When the Pew Research Center recently released a study concluding that a growing number of American Jews had only a “nominal” commitment to their faith, few were surprised. It has been said before.
The Pew study found that 62 percent of American Jews saw themselves as Jews because of ancestry or culture. Only 15 percent traced their identity through their religious faith. Thirty-four percent of Jewish respondents even said it is permissible to see Jesus as the Messiah and still call oneself a Jew.
Alan Cooperman, deputy director of the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, said, “They are not saying Judaism can allow belief in Jesus. They are saying if you are born a Jew, reared as Jewish and convert to Christianity, I still consider you a Jew.”
One report described these “nominal” Jews as “rarely at worship services, indifferent to doctrine and surprisingly fuzzy on Jesus.” That description illustrates the definition of “nominal” found in Webster’s Dictionary. There the word means “existing in name or form only; not actual or real; very small in amount.” Each definition seems to fit the latest Pew report.
Unfortunately the definition also matches the trend among Christians in the United States. Among Roman Catholics, for example, only 55 percent of the nearly 78 million members practice their faith, according to a study by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Sixty-eight percent said they could be “good Catholics” without going to mass and more said it was a moral obligation to help the poor and needy (68 percent) than believed the church sacraments were essential (61 percent).
Protestants fared little better, according to a study by LifeWay Christian Resources. When asked in a survey “if a person is sincerely seeking God, he/she can obtain eternal life through religions other than Christianity,” 26 percent of respondents agreed.
Twenty-eight percent of respondents said God is just a concept, and only half said, “Believing in Jesus Christ is the only way to get to heaven.” With such responses, it should not be surprising that more than two out of three said they rarely pray, attend worship or read the Bible.
Another study by Hout and Fischer titled “America’s Weakening Ties to Organized Religion” found a steady century-long decline in American Christians’ belief in heaven, hell, the Bible and the certainty of God.
Like the Jews, American Catholics and Protestants — including evangelicals — seem to have a growing number of “nominals.”
Some contend the “nominal” phenomenon is not new, that there have always been people who do not personally adhere to the public standards of belief but are afraid to break with them publicly.
It is easier to blend in with the dominant religion than to risk economic, social or political fallout by breaking with the norm, these observers say.
Some point to the parable of Jesus recorded in Matthew 25:8–12 of the virgins who prepared for the wedding feast. Five made personal preparation by bringing oil for their lamps. The other five simply went along with the crowd. When the bridegroom neared they discovered they were unprepared. These are like “nominals” today, the reasoning goes. They are in the group but not prepared for the celebration.
Some researchers trace the impetus for the growth in “nominals” to a philosophical change beginning late in the Baby Boom generation. Since the late 1950s children have been reared to think for themselves and not simply to follow authority.
As a result, this argument contends, more recent generations have developed values and attitudes that undermine traditional authority. Many in this camp point to the sexual revolution and the drug culture to illustrate a “me first” attitude that resists authority whether it comes from government or the church.
Other Christian observers point out that some “nominals” once had a vibrant faith but disappointment with God or injury in the church caused them to drift away. Lack of social awareness by the church is a stumbling block for many young people today. They find the orthodoxy of their elders lacking the visible obedience to God’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
Evangelicals themselves have indicted a common approach to theology that many believe encourages “nominals.” The biblical emphasis that it is “by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8–9) sometimes fails to point out that believers “are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:10).
The gift of grace is always accompanied by the demands of costly discipleship, the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization said in “Occasional Paper 23.” One without the other is incomplete.
The Lausanne Committee observed, “In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin veneer of Christianity.” In the United States, for example, about 70 percent claim to be Christian but fewer than half that number say religion is important in their lives.
Statistics are interesting but they cannot show what is in one’s heart. One must always be careful about judging the faith of another. And it is incumbent on anyone talking about “nominal Christians” to examine one’s own heart first, for it is in the heart that the drift toward being a “nominal” begins.
At the same time, as evangelicals understand the Bible, a relationship with God is not about identity with a culture, a tribe or an institution — not even a church. It is about a transforming personal relationship through faith in Jesus Christ that is characterized by such qualities as love, joy, peace, fellowship with other believers, a desire to learn of God through Bible study, a concern for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven and a living hope for eternity.
That is the kind of relationship to which God invites all who will believe, and there is nothing “nominal” about that kind of relationship.
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