Prof. Wesley Wildman featured in BU Today for Conversation on Church Closings
The following is an excerpt from BU Today’s article “Why Might a Record Number of Churches Close this Year” by Rich Barlow, featuring Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics Wesley Wildman, published on November 14, 2025.
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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.”
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