400,000 Catholics in America Missing

400,000 Catholics in America are missing. The National Council of Churches' 2009 edition of the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches records a slight but startling decline in membership of the America's largest Christian communions. Membership in the Roman Catholic Church declined 0.59 percent. A loss of 398,000 members since the appearance of the 2008 Yearbook. Southern Baptists lost nearly 40,000 members.

Its long been noted among Southern Baptists that Baptist conversions and baptisms have been in decline for several years. Among American Catholics baptisms and conversions have been steady at about 1 million infant baptisms and over 100,000 adult baptisms and conversions for the past decade.

NCC states that they faithfully report those numbers provided to them. On this we have no dispute. There is no reason to assume that the NCC has ever been less than truthful regarding their statistics.

So, where did 400,000 Catholics go?

An article in The Georgia Bulletin, the newspaper of the Catholic the Archdiocese of Atlanta, may shed some light. They report:

The number of Catholics in North Georgia continues to climb. Catholics are growing faster than the overall population in the Peach State as the official count of Catholics in the archdiocese climbs to 750,000, up from 650,000.

Hmmm... There are 100,000 more Catholics in Northern Georgia alone. Well, that's in line with most of America. The U.S. Census Bureau has repeatedly announced the increase in the Hispanic population, which is disproportionally Catholic, in all regions of the United States for many years.



Our own Southern state has also seen an inflow of Hispanic Catholics with many new Catholic churches being built or expanded.

Reading on in The Georgia Bulletin, we found this:

Hispanic people only make up some 18 percent of registered parishioners in the archdiocese. That shows there are many more Hispanics, who are likely Catholic, but who either do not attend a church or attend but are not registered.

Hispanics make up 49% of Catholics in North Georgia, but only 18% of registrations. Houston, we may have found our missing Catholics. If older registered Catholics in the America are dying, but younger Hispanic Catholics are not registering, then there likely is a significant drop in the Catholic population, at least on paper.

So, while Southern Baptists are busy with their new iniative to grow their organization, Catholics seem in need of finding some pencils and getting their Hispanic members registered.

Related Posts:
Evangelism Explosion Among Catholics
Orthodox Church in America Increasing
Search Maps for Denominational Names


Source: NCC's 2009 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches
reports decline in Catholic, Southern Baptist membership

Search Maps for Denominational Names

Our local free newspaper enlightened us on the existence of StateStats, a free online tool for creating search maps depicting the popularity of search terms by state. The search map tool basically counts how many people searched for a term in the past 30 days and then creates a heat map. Red indicating the most search activity and blue indicating the least search activity. We decided to play with the tool and toss in some of the more common terms used on CAS. You may find the resulting search maps as interesting as we did.

Map #1

Being in the deep South, affectionately (or not) known as the Bible Belt and home to many of the world's 16 million Southern Baptists, the first term used was "Baptist". The search map above was certainly not much of a surprise, except that the activity is clustered at one end of the Bible Belt and doesn't extend evenly throughout the Bible Belt. We were expecting Georgia and North Carolina to appear redder.

Map #2

Our next search map proved a bit more surprising. The second search map above depicts search activity for the term "evangelical." Once again we find the search activity is clustered together in a small group of contiguous states. The surprise was that instead of the cluster being located in the Bible Belt of the South, the cluster is located in the Northern Midwest. With a bit of poking about in Google, we discovered that the above area coincides with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). A Glenmary map of the Largest Participating Protestant Religious Groups is almost a perfect match. Mystery solved. Scooby snacks for everyone.

Map #3

One of the first things you likely noticed about the third search map above is that the nice, neat red cluster of the first two maps doesn't exist. There are red states all over the map. This is a search map for "Catholic". Of course, after the initial surprise, the map makes sense.

While New England (MA, NY, RI) is reknown for being heavily Catholic, those are the same states that are reknown for having the highest concentrations "liberal" Catholics who seem poorly catechized. MD was the site of the first Catholic colony and is home to the mother church of all Catholics in America. LA is the state divided into Catholic parishes instead of counties and recently elected Catholic as governor.

Nebraska as a bit of a surprise as when one says the word "Catholic" anything but "Nebraska" pops into mind. However, Nebraska is the home of the world famous Boys Town founded by Catholic priest Father Edward Flanagan. You may (or may not) recall the black and white movie with Spencer Tracy and a young Mickey Rooney.

I think we were expecting a red cluster from California to Texas as that region is heavily Hispanic Catholic. Perhaps they are searching on "Catolica?" (Or not)

Related Posts:
Evangelism Explosion Among Catholics (links to Glenmary maps of religious adherents)
2008 Evangelical Electoral MapChristian Apologetics Society Readership


Source: StateStats

Christian Apologetics Society Readership

While reviewing our web analytics, which steers much of our content, we were intrigued by the U.S. map showing where you our readers were located. Usually we view a shaded map which tells us that most of CAS visitors hail from California, Texas, and New York. We were much more suprised when we opted for a map showing by cities where you our beloved visitors were from:



We may have to conduct some research to discover what topics would interest visitors from the Dakotas and the upper Mountain region of the U.S.


Related Posts:
2008 Evangelical Electoral Map
Evangelism Explosion Among Catholics
Pew and the U.S. Religious Landscape


Source: Google Analytics

2008 Evangelical Electoral Map

Christianity Today has cobbled together a very clever electoral map depicting the evangelical Christian vote for the 2008 election. Christianity today used CNN's 2008 election results for the data. Hat tip to Kendall Harmon at TitusOneNine.

Click View Larger Map to open a larger map in a new page.


View Larger Map

The darker the shade of red, the fewer the number of evangelical Christians voting for McCain. Pink depicts heavy McCain support. Deep red depicts lowest McCain support. There are no blue states as Obama did not carry a mjority of evangelicals in any state.

If only there were a map of the 2008 Catholic electoral vote, perhaps many of those non-attending Catholics might reconsider practicing their Christian faith.

Related Posts:
Vote Your Conscience

Source: The Evangelical Electoral Map

Evangelism Explosion Among Catholics

One of the better Baptist blogs is Timmy Brister's Provocations & Pantings. Timmy describes himself as "a Christian who finds his passion around the gospel of Jesus Christ and communicating Christ in our culture."

In one of Timmy's recent posts, Timmy discussed "the work of exegeting culture, especially in regards to church planting." Timmy briefly described how he uses demographic research to determine where to plant churches. We critiqued Timmy's math and proposed an equation that might provide more accurate numbers on which to base church planting decisions. In response, Timmy asked me to summarize Catholic efforts "evangelize the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ". Our response to Timmy was as follows:

>Timmy Brister: "I would be interested in hearing what Catholics are doing to evangelize the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you mind sharing?"

Sure, But I don't know if I can do the topic justice as U.S. Catholics only make up about 4-5% of the worldwide Catholic Church. I only know a little about what's going on in our 5% of the Catholic Church.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops coordinates evangelization through their Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis.

The primary Catholic agency conducting most of Catholic evangelization in the U.S. is Glenmary and their Glenmary Research Center. Glenmary compiles most of the maps and data used not only by Catholics, but by other denominations as well.

Catholic Church: Adherents as a Percentage of Total Population

U.S. Counties With High Percentages of Unclaimed/Unchurched

U.S. Counties With Low Percentages of Catholics

U.S. Counties With Mission Need

Based on the mapping, Glenmary missionaries have been working largely in the Southern and Midwestern U.S. on church plants and other missionary activities. You can find reports on their missionary activities on the Commission on Evangelization site. Its chock full of resource on evangelization, discussion starters, reaching out to seekers, etc. They also have an article on "Why Catholics and Baptists Should Evangelize Together",.

Another Catholic evangeliztion group, to which I belong, is the Pope John Paul II Society of Evangelists and School of Evangelization. The immediate goal of the Pope John Paul II Society of Evangelists is to recruit 69,000 members, who are committed to winning at least one soul for Christ and His Church each year. All baptized Catholics who are fourteen years of age or older, who are in complete harmony with all the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Magisterium, are eligible to become members. There are no fees or dues of any kind. The Society has an online library of reprintable apologetics pamphlets and tracts that we download and pass out during our day to day activities. There are also free Catholic apologetic and prayer CDs, which you are most welcome to order.

In addition to these two major Catholic evangelization ministries, Catholics now have their own cable channel Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), thanks to Mother Angelica in Birmingham, AL. EWTN offers 24-hour Catholic programming to most major markets. A lot of unchurched, unclaimed, and non-Catholic Christians are watching EWTN and realizing that most of what they have been taught regarding Catholicism is wrong and they are converting.

Catholic radio has been growing every year with more and more Catholic stations standing up. Catholic Answers LIVE, a 2-hour apologetic program is very popular. They feature special days for only non-Catholics to call in with their questions. The Catholic Answers program is available as a free podcast, which I listen to at the office, often 2-3 times each.

In new media, Catholic Answers is THE outreach website. Catholic Answers Forums is where you find the greatest number of discussions on all aspects of Catholicism by Catholics, Baptists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics and others. Catholic Answers also pubishes a great Apologetics magazine, This Rock. Furthermore, there are about 1,624 Catholic blogs as of today. Each one written by a Catholic seeking to share his/her faith with others.

Catholic institutions also play a large part in Catholic evangelization. Catholics run the largest system of schools in the nation with 6,266 elementary schools educating 1,576,301 students and 1,352 high schools educating 680,689 students. 557 Catholic hospitals treated 83,795,186 patients. More than 1,735 local Catholic Charities agencies and institutions provided services to 7,854,104 unduplicated individuals in need of help in 2004. (Catholics invented the hospital and the university)

But the best and most effective Catholic evangelists are the many Catholics who quietly go about living their Catholic faith with humility and charity. As Saint Francis of Assissi said: "Preach the gospel at all times -- If necessary, use words."

In total, Catholic evangelism is fairly effective. About 1.1 million children and adults enter the Catholic Church every year in the U.S.. Worldwide, the Catholic Church grows by about 17-18 million. That growth is about the size of the entire SBC, every year, sustained. The number of Catholic priests is increasing as is the number of nuns. Several religious orders, such as the Dominicans in Nashville, TN, are overflowing with novices.

I hope that gives you a better perspective on Catholic evangelization. With 25% of the U.S. population Catholic, we only need every Catholic to help bring just 3 people into the Church to make the U.S. 100% Catholic. Want to be one of my three? ;)

God bless...

+Timothy

BTW, while writing this comment, I received a call from a friend of mine. He was raised Baptist but converted to Judaism. He told me that as a result of our long talks that he now considers himself a Christian. Please pray for him.

UPDATE

Jim West, pastor of Petros Baptist Church in Petros, Tenn., has penned a similar, but much shorter article on Baptist presence on the web entitled, Oh What a Baptist Web We Weave. The Facebook group mentioned and linked to seems a good idea worth replicating by others.

Related Posts:
New Catholic Evangelism Video

Source: Cultural Exegesis and Contextual Research

Maps of the Apostles

An anonymous CAS visitor sought maps of the Apostles. Presumably, what our Christian brother, or sister, was seeking was a map showing the areas that the Twelve evangelized. While there are dozens of maps depicting the voyages of Paul, maps depicting the travels of the Twelve are rare and difficult to locate.

One of the better maps is found on the site of the Calvin College Electronic Library (CCEL), a good source for patristic literture and commentary. CCEL's Fate of the Apostles includes a small gray scale map showing traditional locations where the Apostles preached and died. The map is shaded to indicate the boundaries of the Twelve's evangelization efforts. Small crosses indicate the approximate final resting place of each Apostle.

CCEL also offers a second map of the Apostles, showing locations where the original Apostles preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to various ancient traditions. Similar to the first map of the Apostles, this shaded map does not include crosses depicting the place of death of each apostle.

Source: Fate of the Apostles