Fast Facts from ECFA
• 71% of Americans believe in the Trinity.
• 23% of U.S. adults watched a religious TV program in the past week, 20%
listened to religious talk radio.
• 91% of visitors to your church will never return unless someone connects with
them.
• A set of 35 Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church
represented 45% of the U.S. population in 1968 and 35% in 2012.
• 62% of non-Christian Millennials have never read the Bible.
• 81% of practicing Christian Millennials have posted Scripture online in the
past year.
• Almost 1 in 5 people under 40 in the U.S. now describe themselves as
spiritual but not religious.
• Gen-Xers begin turning 50 in 2015.
• 82% of U.S. adults have at least one credit card, including 40% who have 3 or
more. Just 16% have none.
• 50 million Americans have trouble putting food on the table, according to
Feeding America, a food bank network.
• Millennial moms are far more likely than moms of any other generation to be
raising their kids near or even in the same house as their extended family.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 1 in 5 pregnancies in
the U.S. ends with abortion.
• There are now 3.9 billion urbanites in the world.
• 80% of U.S. adults believe it is more common for grown children to live with
their parents now than 20 years ago.
• 30% of the U.S. population are auditory learners vs. approximately two-thirds
who are visual learners.
• 12- to 17-year-olds in the U.S. send or receive an average of 60 texts per
day.
• 19% Bible Lovers/19% Bible Skeptics.
Bible skepticism is tied with Bible engagement for the first time in Barna Group and American Bible Society polling. The number of those who are skeptical or agnostic toward the Bible—who believe the Bible is “just another book of teachings written by men that contains stories and advice” —has nearly doubled from 10% to 19% in just three years. This is now equal to the number of people who are Bible engaged—who read the Bible at least four times a week and believe it is the actual or inspired Word of God.
Digging into the population segmentation of Bible skeptics, two-thirds are 48 or younger (28% Millennials, 36% Gen-Xers), and they are twice as likely to be male (68%) than female (32%). They are more likely to identify as Catholic than any other single denomination or affiliation (30%) and are the segment most likely not to have attended church (87%) or prayed (63%) during the previous week. They are also most likely not to have made a commitment to Jesus that is important in their life today (76%). (Year-in-Review: Barna's Top 10 Findings from 2014, Barna.org.)
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