Mistreatment of Natives, Church Attendance Declining, & Refugee Help

While much of this week’s focus at the Southern Baptist Convention has been on caring for those who have experienced sexual abuse by pastors or other church leaders, messengers to the convention’s annual meeting approved their first ever resolution dealing with the mistreatment of Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. The resolution dealt with removal of the people from their native lands and forced assimilation through mandatory boarding schools.

A quarter of Christian adults in the U.S. say they’re attending church at least weekly, down from a third who say they regularly attended prior to the pandemic, according to a recent Evangelism Explosion study conducted by Lifeway Research.

When asked about their church attendance before COVID-19, 34% say they attended four or more times in a typical month, 30% attended one to three times a month, and 36% attended less than once a month. Now, 26% say they attend four times a month or more, 31% say one to three times, and 43% say they attend worship services at their church less than once a month. Since the start of the pandemic, the percentage of Christians who say they attend church monthly has dropped seven percentage points: 64% to 57%.

Numerous studies confirm churches continue struggling to regain in-person attendees who were lost during pandemic closures.

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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, announced that the total number of people forcibly displaced has surpassed 100 million for the first time on record. This number includes those “forced to flee conflict violence, human rights violations and persecution” and includes refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced people. These 100 million people represent 1% of the global population and would make up the 14th most populous nation in the world.

The number of displaced people has risen dramatically in the last decade from 45.2 million in 2012 to a staggering 100 million today. This massive increase can be attributed to increased conflict in countries such as “Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo” as well as the war in Ukraine. Since the war in Ukraine began, more than 8 million people have been internally displaced, and 6 million have fled as refugees.

You can find the full story at our website, Baptist Press.com.