It’s perhaps understood best as a sign of changing times.
Wake Forest Baptist Church, the prominent and storied community institution that meets on the Wake Forest University campus, has made the difficult decision to dissolve in the near future “due to a declining and aging membership, limited financial resources and a new rental policy imposed on the church by Wake Forest University,” the Rev. Rayce Lamb, interim pastor, said in a letter Sunday, as the Journal’s John Deem reported.
The scene of hundreds of thousands of sermons, classes and ceremonies, if not millions, the university’s Wait Chapel has served as a spiritual home for the congregation since 1956, when Wake Forest College first moved from Wake Forest to Winston-Salem. It’s also been the home of several prominent ministers, as well as a hub of progressive social justice issues — all while keeping one foot firmly planted in established Baptist doctrine.
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Those competing forces sometimes caused friction within the congregation — and with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. The church rode a wave of controversy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, serving as one of the first churches in the area to perform civil unions for same-sex couples, before same-sex marriage was ultimately legalized — a decision that didn’t sit well with its parent organization.
“From marching for Civil Rights in the 1960s, providing care to AIDS patients in the 1990s, and being a tireless advocate for marriage equality in the 2000s, Wake Forest Baptist Church has never been afraid to fight for justice and share the expansive love of Christ,” Lamb wrote in his letter. “The impact this church has had on both the Winston-Salem and the Wake Forest University community cannot be overstated and it will be missed. But, while Wake Forest Baptist Church will cease to exist, the resilient faith held by its members will not, and together we will move forward to do God’s work in new ways.”
We trust it will be so.
But things change. Church membership has dropped from hundreds in the 1950s and ’60s — including Wake Forest students, faculty and staff — to a few dozen today, not enough to keep paying the rent. Between now and the time the church folds, it will meet in the smaller Davis Chapel rather than Wait Chapel.
This isn’t the only church in the area to close or downsize in recent times. Some churches dissolve because of scandal or inner division — but more from practical factors like shifting demographics or population trends — or competition from other churches.
The closing serves as a reminder, though, that church attendance habits have been changing significantly in the U.S. for a while now. Last year, for the first time in several decades, Gallup found that fewer than half of U.S. adults belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque.
“Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend,” Gallup reported. “U.S. church membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937 and remained near 70% for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century.”
This coincides with the rise of the “nones” — Americans who say they have no specific religious affiliation (and thus check the box marked “none” or “nothing in particular”). Time magazine defined this group as “the fastest growing religious group in the United States” in 2012, and it’s continued to grow since.
But while they may not be particularly religious, it would be a mistake to identify the nones as anti-religion or immoral.
Whether in a church building or elsewhere, people seek meaning, purpose and structure in their lives. Despite its source, many of us seem to agree on the values that help us make it through our days and associate with each other in rewarding ways: honesty, generosity, kindness and compassion.
We could all use a little compassion these days.
The members of Wake Forest Baptist Church have learned these values. We trust they’ll take them along as they depart for new places.