Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 17, 2025
The information that I present today is from Zenit, a Catholic news site and is based on a recent report from the Pew Research Center. I recommend that you sign up for a daily email from Zenit. It provides international Catholic news and analysis. I read Zenit each day and I recommend that you do the same.
Over the course of the last decade, something historically significant has taken place across the globe: the gradual erosion of Christian majorities in countries that once seemed inseparably linked to the faith. From the cathedrals of Europe to the chapels of Oceania, Christianity—while still dominant in many regions— is quietly losing ground.
The losses are particularly pronounced in nations long associated with Christian heritage. Between 2010 and 2020, four countries— France, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay—slipped below the 50 percent threshold of Christian self- identification. In the UK, Christians represented just 49 percent of the population in 2020. In France, it was 46 percent. Australia stood at 47 percent, and in Uruguay, the number had dropped to 44 percent.
Uruguay’s case is especially striking. Once shaped by a strong Catholic presence, it became in 2020 the only country in the Americas where a majority of the population—52 percent— claimed no religious affiliation at all. This category of the “unaffiliated” includes atheists, agnostics, and those who simply identify with nothing in particular. Across the same decade, three countries joined the list of nations with religiously unaffiliated majorities: Uruguay, the Netherlands (54 percent), and New Zealand (51 percent). They followed the path of countries like China, Japan, and the Czech Republic, where religion has long played a limited public role.
What emerges from the data is a portrait of a world where religion, particularly Christianity, is no longer the social default in many developed countries. It is not so much that other religions are replacing Christianity, but rather that a growing number of people are opting out of religious identity altogether. We Catholics imagine that Catholicism is losing ground to Evangelical Protestantism, but this is not the predominant religious phenomenon. Christianity, Catholic and Protestant, is losing ground to religious non-affiliation. People aren’t changing religion as much as they are becoming religiously unaffiliated.
The shifting religious map does not necessarily suggest the end of religion, but it does challenge long-held assumptions about religion’s cultural permanence. In some countries, the departure from Christianity has left no clear replacement—no new dominant belief, only a growing secular silence where religious affiliation once resonated in the lives for most people.
For the Catholic Church and other Christian traditions, the implications are complex. On one hand, the loss of majority status in traditionally Christian nations might prompt a fresh evangelizing spirit—one that no longer takes cultural Christianity for granted. On the other, it raises urgent questions about secularization, generational change, and the credibility of religious institutions.
Christianity has survived declines before—often to be revived in surprising ways and places. But this moment is different in its scale and pace. The trend is undeniable. Christianity is no longer the cultural baseline in parts of the world where it once defined not only personal faith but national identity.
It seems to me that Saint John’s is the kind of church that might be relevant in a world where many people choose not to affiliate with any religion. People may choose not to belong to a church, but people still have religious yearnings and questions. People still face death and loss and people still must figure out what they want to teach their children. People still hunger for an experience of the transcendent. Saint John’s is known as a church where everyone is welcome, where believers and doubters can stop in for silent prayer. Because our congregation is not “ stable”, but the majority are visitors and temporary members, people feel able to come without making a commitment. And I am told again and again, our church, despite its transient character, is especially welcoming. Welcome and lack of judgment are our hallmark character. We need to reflect on our unique mission. We offer welcome without judgment and inclusion without demanding commitment. Our parishioners and many of our participants are deeply committed, very religious, but we warmly welcome those who are merely curious or who want to show up without obligation.
Philadelphia needs Saint John’s! Let’s embrace our mission and let’s project welcome and love.
