Religious views in America in 2010
Americans ages 18-29 are considerably less religious than older Americans. Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today. They are also less likely to be affiliated than their parents' and grandparents' generations were when they were young.
Young adults attend religious services less often than older Americans today. And compared with their elders today, fewer young people say that religion is very important in their lives.
Compared with their elders today, young people are much less likely to affiliate with any religious tradition or to identify themselves as part of a Christian denomination.
Consistent with their lower levels of affiliation, young adults engage in a number of religious practices less often than do older Americans, especially the oldest group in the population 65 and older.
Less than half of adults under 30 say that religion is very important in their lives, compared with roughly six out of 10 adults 30 and older. By this measure, young people exhibit lower levels of religious intensity than their elders do today, and this holds true within a variety of religious groups.
Young people are more accepting of homosexuality and evolution than are older people. They are also more comfortable with having a bigger government, and they are less concerned about Hollywood threatening their values. But when asked generally about morality and religion, young adults are just as convinced as older people that there are absolute standards of right and wrong that apply to everyone. Young adults are slightly more supportive of government efforts to protect morality and of efforts by houses of worship to express their social and political views.
Source: The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
CLEARCREEK TWP., Warren County — CLEARCREEK TWP., Warren County — Pekin Road Baptist Church and the former Ridgeville Community Church are local examples of a negative national trend in the American mortgage industry.
Since December 2007, the number of foreclosure proceedings brought against churches has tripled compared with the previous seven years, according to a review of the Thomson Reuters Westlaw legal database which tracks foreclosures.
After 43 years without a single one, the Evangelical Christian Credit Union saw its delinquency rate more than double to 7.7 percent in July 2010 from 3.6 percent at the end of 2008, spokesman Jac La Tour said.
The trend suggests churches, like other nonprofits, are under extreme financial duress, La Tour said.
“The last place any of them is going to look (to cut spending) is their mortgage,” he said, adding the rate of delinquency among the roughly 1,000 evangelical ministries with mortgages under management by his credit union had dipped from 8.2 percent at the end of June.
While linked to today’s tough economic times and the national mortgage crisis, religious leaders and experts said the quickening rate of foreclosure by churches could also be traced to competition from new churches and changes in where, how often, and if people go to church in America.
“All churches in this country, at least Protestant churches, depend on voluntary contributions of members. If people are hurting, they are going to have less discretionary income. Churches might be the last place they would cut,” said Ava Chamberlain, a professor of American religious history at Wright State University.
“As different sorts of religious expression become more attractive and more popular, those churches become more popular, and they grow and get more members,” she said. “It’s been going on since the early 19th century (since religious freedom, and separation of church and state were ratified in the U.S. Constitution).”
People shopping for a new church consider issues like dress code and political stances on issues, such as gay clergy.
“They might not go to church or they might find another church,” Chamberlain said. “They’ll take their money with them.”
More traditional Protestant churches, especially the moderate to liberal churches, are struggling more with membership. Chamberlain said.
Methodist churches have closed, and Catholic dioceses have merged or closed churches.
In the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati, which includes Dayton, there have been 12 mergers since 2005, including five this year.
In the Cleveland, 17 new Catholic parishes, involving 39 churches, have been created as a result of mergers since last year.
Local synagogues
to merge?
After more than a century on their own, the Dayton area’s Beth Abraham and Beth Jacob synagogues are studying a merger to offset operating deficits and declining memberships. A vote is expected in October.
While responding to shifts in population and the loss of younger generations who move out of the Miami Valley, synagogues are trying to find ways to attract families unaffiliated with orthodox, conservative or reformed synagogues, said David Fuchsman, Beth Abraham’s president.
“If they are going, they are just going on the holidays,” Fuchsman said. “It’s one of the challenges for all the synagogues.”
Beth Abraham in Oakwood is also trying to find ways to connect with Jews in interfaith marriages, Fuchsman said. “I know that we are trying to do things to be more welcoming than decades ago.”
At the same time, the merger exploration committee recommended: “partial financial support for specified period of time to an Orthodox Congregation in physical proximity to the current Beth Jacob building if there is a sufficient community who commit to form, support and attend this type of Congregation.”
Rise and fall
in Ridgeville
In May, remaining members of the Ridgeville Community Church decided to change their name to Faith Alive Church. The name change was done in part to separate the church from confusion over their existence due to “For Sale” signs posted on the property.
“That became a real distraction,” said Pastor Mike Rhodehamel, who said he was saved here as a teen and returned as pastor in October 2008.
The name was the latest major change for a church that once boasted almost 400 members and a successful K-12 Christian school at Lower Springboro Road and Ohio 48.
Started by the Ridgeville community in 1845, the church grew into a complex of buildings. The congregation burned at least one paid-off mortgage at a party.
“It was just a real celebration for the entire body,” Rhodehamel said.
The church’s financial downfall came after construction of a $2.2 million expansion for the high school. Church officials took from church coffers to keep up with the mortgage and other school expenses, while enrollment began dwindling, Rhodehamel said.
“We were robbing from Peter to pay Paul,” he said. “We never got out of the hole we dug.”
Dissension over the school problems shrank the church’s congregation and thus contributions, sapping church accounts. After several rescue attempts failed, the entire complex was lost in foreclosure to Lebanon Citizens National Bank.
While renting from the bank and rebuilding membership, Faith Alive is looking for a new location, probably to the west, nearer to Springboro. Rather than the Ridgeville community, its 80 members now come from Franklin, Centerville, Middletown and Springboro, Rhodehamel said.
In hopes of building membership, sermons borrow elements from traditional and contemporary services.
“We do a little of both. We kind of try to mix it up,” Rhodehamel said.
Baptist congregation waiting on miracle
Pekin Road Baptist Church grew from an outreach by the First Baptist Church of South Lebanon in the 1960s.
“It was basically at that time a rural area,” Pastor Dennis Meece said.
Members burned the mortgage after paying for the original building about two miles south of Ridgeville, but lost the entire complex due to an inability to keep up payments on the mortgage on an addition, Meece said.
After peaking around 100 in the 1980s, membership dwindled. Today eight families, about 15 people, comprise the congregation.
“A church is not the building,” Meece said. “It’s not just a matter of financial, it’s a matter of investing ourselves.”
Meece said virtual churches on the Internet and other alternatives to traditional church attendance fail to fill the spiritual void.
People lose “the fear of God” and the potential consequences of sin and immorality, Meece said.
“Nothing will ever take the place of the physical assembly of people,” Meece said. “God knew we needed group therapy.”
While looking for new facilities, Meece is also hoping for a miracle.
Six years ago, a Good Samaritan began cutting the church lawns after stopping by the church.
“He’s been cutting our grass ever since,” Meece said.
While forced to face financial realities of a changing religious marketplace, Meece still harbors hope another miracle could help him buy back the building.
“That person could come in,” Meece said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2261 or lbudd@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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