Last week we reported on the findings of the new Religious Landscape Survey, which found that members of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, in the words of the post’s title, are “Not as Conservative as We Think We Are.”
According to that study, half or more of Missouri Synod Lutherans never read the Bible and approve of abortion, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage.
Studies of American Catholicism have shown a similar gap between what the church teaches and what its members believe, but researchers have found a big difference between the views of those who attend mass regularly (who tend to believe what their church teaches) and those who are only nominal Catholics (who tend to conform to the secularist beliefs of the culture). We raised the possibility that the same might prove true of confessional Lutherans. I’m happy to report that this seems to be the case.
In the subsequent discussion in the comments, Jeremiah Oehlerich pointed us to a response to the RLS findings by the Lutheran demographer Lyman Stone, who posted a piece on Substack entitled Are Lutherans Growing? Shrinking? Liberal? Conservative? Three Surveys Disagree.
He points out that both the RLS and another big survey, the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES), extrapolate their statistics and say that the LCMS has 3 million members! That’s a million and a half more than the church body itself claims! With this and other measures, Stone concludes,
Surveys are capturing large numbers of totally nonreligious people who nonetheless were perhaps baptized LCMS or might even perhaps have their children baptized LCMS, but who have absolutely no other connection to the LCMS, and are unlikely to be on any member roll anywhere. . . .
It really is the case that public surveys of highly nominal religious ID, especially of older people, are capturing something that looks suspiciously like “what you were baptized as” rather than “actual affiliation with a religious body today.”
So, what you have to recognize is about 50% of CCES/PRLS “LCMS members” are in fact…. not LCMS members at all.
Notice that these are not just “inactive members,” who tend to still be on church rolls and so are numbered with the synodical statistics. Rather, most of these are adults who may have been in the church as children but not since then, yet when a pollster asks them what denomination they are, they still say “Lutheran Missouri Synod”!
Stone himself has been carrying out research on the LCMS through his Lutheran Religious Life Survey. He gets his subjects this way:
The Lutheran Religious Life Survey (LRLS) samples LCMS members via LCMS social media, LCMS broadcasts, LCMS mailing lists, and congregational-level cluster sampling from insider recruitment, meaning that its respondents are extremely reliably sampled from at least semi-regular LCMS churchgoers or consumers of LCMS media.
OK, if the RLS method over-represents nominal members, Stone’s approach may over-represent highly-committed members. But still, his findings are surely more representative of active church-goers. (He is working from some 2000 respondents, while the RLS just heard from around 800 respondents who identified with the LCMS.)
Of the LCMS members Stone surveys, 90% believe abortion is a sin. Also, according to his
2022 Lutheran Religious Life Survey report, he found that generally 95% or more of LCMS church goers believe in the Trinity, the inerrancy of Scripture, the saving power of baptism, and the real presence of Christ in Holy Communion.
Stone comments, “LCMS members are quite well-catechized on basic confessional statements.” That will come as a relief to pastors!
Stone has uncovered some other fascinating and encouraging information–about pastors, evangelism, and converts, some of which I want to post about later. Those reports are
here.
He is aware of his need for wider samples and has plans for more comprehensive studies, including a yearly survey. The 2024 Lutheran Religious Life Survey is in the works.
The good news is that his project is getting a permanent home at Concordia University Nebraska in Seward. Go
here for information about that.
That most of the people in our local congregations are likely orthodox is encouraging, but we should not be complacent. We should care about all of those nominal Lutherans who never darken the door of our churches anymore.
If they still identify with us enough to admit an affiliation to a pollster, they still feel a connection to us. And if they are baptized they have a connection to Christ whether they realize it or not. And if they are both baptized and confirmed, they have an inkling about what we believe. This is something we can build on.
As they would have learned in confirmation, faith that is not nourished by Word and Sacrament will die. They will need to be evangelized. But if we can bring them back, the Word and Sacraments can reorient their beliefs and their lives.
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