Yesterday we looked at how the Chicago Sun-Times spun the ARIS data into a story about Wiccans, today we turn to Oregon where Nancy Haught at The Oregonian interviews Southern Oregon University sociology professor Mark A. Shibley about what the data means regarding the spiritual makeup of the Northwest.

“Established churches have been in decline, and evangelical Protestantism has been growing. Over time and generations, the mainline and Catholic churches are failing to hang on to young people, and some are being scooped up by mega-churches designed to appeal to the younger generation. New religious movements and spiritualities, neo-paganism, New Age folks have all experimented, explored and are proliferating here in the Northwest. At the same time, the hip California style of evangelicalism has flourished here. Some of those movements have spread up the coast, planted churches and taken hold. Our landscape has gotten a little bit more religious, but in particular ways.”

Shibley, who contributed to the book “Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest: The None Zone”, also points out that many of the increasingly large “nones” demographic found within the ARIS data may very well be exploring spirituality in “unconventional” ways (ie New Age, syncretic mixes, etc). So with “nones” (around 24% in Oregon, 25% in Washington), new religious movements (including Pagans), and evangelicals all flourishing in the Pacific Northwest, does that spell  some sort of looming religious conflict? Maybe not. While evangelicals are certainly absorbing adherents from the slowly dwindling institutional churches, some are predicting a major evangelical collapse in the next ten years.

“Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century. This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West … Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.”

Leaving the Northwest, perhaps, to the Pagans and “nones”? I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see, reports of the collapse of evangelical Christianity have come from a number of different sources and been wrong before. Still, if you squint in a certain direction, you can see how our post-Christian future could develop in the next twenty-thirty years.

As for the journalistic merits of the Oregonian piece, it’s a marked improvement over the Sun-Times’ look at Wiccans. While both only used one source in their respective articles, Haught wisely decided to find an academic who understood the ramifications of the ARIS data and then conducted the piece as a straightforward interview.  She also didn’t try to lead with a bad joke, for which I thank her. The end result is a far more nuanced, accurate, and detail-oreinted look at a developing trend.

Tags: ARIS, Christianity, evangelism, journalism, Mark Shibley, nones, Oregon, Paganism, Wicca