institutions, sectors of society and symbols in reaction to previous and/or co-occurring secularization processes.
On December 23, 2012, Kaufmann wrote about global desecularization.
I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious.
On the other hand, the secular West and East Asia has very low fertility and a rapidly aging population... In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world. Ergo, we can expect significant immigration to the secular West which will import religious revival on the back of ethnic change. In addition, those with religious beliefs tend to have higher birth rates than the secular population, with fundamentalists having far larger families. The epicentre of these trends will be in immigration gateway cities like New York (a third white), Amsterdam (half Dutch), Los Angeles (28% white), and London, 45% white British.
If we go to Europe, if we take the population of Europe including Russia, it's expected to decline by 25,000,000 in the next 20 years. And then between 2030 to 2050 by another 55,000,000. So you see there is an acceleration of population decline because total fertility rates, that is the number of children of woman will bear in her lifetime have been below replacement for 30 or 40 years...
As populations shrink, there are fewer mothers begetting fewer children and so forth so you get a compounding effect.
Buckle up, Mr. Militant Atheist! The collapse of atheism is going to occur faster and faster. The 21st century is going to be an autobahn of tears for militant atheists. For more information, please see: Acceleration of 21st century desecularization
First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.
At the American Atheists 2018 convention, David Silverman, ex-president of the American Atheists organization, gave a speech entitled, "How the mighty get back up". The speech alluded to the pro-religious rights agenda of the Trump administration (See: Donald Trump and American atheists). During the speech Silverman said regarding American atheists, "We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before". (See: Decline of the atheist movement). Later in 2018, Silverman was fired due to allegations of financial conflicts and sexual assault (see also: Atheism and sexism)
At the 2018 American Atheists convention, the ex-president of the American Atheist organization David Silvermandeclared:
It is a hard time to be an atheist activist. This has affected us. And it has affected our community...
...it has really affected us. We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before...
We feel the loss. And we feel like we have lost. We feel like we lost the election... We see this cascade of attack coming down at us over and over from all different directions and we feel like it's over. I have heard so many times it makes me sick. It makes me sad. It feels like we lost.
The apathy that follows. It doesn't matter. We can't win anyways. It's useless to fight. This apathy is infecting us. It's hurting us.
And people are reacting to each other now. And so that is causing a division. Lots and lots of division in our movement. Hard, bad division... And that has resulted in a splintering and factioning of the movement that I have never seen before and none of us have.
In other words, we're in a bad situation and it's getting worse.
RationalWiki is a wiki run by atheists/agnostics who are politically left leaning. It is predominantly run by "social justice warriors" (SJWs).
A RationalWiki editor who goes by the username ikanreed wrote on October 31, 2018 in relation to the declining editing of their wiki and the decline of the atheist/skeptic movement:
I think it's the massive reputation blow skepticism and rationalism itself has taken over the coarse of the last... I don't know, let's say 4 years... The intellectual clout of rationalism has suffered dramatically, look at the way people talk about skeptics today versus 5 years ago.
Numerous atheists have declared that the "atheist movement is dead" or that it is dying (see: Decline of the atheist movement) Facebook post at the Freedom For Atheism Foundation page about this article:
As you might have guessed, 2019 is going to be a HORRIBLE YEAR for militant atheists. Why you might ask?
Consider:
1. France
France has the 8th highest rate of atheism in the world with 43–54% of the population being atheists/agnostics/non-believers in God. France is the country where atheism first made inroads into the Western World (see: French atheism ).
France adheres to a strict form of secularism, known as laïcité, which is designed to keep religion out of public life. This principle was entrenched by law in 1905, after fierce anti-clerical struggles with the Roman Catholic church. Today, the lines are in some ways blurred. The French maintain, for instance, certain Catholic public holidays, such as Ascension. But on the whole, secular rules prevail. It would be unthinkable in France, for example, to stage a nativity play in a state primary school, or for a president to be sworn in on a Bible.
Right now, France has demonstrations in the streets throughout due to economic conditions and other grievances (see video below) In addition, both evangelical Christianity and Islam are very rapidly spreading in France due to growing immigrant populations (see video below).
On July 12, 2012, the Christian Science Monitorreported:
French scholars say, evangelicalism is likely the fastest-growing religion in France – defying all stereotypes about Europe’s most secular nation...
Daniel Liechti, vice-president of the French National Evangelical Council, found that since 1970, a new evangelical church has opened in France every 10 days. The number of churches increased from 769 to 2,068 last year.
Traditionally, evangelical Christianity often grows rapidly during times of economic/social instability.
As Latourette’s Great Century was coming to a close, churches outside of Europe and the Americas that took root in the 19th century grew rapidly in the 20th century. Africa, in particular, led this transformation growing from only 10 million Christians in 1900 to 360 million by AD 2000. Given current trends, there could be over 600 million Christians in Africa by 2025. Shortly after 1980, Christians in the South outnumbered those in the North for the first time in 1,000 years. In 1900 over 80% of all Christians lived in Europe and Northern America, however, by 2005 this proportion had fallen to under 40% and will likely fall below 30% before 2050. Projections for the future show that the Christian churches of the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America and Oceania) will likely continue to acquire an increasing percentage of global Christianity...
Another daily reality for Southern Christians is poverty. Much of the global South deals with serious issues of poverty and a lack of access to proper health care. Countries that have been hardest hit by AIDS, such as Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland, are also countries where Christianity is flourishing. Without access to the necessary medical care, accounts of healing and exorcism found in the Bible are taken more seriously. The work of the Holy Spirit exhibited in the ministry of signs and miracles of healing and deliverance from demonic powers has exploded in the ministry of Pentecostal/Charismatic churches in the global South. David Smith describes these churches as “overwhelmingly charismatic and conservative in character, reading the New Testament in ways that seem puzzlingly literal to their friends in the North,” and as “largely made up of poor people who in many cases live on the very edge of existence.” Thus the growth of Christianity in poorer regions implies not only an alternative reading of the Bible, but a different experience of the Bible.
And remember, evangelical Christianity grows rapidly during times of economic/social instability and China is faced with: a high debt load, an economic slowdown, a current trade war with the USA and potential challenges to its political leaders should a full blow economic crisis occur. If China does economically reform itself and avoid a trade war, this would still be a win for Christianity as the communist state would have less control over the populace.
I just saw your 2016 blog post relating to the issue of whether or not "atheism is in trouble". I am referring to this blog post of yours I get email — theistic tears edition
First, if Richard Dawkins is your example of a charismatic atheist, then atheism is most certainly in trouble. If you doubt me, just ask his 3 ex-wives and his detractor Rebecca Watson (see: Elevatorgate). Dawkins' popularity has plummeted and his now anemic web traffic is testimony to this matter (see: Alexa ranking for RichardDawkins.net ). Whether you want to admit it or not, atheists are well-known for having poor social skills (antisocial, nerds, neckbeards, etc.). For more information about this matter, please see: Atheism and social intelligence
In 2017, quoting fellow leftist Alex Nichols, you wrote:
...the growing popularity of jibes associating outspoken atheists with fedoras, neckbeards, and virginity, led to an exodus of liberals and leftists from the “atheist” tent. Those who remained for the most part lacked in social skills and self-awareness, and the results were disastrous.
If we're going to expand our base and we're going to draw in more people to recognize the virtues of living in a secular world, we need to appeal to more than just that geek and nerd subset of the population. We need to have a wider base. ...I seriously believe that we're on the cusp of a crisis. We're not there yet but it's looming in front of us. Will we adapt and thrive and change the world? Or will we remain an avocation for a prosperous and largely irrelevant subset of the population? Will we become something more than a scattered society of internet nerds? That's what we have to do.
Second, as per Discovery Magazine, most atheists are East Asians. And China is seeing an explosive growth of evangelical Christianity. See: East Asia and global desecularization
Fourth, as far as the United States, the American atheist Aron Ra recently said that the atheist movement is dead and he is not alone in his opinion among American atheists (see: Decline of atheist movement ).
At the 2018 American Atheists convention, the ex-president of the American Atheists organization David Silverman declared:
It is a hard time to be an atheist activist. This has affected us. And it has affected our community...
...it has really affected us. We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before...
We feel the loss. And we feel like we have lost. We feel like we lost the election... We see this cascade of attack coming down at us over and over from all different directions and we feel like it's over. I have heard so many times it makes me sick. It makes me sad. It feels like we lost.
The apathy that follows. It doesn't matter. We can't win anyways. It's useless to fight. This apathy is infecting us. It's hurting us.
And people are reacting to each other now. And so that is causing a division. Lots and lots of division in our movement. Hard, bad division... And that has resulted in a splintering and factioning of the movement that I have never seen before and none of us have.
In other words, we're in a bad situation and it's getting worse."
Dr. Myers, the atheist/humanist movements are lost causes! Abandon all hope now! Jesus still sits on the throne!
