Why Might a Record Number of Churches Close This Year?
Boston University Theologian Wesley Wildman on America’s shrinking religiosity
It’s possible that a record 15,000 US churches will close this year; what’s unquestioned is the plunge in institutional religious participation in the country. BU’s Wesley Wildman weighs in on what’s behind the numbers. Photo by Channel 82/Unsplash
Why Might a Record Number of Churches Close This Year?
Boston University theologian Wesley Wildman on America’s shrinking religiosity
The Christmas holidays, typically a season of joy and packed church services, could be full of woe for many congregations in 2025. A record number of US houses of worship—15,000–may close this year, with a “tsunami” of more shutdowns due in the decade ahead.
Most of the soon-to-be-defunct churches, per Axios, will be mainline Protestant, although Catholic churches have also shuttered. The immediate reason: surging “nones”—people with no religious affiliation—especially among Gen Z and millennials: 44 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds have no affiliation.
But deeper forces are at play, Boston University’s Wesley Wildman says. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation and the Norwegian government, he has researched secularism’s effects on religious groups, immigrants, and culture, and how nonreligious people conduct meaningful rituals. “Our demographic research built computational social simulations validated against past trends in several nations,” he says. “These simulations were able to match past periods of religious change and project forward to the end of the 21st century.”
Wildman is a School of Theology professor of theology, philosophy, and ethics, with a joint appointment at the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. He parsed America’s shrinking Christianity for BU Today.
Q&A
with Wildman
BU Today: Are we really on track to see 15,000 brick-and-mortar churches close in 2025?
Wildman: Europe is ahead of the curve in secularization trends, so it is something of a bellwether for the US. But the US is famously creative and oddly resistant to secularizing trends, so things might go differently here. Even so, religious affiliation and attendance, as well as private religious practices and religiosity, are all declining rapidly.
The Axios piece derives from an article in a well-known Baptist publication, the Baptist Courier. In it, a former denominational consultant and seminary professor argues that 15,000 churches currently open will no longer be able to afford a full-time pastor, and a further 15,000 churches will have shrunk to the point that they need to close, all in 2025. That’s about 8 percent of the churches in the US, so it’s big news. The problem is that nobody knows how to confirm these numbers. We have to go by denominational numbers, which are difficult to collect and often not up-to-date—not to mention that many churches don’t belong to denominations. The 15,000 closures might be overblown. But there is no question that many more than that have closed, and will continue closing, over a period of years.
BU Today: Has there ever been a contraction of churches like this in our history?
Wildman: Over the centuries, there have been ups and downs in organizational religions of all kinds, including Christian churches. But the collapse of religion in all dimensions simultaneously—affiliation, attendance, private practices, and intensity of religiosity—is genuinely unprecedented.
The rise of the Nones, the Dones (formerly religious people who are religious no longer), and the Spiritual-But-Not-Religious (some of whom are also Nones or Dones) are all side effects of a deeper transformation, which has everything to do with secularization. Our research has detected signs of secularization all over the world, including India, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa, places generally considered intensely religious.
The key conditions that drive religious decline are: (1) existential security, so you don’t need to trust supernatural powers to keep you and your loved ones safe; (2) education, which gives you an alternative worldview that does not depend on supernatural forces; (3) a positive attitude to cultural pluralism, so you appreciate differences among beliefs and practices and don’t take your own worldviews so seriously; and (4) freedom, so you can vote with your feet and leave religious organizations without paying any costly social or family or economic penalty. These four factors drive down supernaturalism, which in turn makes religious worldviews and lifeways less plausible for some people, some of whom remain spiritual.
In parallel, other people leave religions because they are disgusted with one or another aspect of the associated organizations, from political alliances with churches to clergy abuse scandals. Such people often remain supernatural in their worldview beliefs, but want nothing to do with ecclesiastical institutions. The spiritual among them might explore New Age spirituality.
BU Today: Are congregants able to continue their church communities virtually, despite the closings?
Some people appreciate church worship activities remotely, but typically they are members of a church who are temporarily or permanently prevented from attending, perhaps for health reasons. Some enjoy encountering others in virtual environments—as documented in my book with Kate Stockly, Spirit Tech—but those relationships are anonymous and rarely long-lasting. Most likely, people will not compensate for closed churches by spending more time online in virtual church communities.
There is a ton of evidence that religious worldviews and lifeways are useful for generating social support and for inspiring people to cultivate virtuous lives.
BU Today: Religion, at its best, provides society with a moral grounding and vital services (food pantries, child care, emergency relief). How might the shrinkage in congregations impact social supports?
There is a ton of evidence that religious worldviews and lifeways are useful for generating social support and for inspiring people to cultivate virtuous lives. Sometimes religions also create extremist perspectives and thus negative virtues, so their moral influence is complex.
Secular civilizations have created alternate means of social support, such as economic flourishing and social safety nets, and alternative means of virtue cultivation, such as education systems and social justice movements. But secular civilizations have not yet found ways to generate the kinds of community that people on spiritual journeys, seeking to cultivate advanced moral virtues, prize. So there remains a strong impulse for spiritually minded people to stay connected with whatever communities exist, including churches. Based on our research, we estimate that almost 25 percent of people sitting in churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples reject supernatural worldviews, yet stay involved because they appreciate the social support and stability afforded by religious organizations.