Byron Johnson and Thomas Kidd take a contrarian stance against “dominant media and scholarly narratives regarding religion” in their new book, The Death of Religion?, published by B&H Academic.

“We present conclusive data to show that religious people are thriving and that practicing religious people are thriving most of all. We further show that at almost every turn, commonly used polling and survey data is misleading, confused, or grossly incomplete,” they write.

“We also demonstrate that typical surveys of American congregational life undercount the number of American churches by as much as 40 percent. The uncounted churches are disproportionately evangelical or Pentecostal, and often minister to immigrants and people of color.”

I talk to the authors about their contrarian stance in this episode of the Influence Podcast. I’m George P. Wood, executive editor of Influence magazine and your host.

Byron Johnson is founding director of the Institute for Studies of Religion and distinguished professor of the social sciences at Baylor University. Thomas Kidd is research professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and senior research scholar at the Institute for Studies of Religion.

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Show Notes

• 00:00 — Introduction and Sponsor Ad
• 01:58 —  What are the dominant — and negative — media and scholarly narratives about religion?
• 02:44 — But isn’t it true that there’s been a notable dropoff in religious affiliation?
• 06:10 —  Worries about the impending death of Christianity in America predate the nation’s Founding and can be discerned in every era of American history. Tell us a little about that.
• 10:39 — Tell us about the correlation between the decline of Mainline Protestantism and the rise of the nones. And how accurate a picture do statistical data give us, anyway?
• 20:48 — What is human flourishing, and what do data show about the connection between religion and flourishing?
• 24:01 — It’s one thing to talk about flourishing when your life is going well , but data seems to indicate that religion contributes to flourishing even in prison. Tell us a little about that.
• 27:25 — What’s your counternarrative to the declinist narratives? What do the data show us about what is actually happening?
• 32:17 — What are you reading right now that’s interesting, helpful, and/or personally challenging?
• 35:12— Conclusion

P.S. This podcast is cross-posted from InfluenceMagazine.com by permission.