{"id":29,"date":"2010-07-14T11:09:36","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T11:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html"},"modified":"2010-07-14T11:09:36","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T11:09:36","slug":"spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual and Religious Trends: How Are Things Changing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m busy working on my next book&#8211;it doesn&#8217;t yet have a title&#8211;on how spirituality and religion are changing in the United States (and mentioning Canada, Aus\/NZ, UK as well for comparison). &nbsp;For instance, did you know that in the last few years nearly every brand-name denomination in North America has experienced numerical decline, including many very conservative churches that some scholars thought resistant to membership erosion? &nbsp;Were you aware that &#8220;none of the above,&#8221; atheism, and &#8220;spiritual but not religious&#8221; are the fastest growing religion identifications? &nbsp;Or, that fewer Americans believe in Hell than ever before&#8211;or that attending a weekly religious service is at an all-time low?<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>So, I&#8217;m asking for your point of view: &nbsp;What&#8217;s new in your neighborhood? &nbsp;What ideas, patterns, trends, or shifts have you noticed in faith and spirituality in your own life, with your friends, and that of your immediate community? &nbsp;What&#8217;s different about what you believe and how you practice your faith? &nbsp;What do you think are the most important trends in religion and spirituality?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I thought there&#8217;d be no better group of readers to ask than those here at Beliefnet for some thoughtful, serious input. &nbsp;I&#8217;m curious about what you see from your window on the religion world and appreciate your stories, testimonies, and comments. If you feel comfortable, leave your name and a way to contact you and I may follow up with your comments. &nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m busy working on my next book&#8211;it doesn&#8217;t yet have a title&#8211;on how spirituality and religion are changing in the United States (and mentioning Canada, Aus\/NZ, UK as well for comparison). &nbsp;For instance, did you know that in the last few years nearly every brand-name denomination in North America has experienced numerical decline, including many&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-in-america"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spiritual and Religious Trends: How Are Things Changing? - Christianity for the Rest of Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spiritual and Religious Trends: How Are Things Changing? - Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m busy working on my next book&#8211;it doesn&#8217;t yet have a title&#8211;on how spirituality and religion are changing in the United States (and mentioning Canada, Aus\/NZ, UK as well for comparison). &nbsp;For instance, did you know that in the last few years nearly every brand-name denomination in North America has experienced numerical decline, including many&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Christianity for the Rest of Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-14T11:09:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Diana Butler Bass\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Spiritual and Religious Trends: How Are Things Changing? - Christianity for the Rest of Us","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Spiritual and Religious Trends: How Are Things Changing? - Christianity for the Rest of Us","og_description":"I&#8217;m busy working on my next book&#8211;it doesn&#8217;t yet have a title&#8211;on how spirituality and religion are changing in the United States (and mentioning Canada, Aus\/NZ, UK as well for comparison). &nbsp;For instance, did you know that in the last few years nearly every brand-name denomination in North America has experienced numerical decline, including many&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html","og_site_name":"Christianity for the Rest of Us","article_published_time":"2010-07-14T11:09:36+00:00","author":"Diana Butler Bass","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/2010\/07\/spiritual-and-religious-trends-how-are-things-changing.html","name":"Spiritual and Religious Trends: How Are Things Changing? 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She holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Duke University and is the author of seven books including A People\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s History of Christianity: the Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009) Her best-selling Christianity for the Rest of Us (2006) was named as one of the best religion books of the year by Publishers Weekly and Christian Century, won the Book of the Year Award from the Academy of Parish Clergy, and was featured in a cover story in USA TODAY. Diana regularly consults with religious organizations, leads conferences for religious leaders, and teaches and preaches in a variety of venues. She regularly comments on religion, politics, and culture in the media including USA TODAY, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post, CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR. From 1995-2000, she wrote a weekly column on American religion for the New York Times Syndicate. She has written widely in the religious press, including Sojourners, Christian Century, Clergy Journal, and Congregations. From 2002 to 2006, she was the Project Director of a national Lilly Endowment funded study of mainline Protestant vitality\u00e2\u20ac\u201da project featured in Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Diana also serves on the board of directors of the Beatitudes Society. Diana has taught at Westmont College, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Macalester College, Rhodes College, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. She has taught church history, American religious history, history of Christian thought, religion and politics, and congregational studies. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia. She is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/author\/dbbass"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christianityfortherestofus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}