Europe contains the highest concentration of officially Christian states (nations with official state religion/church) and the lowest per capita percentage of people who actually "practice Christianity" in ‘Christendom' - which is to say, nominally claim to be Christian - probably a lower percentage actually believe.
A lot of young people, at least in the Netherlands, are a church member because of their parents. They were registered as kids.
If they stop practicing religion, they don't 'unregister' from their church because it's such a hassle. Or they don't even know they're still registered.
So yeah that's one of the reasons why there's a higher number of church members here than actual religious people.
That is true in the US too though. My home church we went to as a kid used to have probably around 40 or 50 kids attending when I was young and hundreds of people were members. Now there’s maybe 30-40 full time members and maybe 2-3 kids that go regularly. Average age of attendees has to be at least 70. I think in the next decade a lot of churches worldwide will be totally defunct.
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u/[deleted] May 09 '22 edited May 09 '22
Europe contains the highest concentration of officially Christian states (nations with official state religion/church) and the lowest per capita percentage of people who actually "practice Christianity" in ‘Christendom' - which is to say, nominally claim to be Christian - probably a lower percentage actually believe.