The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Worship

Related Photos

  • JOSH REYNOLDS

    Religion Today

Discussion

October 30, 2009

AP: Evangelists target spiritually cold New England

The Associated Press

WATERTOWN, Mass. — It’s hard to tell in the quiet of a color-splashed autumn morning, but Redeemer Fellowship Church is trying to set roots in a rough neighborhood. For churches, anyway.

Until this new church opened last month, its 19th-century Congregational church building in suburban Watertown was empty for nearly two years. Just across the street, a closed Baptist church is filled with condos. So is a former Catholic church a half mile away.

Dead churches are a familiar story in New England, which recent surveys indicate is now the least religious region in the country. But some see opportunity in a place where America’s Christian faith laid its roots.

“You look at this area and it’s a great area of potential, it’s a great area of need,” said Redeemer Fellowship pastor Chris Bass, a Houston native.

Several Christian denominations see New England as a “mission field” — a term often associated with unchurched, foreign lands. As they evangelize and work to plant new churches, they speak of possibility, but also frustration. The area’s highly educated population is skeptical and often indifferent to their faith.

“About once every hour, I give up. It’s tough, man,” said a half-joking Joe Souza, a Southern Baptist missionary working north of Boston. “It’s like, you found a cure for cancer and you want to give it away and nobody wants it.”

Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey released this year showed New England overtaking the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region in the country. Twenty-two percent of respondents here said they have no religious faith of any kind, highest in the country.

In a Gallup poll this year, all six New England states were in the Top 10 least religious in the country, with Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts claiming the top four spots.

New England’s religious apathy has developed over decades, but it’s striking where the Pilgrims landed seeking religious freedom and the great 18th-century preacher Jonathan Edwards helped spark the First Great Awakening. Stately churches near town centers all over the region are reminders of the central importance religion once held.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut do host the nation’s heaviest concentration of Catholics, but those numbers have dropped substantially. In 1990, 50 percent of New England residents identified themselves as Catholic; by 2008, it dropped to 36 percent following the clergy sex abuse scandal in Boston, according to American Religious Identification Survey 2008.

Several groups trying to re-ignite New England’s faith are theologically conservative, such as the Southern Baptists, Presbyterian Church in America and the Conservative Baptists’ Mission Northeast. They say a reason for the region’s hollowed-out faith is a pervasive theology that departs from traditional Biblical interpretation on issues such as the divinity of Jesus, the exclusivity of Christianity as a path to salvation and homosexuality.

The Rev. Wes Pastor, head of the NETS Institute for Church Planting in Williston, Vt., said New England’s liberal mainline denominations, such as the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church, have been practicing a “different religion.”

“I’m not saying it to be snooty, but they have a different belief system and that belief system ... is a profound departure from historic Christianity,” said Pastor, whose group trained Bass and supports his Baptist church.

The Rev. Paul Nickerson, a church planting specialist at the UCC’s Massachusetts Conference, said local churches declined because of a creeping insularity, not because “we’re theologically inept.” Progressive churches that refocus on the needs of the unchurched are growing, he said.

Text Only
Worship
  • Cowboy church offers non-traditional Bible camp

    Vacation Bible school gets under way in full force at Joplin area churches next month, but one congregation offers an alternative. How about Horsemanship and Bible camp?

    May 28, 2012

  • David Yount: Christians still await return of Jesus

    Unlike ourselves, the earliest Christians lived in imminent expectation of the consummation of history, when Jesus would return to usher in the kingdom of God. They thought heaven was right around the corner. This expectation explains their fervor.

    May 28, 2012

  • 022512_craig-tally-new-NEW.jpg Craig Tally: Today’s idols not as visible, still strong

    The early nation of Israel existed in a time when people of differing tribes worshiped multiple gods. They fashioned idols to portray these gods, their features and their powers.

    May 21, 2012 1 Photo

  • r050112campnoah.jpg Four camps scheduled in Joplin to help children deal with tornado experience

    Nearly one year later, emotional scars remain from the disastrous Joplin tornado, and children are no exception.

    May 21, 2012 1 Photo

  • r050912faithbook.jpg Doctors in danger: Joplin author recalls growing up on the mission field

    The year was 1937. Mao Tse-tung and his soldiers were marching north as part of the Communist takeover of China, and nothing would stand in their way -- the least of whom would be 7-year-old Garland Bare, his missionary parents or the three other Bare children.

    May 14, 2012 1 Photo

  • Terry Mattingly: Tension builds between women, Vatican

    Truth is, tensions have been building for decades between the LCWR leadership and Vatican leaders. Thus, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith missive stressed that its call for reform was built on a lengthy study of materials created by “a particular conference of major superiors and therefore does not intend to offer judgment on the faith and life of Women Religious in the member congregations.”

    May 14, 2012

  • Church briefs (May 12 on)

    May 14, 2012

  • 022512_craig-tally-new-NEW.jpg Craig Tally: Parenting ideal for understanding idolatry

    It is generally believed that idolatry is wrong because of its connection to polytheism. However, the matter of having more than one god is the subject of the First Commandment, which clearly states that we are to have no other gods.

    May 7, 2012 1 Photo

  • 050212-FAITH-concrete2.jpg Nazarenes build three homes for tornado-stricken families

    The latest effort, spearheaded by the Joplin District Church of the Nazarene in Carthage, which has jurisdiction over 77 congregations in Southwest Missouri and Southeast Kansas, has come in the form of three new Joplin homes.

    May 7, 2012 1 Photo

  • David Yount: Bible’s length daunts many

    The Bible can be a source of strength for young and old alike. But the challenge every reader of the Bible encounters at the outset is that it is formidable in length -- my copy runs to 1,862 pages of tiny type -- and, to all appearances, lacks a coherent plot.

    April 30, 2012