The 1960s as "Post-Christian" America

It's about more than numerical change

In an ongoing series of posts about the future of Christian higher education, I’ve taken for granted that the United States is becoming — or already is — a “post-Christian society.”

For the most part, what I mean there is that Christian colleges must wrestle with the numerical decline of Christianity. Tuition-dependent institutions have to enroll students, and if they choose to enroll only Christian students, they’re going to find fewer and fewer of them in a country whose residents are less likely to attend Christian worship, belong to a Christian church, or (especially if they’re under the age of 30) even identify themselves as Christian.

But it’s not just about numbers. “Post-Christian” also speaks to an anxiety — or sometimes, excitement — about something more than emptying pews. In fact, you only need to go back about sixty years to find American Christians describing as post-Christian a country whose residents overwhelmingly attended Christian worship, belonged to Christian churches, and (at all ages) identified themselves as Christian.