The New York Times recently reported on the Pew Research study that found that, while the number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen from 78% to 60% in the 2000s, in recent years, the slide has stopped - for now - and in fact, has experienced a slight uptick. In their reporting on this phenomenon, The Times wrote, “America’s secularization is on pause for now, likely because of the pandemic and the country’s stubborn spirituality.” At least, this is how it initially appeared, as you can see in the text below I italicized and bolded:
One nation, under God
I’m working on a project about belief.
As religion in America declined, experts administered last rites.
Churches were approaching “their twilight hour” as attendance fell, The Brookings Institution wrote in 2011. In his 2023 book, “Losing Our Religion,” the evangelical preacher Russell Moore asked: “Can American Christianity survive?”
The answer appears to be yes. People have stopped leaving churches en masse, according to a new study released this morning by Pew Research. America’s secularization is on pause for now, likely because of the pandemic and the country’s stubborn spirituality. Most Americans — 92 percent of adults — say they hold one or more spiritual beliefs that Pew asked about:
But I went to The Times website the day after the article was published, and found the phrase had been changed to “sustained spirituality.”
I can only imagine that some editor or a disgruntled reader caught the word “stubborn,” and quietly made the change. For “sustained” certainly sounds better, more neutral.
I wouldn’t have changed it - because, while I’m fine using both words to apply to my faith - if given the choice, I prefer stubborn. For faith to be “sustained,” it has to be stubborn. Tenacious, hold-on-through-dark-and-difficult moments kind of stubborn. Where you and I choose to hold on to what we believe, and the God we believe in, with a dogged determination when life gets hard. For as we all know, it will get hard.
In the church where I serve, I recently shared a message about this stubborn kind of approach to life and prayer - one that we see modeled in one of Paul’s co-workers. Listen in, and I hope you’ll be encouraged to be stubborn in your prayers and in your life, too.
Photo by Samuel Martins on Unsplash
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