Review: The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? By Jim Davis and Michael Graham

According to recent Gallup polls, American churches are emptier today than they were twenty-five years ago.1 Church membership is falling in large numbers. In fact, over fifty percent of Americans rarely or never attend worship services—and if they do, it is usually on Christmas or Easter. Although these numbers are not great, they are better than the numbers in early American history. In America’s colonial period, around eighty percent of Americans had no church affiliation.2 Indeed, church affiliation and membership in the United States have risen and fallen over the years. The question for today is: Why have so many Americans stopped going to church on Sunday? That is the question Jim Davis and Michael Graham answer in The Great Dechurching (TGD).

TGD is based on extensive research, studies, and polls of various social scientists who are interested in what Davis and Graham call the “dechurching” of America. This book is well-researched and based on statistics about people leaving churches. Details include church attendance numbers by age, political affiliation, gender, religious background, and so on. The authors also break down numbers concerning the numerous reasons why people stopped going to church. Although the book makes use of charts, numbers, and percentages, it is not a dry study of brute facts. Davis and Graham also give stories that illustrate the charts and numbers. In other words, the authors share examples of people leaving the church and their reasons for doing so.

There are four main parts of TGD: 1) Meet the Dechurched, 2) Profiles of the Dechurched, 3) Engaging the Dechurched, and 4) Lessons for the Church. The first part of TGD is an introduction describing the dire reality that regular church attendance is quickly falling. In the United States, around forty million adults who used to go to church have stopped doing so. Davis and Graham write, “The size and scope of this shift away from church is unprecedented in our country. Dechurching is an epidemic and will impact both the institutions of our country and the very fabric of our society within our lifetime” (7). The first part of the book also notes that dechurching is happening equally across the board. In other words, Protestants (including mainline), Roman Catholics, and others are leaving their churches in similar numbers. Interestingly, the authors note that the more education people have, the more likely they are to stay in church. It is also worth mentioning that some of these people left the church because it was either too enmeshed with right-wing politics or was not enmeshed enough.

The book’s second part gives detailed profiles of people who are leaving the church, a wide array including exvangelicals, mainstream evangelicals, mainline Catholics, cultural Christians, and BIPOCs (black, indigenous, and people of color). The chapter on exvangelicals (chapter 5) was especially interesting. Davis and Graham use the term “exvangelical” to describe Christians who have “permanently, purposefully exited evangelicalism” (68). Exvangelicals are those who have left the church mainly because the church left them wanting. For example, surveys show that this group is dechurched because they did not feel loved by the church family, they had bad experiences in the church, and they did not fit in.

The third part of TGD is about engaging the dechurched. This section includes some hopeful information. First, the fact is that many of the dechurched have not renounced the faith or adopted heresies. Furthermore, many of the dechurched interviewed in various surveys have said they would return to church if a friend invited them to a good church. Although the “great dechurching” is a serious problem, it is not a hopeless one. The third part of TGD also explains what beliefs, belonging, and behaving mean for the dechurched. For many of the dechurched, belief is important. It is not as if all the dechurched could not care less about Christian beliefs. As Davis and Graham state, many of the dechurched left because they did not have the sense of belonging they desired. Additionally, some of the dechurched left because the church was not displaying consistent Christian behavior. The authors note that in order to reach the dechurched, we need to understand their mindsets and realize that in some ways, the church may have failed people. Many of the dechurched have said they would return to church if they found a church that gave them a sense of belonging and was less hypocritical and more consistent in their ethics.

This third section of the book also talks about why young adults have been leaving the church. The authors note that the younger dechurched surveyed in the interviews said they would have stayed in the church if their parents had shown more love and kindness, listened to them more, and charitably engaged other viewpoints. Parents will certainly be interested in chapter ten.

The fourth part of TGD is the “so what” section. It gives insightful advice for Christians on how to engage the dechurched. In this section, Davis and Graham discuss the information diet of so many people and how to counter it with biblical discipleship for proper spiritual formation. The authors also talk about being properly missionary-minded while upholding the core truths of the Christian faith. The emphasis is on a balanced church. That is, to reach the dechurched, we need to focus on a good balance of teaching the truths of Scripture while being outward-looking and evangelistic. The authors call this being “missional and confessional” at the same time (213).

There is also a chapter in this fourth section about what it means that Christians are pilgrims and exiles. The authors argue that Christians are no longer an influential majority in the United States. This means we must return to the fact that we are exiles and pilgrims in this world. This biblical viewpoint helps the church engage in evangelism more: “A common thread throughout all of church history is that the more Christians lose in this world for Jesus, the more willing they have been to talk about Jesus” (217). The last chapter is meant for church leaders. It contains instructions for navigating the large number of people leaving the church: 1) do not be surprised when people fall away, 2) extreme responses hurt people, 3) be patient, 4) shepherd the flock, and 5) equip the saints.

I appreciated this book because it helped me think in more accurate terms about people who have left the church. It corrected some stereotypes I may have had. For example, the authors note that it is not necessarily true that people go to college or university to lose their faith. The dechurched are typically less educated. Another thing I learned is that just because a person stops attending worship, it does not mean he or she has renounced the faith and is a pagan. Of course, it is unwise and unbiblical to neglect public worship services, but it does not follow that everyone who stops attending a church is an unbeliever. It was good for me to read some of these details to help me think more accurately about the dechurched. On that note, this book will be helpful for churches looking for a resource to help them with outreach and evangelism. Church planters might want to take note of TGD as well.

This book also helped me view the dechurched with more sympathy. Some of the people who have left the church left for heart-breaking reasons such as spiritual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, unbiblical teaching, and because their local church was becoming politicized. The takeaway from this for me is that we must work diligently and prayerfully to 1) keep local churches free from all forms of abuse, 2) do a better job of showing true Christian love and kindness, 3) be open to engaging various types of people and lovingly answer their questions, and 4) refuse to let the message and ethos of the church be politicized. The dechurched can teach us how we have failed and how we must do better.

To be fair, some of the dechurched left the church for pathetic reasons. TGD does explain the all-too-common reality that quite a few people from various walks of life and religious demographics stop going to church simply because it is inconvenient for them. This is a sinful tragedy! Others quit attending worship because they moved to a new place and never got around to finding a new church. Again, this is a poor excuse for neglecting the assembly of the saints.

In my view, TGD is balanced. The authors approach the numbers in a realistic way. The tone of the book is not pessimistic; it is not a long, sad lament over the dechurching of America. Neither does the book come across as fatalistic: “What will be will be.” Davis and Graham understand the power of the gospel. They understand the necessity of knowing people in order to better minister to them. And the authors rightly instruct Christians to show love to the dechurched, be willing to talk and answer questions, and invite them back to church. Sometimes a loving ear, patience, and friendship will help the dechurched consider returning to the church and become “rechurched,” if you will—something for which all of us should work and pray!

Notes

  1. See, for example, Jeffrey M. Jones, “Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups,” GALLUP, March 25, 2024, Accessed 30 December, 2024.
  2. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-2005 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 29.

©Shane Lems. All Rights Reserved.

Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2023)


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  • Shane Lems
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    Shane Lems is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California and has a DMin from RTS Orlando. He has been a church planter and pastor in the URCNA. Since 2013 he’s been serving as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Hammond, WI. He is married and has four children. Shane has written numerous articles for Modern Reformation, New Horizons, and other publications. He is also the author of Doctrines of Grace: Student Edition and manages a book blog, The Reformed Reader.

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4 comments

  1. I have not read Finke and Stark, but from other sources that I have read it seems as though church membership in the 17th and especially the 18th Centuries revolved around those with enough money to “buy” pews to appropriate significant positions in Early American church settlements. It was not until people like Whitefield came along with his massive outdoor gatherings in what would otherwise been called “revivals” where hundreds to maybe even thousands of people attended and listened to his “preaching” in outdoor venues. So, the fact that a majority of citizens in the colonial era had no church affiliation may have had more to do with “class membership” in those early congregations than anything else.

    • George,

      Fink and Stark are not the first to note this fact. I discussed this problem in Recovering. Perhaps I missed it but I’ve not seen anyone attribute the lack of church membership to economics. It was possible to buy a pew and that was a practice but I don’t believe that the only way to join a church was to buy a pew.

      • Thanks for the comment, George. For more info on the low number of church affiliations/memberships in America’s founding years, check out Noll, Hatch, & Marsden’s “The Search for Christian America.” They note, for example, that church membership in the colonial period hovered around or below 1/3 of the population in New England and even as low as five percent in the southern colonies. I think sometimes we assume that nearly everyone went to church in America’s founding years, but that is not the case. There’s more to the discussion, of course. Hope this helps! ~Shane

      • Dr Clark, I think I’ve raised this before with you, on the problems of this statement and those like it: “Although these numbers are not great, they are better than the numbers in early American history. In America’s colonial period, around eighty percent of Americans had no church affiliation.”

        I cannot speak for Presbyterianism and Anglicanism in colonial America, but I do know the Congregational practice. Yes, families did buy pews in New England Congregational churches, and yes, civil law prevented the seizure of family-owned pews even in bankruptcy proceedings. But church membership was absolutely **NOT** tied to owning pews. There were plenty of places for people to sit in the meetinghouse other than the family-owned pews.

        Not only were poor people routinely admitted to church membership following profession of faith, since slavery was still legal in early colonial Massachusetts, there were cases of slaves who were church members. Making what Presbyterians would call a “credible profession of faith,” and “owing the covenant” (a local confession of faith of the local church that was more than a bare profession but less than the full confessional subscription required for church office) was the standard for admission to Congregational church membership. That had been the practice for many decades before the 1648 Cambridge Platform regularized the practice in the Congregational “church order,” and it was not new when that two-step process became the Congregational standard de jure, not only de facto.

        What the authors fail to recognize was that very large numbers of people in New England were attending church every Sunday but were not members of the church they attended. Sometimes it was because New England laws on Sabbath breaking, which were inconsistently enforced, particularly outside organized towns, forced people to go to church who didn’t want to be there. But a much bigger issue is that the standards for church membership were far higher in Puritan New England. If someone couldn’t give a clear and convincing testimony to their personal conversion, they weren’t going to be admitted to church membership. Same if they were basically orthodox but couldn’t own the local church covenant due to some sort of doctrinal disagreement. Generally Presbyterians were admitted to Congregational church membership, but much like the Dutch Reformed world with its practice of confessional membership, people who were in significant disagreement with the Reformed faith were probably going to disagree with something in the local church covenant and couldn’t “own the covenant.”

        I can’t speak to what was happening in the South, or in the Middle States, but the picture of New England as a place with a low percentage of church membership simply does not tell the full story. Attendance was far higher than church membership, unlike today’s situation in which many churches, even evangelical churches, expect that many of their members “on the books” will rarely if ever attend. That may have been a problem for Virginia Anglicans due to their history of parish churches brought over from England in which all baptized Englishmen were considered church members, but was emphatically NOT a problem in New England.

        Another factor is that Congregational churches had a separate organization, known as the “society” or the “parish,” which owned the building, which was used for both worship and community purposes. The membership of the parish was limited to men, a profession of personal conversion was not required for membership, and in some places and at some periods of time, there were property or income requirements to be a parish or society member. That meant it was entirely possible for a prominent community member who couldn’t make personal profession of faith to be a member of the parish, or even serve as a parish trustee and be responsible for paying a lot of money to maintain the building, and attend every Sunday, but not be a church member.

        These complications need to be understood by people who look at the supposed low rates of church membership in New England. The “membership” numbers do not tell the whole story.

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