The Dechurching of America and the Leaders of the Next Great Awakening
Throughout American history, there have been cycles of growth and decline in faith. Contrary to what many people feel, we do not currently stand at the lowest point of faith decline. That occurred after the Revolutionary War, when church membership accounted for about 7% of the American population—and that despite the First Great Awakening in the 1730s and 40s. Philosophers like Voltaire and Thomas Paine predicted that Christianity would not survive to witness the 19th century. But obviously it did. The Second Great Awakening began in 1790, leading to the founding of churches throughout the vast Western territories of the United States and creating the very religious American culture that many of us grew up in.
The Third Great Awakening occurred in the 1880s, leading to the outbreak of Pentecostalism and eventually the greatest expansion of Christian faith in history in the 20th century. The latest awakening was the Jesus Movement and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal that began in the 1960s and lasted into the 1980s.
Unfortunately, the spiritual life of a nation tends to wind up and unravel successively. Throughout Old Testament history we read of the rise and fall of faith in Israel, and Christian societies have always experienced a similar roller-coaster religiosity. Revival always gives way to a “return to the mean” and then to seeming disaster.
The current disaster of faith has recently been dubbed “the dechurching of America.” America is facing the lowest point of faith that we have seen since the decade leading to the Civil War. If history is any guide, we will see another awakening sometime in the next 20 years. Along the way, we will see magnificent revivals in a number of churches, in pockets here and there across the nation, and then all of a sudden, we will see a massive influx of new believers flooding into churches.
No one can predict on the basis of history what the next awakening will look like or where it will start. But we can say with pretty good confidence that the young ministers that we are training today—whether church leaders or Christian professionals across society—will lead the next awakening.
At Northwest University, we recognize that the students we see on our campus have a glorious future. As our motto says, we put Jesus first in everything we do. We are training our students to do the same. Whether it is in small groups meeting across the campus, worship services in our chapel, fervent prayer meetings every Monday night, Bible and theology classes required in our curriculum for all, or professional and academic courses designed to integrate Christian faith with work, we are teaching them to call out to God for revival and to expect God to answer. When the time comes, they will be ready. O God, pour out your Spirit on us!
Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.
Repeat them in our day,
in our time make them known;
in wrath remember mercy.
Habakkuk 3:2 (NIV)