Bad Theology Is at the Heart of Declining Numbers

"Although no one cause alone explains the decline seen in the Pew data, one explanation should be highlighted: a lack of orthodoxy."

From Crisis

By Christopher D. Raymond

Bad theology drives church decline. Orthodox believers stay, while those with unorthodox views leave. Generational data confirms it: faith falters with weak foundations.

The release of the latest wave of the Religious Landscape Study by the Pew Research Center shows that the decades-long decline in practice, belief, and belonging continues. For every one convert the Church has gained, another eight (at least) have left, while fewer of those who remain in the fold meet subpar definitions of what it means to be a “practicing Catholic.” These numbers give added urgency to the efforts to (1) understand how this happened so that (2) steps can be taken to correct it.

Although no one cause alone explains the decline seen in the Pew data, one explanation should be highlighted: a lack of orthodoxy. Stated simply, those who—whether due to poor catechesis or being surrounded by a culture increasingly hostile to the teachings of the Church—hold theological views at odds with the Church’s teaching are less likely to remain in the Church in the long term than those adhering to orthodoxy. While this point seems commonsensical to those reading this, it is important to remember just how many others have tried (some well-known names continuing to try) to operate contrariwise. Moreover, when looking at how faith and the content of that faith interact, we see that the degree to which people adhere to orthodoxy predicts whether they will disaffiliate, cease attending, and cease believing in God in the future—net of other factors thought to undermine religion.

To demonstrate that bad theology is very much at the heart of the decline seen in the Pew surveys, we can make use of the Portraits of American Life Study. This survey interviewed people at two points in time marking the acceleration of disaffiliation: 2006 and 2012. Such “panel studies,” where the same people are interviewed at multiple points in time, allow us to delve more deeply into the causes of changes in belief and behavior than is the case with the Pew surveys.

The Portraits of American Life Study is a close approximation of the Pew surveys. While the percentage of Catholics in the 2012 wave of the Portraits of American Life Study sample is somewhat higher than reported by Pew (24.6 percent versus 22 percent, respectively), the annualized rate of disaffiliation observed between the two waves of the Portraits of American Life Study (1.54 percent of those Catholics surveyed in 2006 quit the Faith each year until 2012) was similar to that observed between 2007 and 2012 in the Religious Landscape Study (an annualized rate of 1.49 percent). Looking at that figure of one convert for every eight lost, the Portraits of American Life Study is again close, with 6.6 respondents raised Catholic leaving the Church for every respondent joining the Church as of 2012 (which, presumably, would be even closer to that 1:8 ratio if we could have surveyed respondents again in 2024). 

The Portraits of American Life Study is well suited to study this question because it has data allowing us to examine the degree of orthodoxy among the laity. Respondents were asked about whether Christ physically rose from the dead; whether Heaven, Hell, and demons are real; whether the Bible is the inspired Word of God; whether the Bible contains moral and/or historical errors; and whether God’s law is the basis for morality. Orthodox responses to ten of these questions were then added together to create a scale ranging from low to high orthodoxy. Respondents with seven or more orthodox views were treated as “orthodox” (admittedly a very low bar); four to six orthodox views were treated as “moderate”; and three or fewer treated as “unorthodox.” 

Two key findings emerge from looking at the relationship between theology and loss of faith. One is that the orthodox are not leaving the Church, while the unorthodox are. Between 2006 and 2012, less than 2 percent of the most orthodox respondents and 4 percent of relative moderates quit the Church; among those with the most unorthodox theological views, nearly 16 percent ceased to identify with religion. This confirms that theology matters: orthodoxy saves souls while unorthodox views lead one out the door.

This finding, applied to a broader scope of time, leads to a second conclusion: that the deleterious effects of unorthodoxy have been with us for some time. Broken down along generational lines, we see that disaffiliation among Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers (13.3 percent and 15.6 percent, respectively) is more than double the rate observed among those in the Silent Generation (6.2 percent); among Millennials, it is 26.3 percent. We also see that weekly Mass attendance drops with each generation, from nearly 60 percent among the Silent generation to less than a third of Boomers and Gen-Xers and around 20 percent of Millennials. 

The loss of faith observed among younger generations corresponds to generational differences in the degree of orthodoxy. While 46.9 percent of those in the Silent Generation evinced relatively strong adherence to orthodoxy (another 29.7 percent were found with the most unorthodox theological views), such orthodoxy was held by around a third of Baby Boomers and Gen Xers and less than a quarter of Millennials (more than half of whom fell into the unorthodox category). This implies that the decreasing rates of adherence seen with each generation are the result of bad theology: lacking strong foundations in the Faith, it is no wonder that more and more in each passing generation have been swept away with the secular tide witnessed over the past century. 

Leaving aside, for the time being, tough questions about how we arrived at a point where such unorthodoxy became so widespread, one simple step to arrest the decline is to do a better job instilling orthodoxy—and to root out teaching to the contrary where it exists. Lukewarm embrace of the Church’s teachings fails to help anyone; if anything, it just sets people up to be swept away by the next tide of secularization. Of course, improving catechesis and more strident apologetics alone won’t reverse the damage done overnight, but the evidence presented here shows it is clearly needed.