John Stonestreet – Family Council

The Coming Tsunami of Church Closings Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Nov 2, 2026John StonestreetChristianityChristianity, Church, Church Ambassador Network, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty

Church attendance is declining, but predictions of a coming collapse go far beyond the data.

The title of a recent article from CNN announced that “(a) ‘tsunami’ of church closings is poised to remake America.” In it, author John Blake suggested that the United States may face a future that is, like Europe, “filled with empty cathedrals and church buildings converted to condos.” One church he highlighted once served 1,000 people but is soon closing its doors to only 12 congregants.

Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade. Many churches will be unable to escape this “tsunami” of closings—a grim trajectory one pastor described as, “Every year the pews are getting emptier and the collection plates getting lighter.”

Today, less than a third of Americans attend church weekly. 75 years ago, half the population did. But are 10,000 churches closing every year? Not really.

As Ed Stetzer, dean at Talbot Seminary, wrote in response to Blake’s article:

[T]here is no evidence—cited in the article or in the actual data—that something like a tsunami of church closings is coming. The data points to decline. But it is slow decline and churn, not a tsunami.

Specifically, Stetzer argued that there is not evidence to suggest a net loss of 10,000 churches a year. In 2024, for example, 4,000 Protestant churches closed, but 3,800 opened, a drop of only 200 that year. Even including Roman Catholic churches in the analysis does not approach the 10,000 number. Also, the numbers don’t address the somewhat recent experiments with multi-site congregations, or the host of small, nondenominational “storefront” churches that fly under the radar.

The largest number, Stetzer pointed out, (the 100,000 churches to close in the next decade) refers to church buildings sold or repurposed, not congregations dying out. Churches that move are not reflected in these stats, and at least some of the shifting attendance numbers have to do with Christians moving from church to church, not in or out of church altogether.

Part of the problem with the CNN article is the attempt to reinforce an existing narrative. Blake noted, for example, the cultural distrust of institutions, the political divide within churches, issues of sexual morality and identity affirmation, and various scandals in churches over the years. At the same time, his discussion of the positives that churches provide was limited to things like the importance of community and a sense of connection with the past. He worried about what would happen to the social services provided by churches if they no longer exist.

While his concerns are valid, those are things churches do. They aren’t what churches are. The Church is God’s gathered people. A church is where God’s word is proclaimed, His sacraments are practiced, and His people are discipled.

Blake ignored any questions of truth or genuine spirituality. Like too many have, he assumed that if churches don’t “get with the times” and update their doctrines to appeal to younger generations, they will die. In his view, creeds are secondary to marketing concerns. Any talk about spirituality must be subjective, primarily about meaning and connection, not who God is and what He is doing in the world. It should not be missed that the churches that are shrinking are those that think of themselves in the same way.

Thankfully, to paraphrase a line from Mark Twain, reports of the Church’s death are greatly exaggerated. The American church certainly has some problems and, so far, the recent hopes for revival haven’t panned out. But it’s His church, not ours. He promised to preserve it, not always grow it.

Predictions of the Church’s demise are not unusual. G.K. Chesterton wrote that, “(a)t least five times, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.” Jesus put it even more strongly. He promised to build His church, and that the gates of Hell could not stand against it.

Guest Column: Is the LGBT Fad Fading?

Oct 26, 2026John StonestreetLGBTLGBT

New data suggests younger teens are moving away from the identity trends of recent years.

On an especially prescient episode of Seinfeld, Kramer refused to “wear the ribbon” during a walk-a-thon to support AIDS research. Last month, life imitated art at a school in Burlington, Massachusetts, when a group of middle schoolers refused to participate in Pride Day. Instead of rainbow colors, many wore black, or even red, white, and blue. Some announced their pronouns as “U, S, and A.” When teachers and community leaders denounced their sacrilege, parents came to their kids’ defense. As one mom said, “I wish these schools would pump the brakes on what they are shoving down our kids throats.”

This may not be a random incident. After astonishing growth in the last few decades, the number of young people, identifying as LGBT is now in decline. “Trans identification,” according to Professor and author Eric Kaufmann, “is in freefall. (And) non-conforming sexual identity is also in sharp decline.” Last year, his report on the student body survey from the exclusive Phillips Academy Andover found “a drop from over 9 percent non-binary in 2023 to 3 percent in 2025.”

His report was quickly and loudly condemned as flawed. However, at the end of September, Dr. Jean Twenge confirmed that not only has there been a shift in younger Americans identifying as LGBT, but that the largest declines are among younger teenage cohorts. As Twenge put it, “(T)he headline result is for 9th graders (14 and 15 years old): Identifying as LGB absolutely plummets between 2023 and 2025, from 17% to 11%.” Also, the largest decline has been among younger teenage girls, the group that had experienced the largest increase in LGBT identification between 2015 and 2021.

The most likely explanation for the significant change is that the high level of identification in previous years was the result of a social contagion that was brought on by, among other things, Covid isolation and the attending upsurge in social media interactions. Clearly, the growth in LGBT identification was not a naturally occurring event.

This was always obvious, of course. In the early 2010’s, we were still critiquing the Kinsey Report claim that 10% of people were gay and lesbian. In the decade that followed, that number ballooned as quickly as new letters could be added to the ever-growing acronym of sexual identifications. School teachers and youth pastors were reporting that all of their students identified as LGBT because, as one told me, “no one wants to be cis or straight anymore.” Clearly, for younger Americans, the novelty of being gay, bi, nonbinary, and trans is wearing off.

At the same time, as Twenge discussed in a Substack post a week earlier, the numbers have not moved significantly among older Americans, especially millennial women. This means that young people will continue be taught and influenced by adults who remain convinced that it’s their sacred duty to promote LGBT identification and lifestyles. This means that young people who question the validity of such categories will inevitably find themselves in conflict with older, true believers.

After all, to anyone who has built their own identity on being an “ally,” the shift in sexual identification is a tangible threat. A refusal to go along with “PRIDE” celebrations is shocking. Even more, admitting wrong is unthinkable, because that would mean admitting that children have been harmed, the irreversible medical “treatments” were for nothing, and threatening parents with blame for a child’s suicide was manipulation without cause.

Still, it will be hard for “allies” to claim that the early 2020s upsurge in LGBT identification was a naturally occurring phenomenon of students “being true to themselves.” Biological reality has always been on the side of truth. It is our responsibility as Christians to be on the side of truth also.

At the same time, the next trend lines may include an influx of people forced to acknowledge how they have messed up their own lives and even the lives of children. They will not only need to know what is true about who we are, male and female, but also that repentance is good, forgiveness is available, and restoration is possible.

What Are They Teaching Teachers These Days?

Oct 19, 2026John StonestreetEducationEducation

A new review of graduate education programs raises questions about the ideas shaping future teachers and their classrooms.

Recently, the Roaring Fork Schools in Colorado adopted the 3Rs curriculum, which stands for Rights, Respect, and Responsibility. While this might sound promising, as Kate Anderson of the Alliance Defending Freedom explained,

In the 3Rs curriculum, kindergarteners are taught explicit anatomical terms and asked how they like to be touched, first graders complete a worksheet on reproduction, and by second grade, once-optional vulgar slides become mandatory. And the curriculum instills gender ideology through all grades.

As troubling as this curriculum is, the more troubling fact is that a school would adopt it, and a teacher would agree to teach it. The ideological capture of teacher education in America has green lit dangerous and destructive ideas on even the youngest of students. Along with, “What are they teaching the kids these days,” Americans should seriously ask, “What are they teaching the teachers these days?”

A new report from the American Enterprise Institute offers an answer to that question. The report’s author, Daniel Buck, analyzed syllabi from leading graduate schools of education across the country. It found courses that clearly advance political agendas, teacher activism, sexual extremism, and social justice goals. According to the report, these grad programs generally promote “dogmas grounded in progressive and critical theory frameworks rather than exposing prospective teachers to intellectually diverse ideas and training them in pragmatic instruction and classroom management methods.”

As Lyell Asher acutely assessed back in 2018 in The Chronicle of Higher Education, education schools “have long been notorious for…ideological orthodoxy and low academic standards.” The AEI report contained numerous examples of what is happening at the graduate level.

At California State University, Northridge, in a class on “reflective teaching,” students are assigned articles entitled, “Integrating Feminist Theory, Pedagogy, and Praxis into Teacher Education” and “Queering Elementary Education: A Queer Curriculum for 4th Grade.” At UCLA students are encouraged to “embody a social justice agenda . . . and mirror the diverse, caring, anti-racist, socially responsible learning communities.” Buck clarified, “Any mention of instruction, assessment, or learning objectives is notably absent from the program’s guiding principles.”

A review of the M.A. in Education program at U.T. Austin found that 90% of the readings in one of the tracks could be classified as Critical Theory. Assigned articles included, “Is an Antiracist and Decolonizing Applied Linguistics Possible?” and “Raciolinguistic Exceptionalism: How Racialized ‘Compliments’ Reproduce White Supremacy.” For the Critical Pedagogy and Social Justice Class at Texas Tech University, the required text had a chapter titled” Sexuality Education and Desire.”

Describing the report, a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed stated, “Children learn a great deal about race and gender in schools these days, but not nearly enough about reading and math.”

The rot in education programs isn’t new. It began at least a century ago with education theorist John Dewey. As Chuck Colson wrote, “Dewey rejected the biblical view of the child as a creature of God and maintained instead that the child is nothing but a biological organism.” The result was an emphasis on trendy educational theories over transcendent standards or permanent truth. Gone were supposedly outdated goals such as transmitting cultural heritage, learning from the past, and teaching eternal principles and virtue. Instead, education was seen as “the means of humanity’s passage to the next stage of evolution.” In this distorted view of redemption, education is the means of redeeming society in a new social order that reduces truth claims to power politics and treats ideas as expressions of race, class, and gender.

In How Now Shall We Live?, Colson identified a prescription for this disease in education, writing:

If we hope to reform the educational system, we must learn to analyze and critique the worldviews that have spawned these disastrous teaching methods and then offer an alternative worldview that is decisively Christian—one that will yield a theory of education capable of improving the schools for all students.

Tragically, the most progressive department on many Christian college campuses is the education department. Having adopted a good mission of sending Christian teachers to public schools, they are nonetheless held captive by the accreditation standards and program requirements. In a form of ideological capture, these schools of education have lost a distinctive Christian voice and become fellow catechizers of the government school agenda. And those who run these programs also earned graduate degrees in education. So, many are as indoctrinated into progressive educational theory as their counterparts in non-Christian universities.

The Colson Educators Program exists because so many Christian schools expressed a need for teacher training and development within a true Christian worldview. With free digital courses, on-site trainings, and an academic affiliate program, Colson Educators integrates worldview formation into professional development. To learn more, visit colsoneducators.org.

When teachers understand their role within the biblical framework of redemption, the potential is amazing. They can—as English poet John Milton wrote—“repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him…by possessing our souls of true virtue.”