Pew Research Center just conducted a study — encompassing 36 countries and over 80,000 respondents — that illustrates a drastic shift in the world’s religious population. In the U.S., Western Europe, and East Asia, a sizable percentage of the respondents reported that they were either no longer religious or had switched from the faith in which their parents raised them. Pew determined that, on average, at least one of every five adults has switched religions.

In the U.S., the Pew study revealed some interesting tidbits. Twenty-eight percent of adults reported that they have switched religions or become nonreligious. Moreover, 20% are now “unaffiliated,” which means they identify as agnostic, atheist, or spiritual but not religious. Most of those who became unaffiliated were raised Christian. In fact, the majority of the respondents who declared themselves agnostic, atheist, or otherwise nonreligious were raised Christian.

Ryan Burge, a political scientist at East Illinois University, commented on this trend: “In the 1970s and 1980s, switching was pretty rare. Nearly 85% of folks who were raised Catholic were still a member of that faith group when they were interviewed. For Protestants it was even higher — more than 90%. About 80% of folks raised Protestant are still Protestant as adults.”

The Washington Times observes that while there is a significant peeling off of adults identifying as the faith of their childhoods, that doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of the faithful attendees on Sunday morning. Weekly attendance is holding steady and has actually increased somewhat since the 1990s. Perhaps Pew Research is merely reflecting the number of people who would be considered cultural Christians (i.e., people who only come to church on Easter and Christmas).

However, another Pew study suggests that the above is merely a hopeful notion. As our Douglas Andrews recently wrote:

It’s not just that our nation’s Christian numbers are declining; Christian practitioners are also declining. Among that 62% who describe themselves as Christian, only a third attend religious services even monthly, either in person or online.

What happens when a people forgoes its Christian faith? We can get a good sense of this by peering across the pond. All across Europe, our decadent, self-loathing, post-Christian brothers are failing to reproduce and failing to defend their Western heritage. In Germany, the equivalent of the country’s Democrats and Republicans are colluding to ward off a conservative uprising in their recent national elections. And in Great Britain, the politicians are whitewashing the gang rapes of their young, working-class white girls by Pakistani men — all to hide the disastrous reality of their failed experiment in multiculturalism.

Ironically, those in Western Europe consider Americans far too puritanical in their notions of religion. They are taking moral relativism to its logical conclusion — which ultimately is chaos. Moral relativism states there is no Truth, only “your truth.” This is how nations like Germany can claim they are helping save democracy by squelching it. Human beings are very poor arbiters of Truth, which is why having an external, divine set of moral rules and guidelines is what sets the stage for a cultural renaissance.

There is also a great deal of blame to be laid at the feet of the Western church. It doesn’t matter whether that church is Protestant or Catholic — the deviation from Scriptural teachings and shying away from telling hard truths from the pulpit have left people confused, lost, and anchorless. In fearing to lose “seekers,” churches have become soft and inoffensive, altogether losing their potency. That is not to say that plenty of individual churches aren’t faithful and haven’t stayed the course, but there are a great many that are being led astray.

My fervent prayer is that the Western church is awakened from its slumber; that revival will break out across these United States so that we all can be a more united “nation under God.”