Religious decline: not?

Virtue on line reviews a Harvard study that contradicts the press meme that religion is dying. A long subtle report: read the whole thing.

essentially the numbers are stable. Maybe increasing: because those leaving religion come from wishywashy or non practicing families who have few (or no) kids, while the believing families are having a lot more children, which counteracts the decline in numbers.

One problem I have with the resport: Where are the Catholics?
much of this assumes an evangelical definition of Christian (e.g. "30 percent" of Americans say the Bible is the actual word of God". )

Uh, Catholics say The Bible is the inspired word of God, meaning he inspired the ones who conveyed the stories by mouth and later inspired the scribes who wrote it down, and maybe even inspiring the ones who copied and translated it. Saying it is the word of God implies it was written by Him, (or dictated by Him, as is the claim about the Koran) which is not quite the same thing.

so things are not as bad as the meme says, because: Hey look at all those kids.

but a lot of Catholics in PC diocese, along with a lot of mainstream churches, are hemorrhaging members, some of whom become vague believers who rarely go to church, but some join evangelical churches and become strict believers. Think VP Pence.

 There has been a growing gulf between the faithful and the dabblers for quite some time, with the first group growing more numerous. Think about the church you attend, relative to its belief system. It is extremely likely that if your church teaches the Bible with seriousness, calls its people to real discipleship, and encourages daily intimacy with God, it has multiple services to handle the coming crowds.

Which is why I wonder WTF the Pope is doing when he is busy trying to destroy Christian ethics and beliefs to make it more user friendly. But that's another issue I have discussed elsewhere.