Valuetainment - April 05, 2026


“Being Christian Comes With A Cost” - Atheist Turned Pastor REVEALS Truth Behind Religion's Decline

Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Charlie Kirk Billy Graham Johnny Carson Jimmy Kimmel Franklin Graham Rush Limbaugh Best Western Jimmy Fallon George Barna Gen Z Seminary
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Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

162.41

Word count

1,835

Sentence count

152

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Christianity is in free fall across the world, and with it comes a question that has been on everyone s mind for a long time: Why? Is it because of social media, mass media, and the spread of Islam? Or is it because Christianity is dying out across the globe?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30.000 So I want to read this to you.
00:00:31.260 I want to read some stats to you now.
00:00:32.480 I wonder how you're going to answer this.
00:00:34.460 Ten countries where Christianity is declining.
00:00:37.220 Australia has the largest drop of any country studied.
00:00:40.980 It went from 67.1% in 2010 to 10 years later, 46.8%.
00:00:50.120 This is a 20-point decline in only 10 years, and it's even lower today.
00:00:56.000 UK went from 62.4% during that same period to 49.4%, losing its Christian majority, Church of England closing 20 churches per year.
00:01:06.520 France, Catholic share fell from 81% in 1986 to 47%, almost a 40% decline from 86 to 2020, lost Christian majority among the eight countries projected to lose Christian majority by 2050.
00:01:21.660 Uruguay shifted to a majority unaffiliated, 52 nuns versus 44 Christian, used to be 61% Christian in 2010.
00:01:29.940 Netherlands transitioned to a religiously unaffiliated majority by 2020.
00:01:34.220 Roman Catholics went from 39% in 1971 to 23%, average of eight churches closing every year.
00:01:41.160 U.S., 78.3% to 64%, 14% decline during this same period.
00:01:47.640 Canada, 67% to 53%.
00:01:49.960 Chile, 86% to 68%, almost 20%.
00:01:52.640 Germany, 48% Christian in 2024, fewer than half belonged to two large churches.
00:01:58.700 New Zealand, 51% unaffiliated.
00:02:01.080 South Korea, no clear religious majority.
00:02:03.720 In 41 countries, the Christian share changed by five-plus percentage points from 2010 to 2020.
00:02:09.660 In 40 of those 41, the change was a decline.
00:02:12.800 Only one was a positive.
00:02:14.020 The sole exception was Mozambique.
00:02:16.820 That's increased.
00:02:17.640 was the only one out of all of them. Why is this happening? Why is the decline happening across the
00:02:22.380 world? I think there's a lot of explanations for that, a lot of factors that go into that. Number
00:02:27.600 one, I don't trust the stats. Because back when in 1966, when I met my wife, we were 14 years old,
00:02:35.880 91% of Americans would say they're Christians. Do you think we were a nation that reflected that
00:02:41.960 back then i don't think so and and so how do you know what do you mean by the reflected that like
00:02:47.940 another yeah do we live as if we're 91 followers of jesus christ no so people will claim in the
00:02:56.640 past it was a pot if you're a business guy and you wanted a bunch of clients um you know you
00:03:03.200 want to go to a big church in your community and become a member of that church and so forth so
00:03:07.540 you have an incentive to present yourself as being a christian are you truly born again are you truly
00:03:14.140 have a relationship with god those are two different things though right to me to say you
00:03:17.800 know at that time you know there wasn't social media there wasn't the accessibility and those
00:03:22.960 are those are other factors there was a billy graham we did have a massive billy graham would
00:03:27.640 be on uh johnny carson he was on the woody allen show he would go so at least they would still
00:03:33.080 invite nowadays, you know, when's the last time you saw, you know, Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy
00:03:37.280 Kemmel bring a Charlie Kirk or bring any of these guys, the late Charlie Kirk, they don't
00:03:42.040 do that.
00:03:42.400 So we were living in a different era.
00:03:44.160 So we were kind of like, we're a Christian nation.
00:03:46.500 So maybe TV, social media changed.
00:03:48.780 We're a Christian nation, but are we Christians?
00:03:51.480 Are we truly born again?
00:03:53.820 Have we received Jesus as our forgiver and leader in our lives?
00:03:56.860 What percentage is really born again, though?
00:03:58.080 It's a very small percentage, right?
00:04:00.120 But those are the true Christians. 0.99
00:04:01.640 I agree.
00:04:01.980 And so I think you're right. All these factors, social media, the mass media and so forth.
00:04:09.320 Those are all factors. I mean, I remember when Billy Graham was on the Johnny Carson show.
00:04:13.560 Right. I mean, are you kidding me? Great show.
00:04:15.120 Can you imagine Franklin Graham being on Jimmy Kimmel? I don't think so.
00:04:19.760 Yeah. So, yeah. So we did have those those positive influences.
00:04:23.360 We have a rise in Islam in some places that has created a culture where it's uncomfortable for people to publicly defend their faith.
00:04:32.520 Just to give you that number, during that same period, 2010 to 2020, fastest-grown major religion, plus 347 million, is Muslim.
00:04:41.060 Now 25.6% of the world versus Christians, 28.8%.
00:04:44.680 Projected to be the majority by 2050 is what they're looking at.
00:04:48.460 And you look at the birth rate among Muslims versus the birth rate among evangelical Christians.
00:04:53.400 It's night and day.
00:04:55.000 So there are various factors that are involved.
00:04:57.680 However, I see pockets of good news.
00:05:01.520 I see outbreaks where God is doing amazing things among young people in our country.
00:05:08.000 The recent statistics show that young people are reading the Bible more than previous generations.
00:05:14.580 You're right, Rob.
00:05:15.180 Can you pull up that Gen Z stat?
00:05:16.600 You're absolutely right.
00:05:17.240 It's just amazing.
00:05:18.460 And so you saw what happened.
00:05:20.720 The chart that Conor sent Rob.
00:05:22.560 In Asbury, at Asbury College and Seminary, where you had an outbreak of the Holy Spirit.
00:05:27.660 You had people coming to faith right and left.
00:05:30.260 I see some positive things going on.
00:05:32.220 But, you know, I want to stay on this.
00:05:33.840 I want to challenge you a little bit, go a little bit deeper.
00:05:36.680 Because I think what people want to know is, I get all the positive.
00:05:41.080 And we're going to go to it.
00:05:42.260 Because the next thing I'm going to show is where my enthusiasm comes for Gen Z specifically.
00:05:46.660 Their level of interest in wanting to become Christians, wanting to learn about the Bible, you know, and we see that.
00:05:53.680 But the question I want to go to is, these countries, Australia was a Christian majority.
00:05:58.820 UK was a Christian majority.
00:06:00.100 France was.
00:06:00.800 Uruguay was.
00:06:01.420 Netherlands was.
00:06:02.800 Canada, a lot of these countries were.
00:06:05.020 What did the leaders, what did that country do?
00:06:09.000 What did they look away?
00:06:10.180 What did they do for them to all of a sudden be like, oh, let's just be tolerant.
00:06:14.240 It's okay.
00:06:14.820 I'll give you an example.
00:06:15.520 Please.
00:06:16.100 The Church of England, which is totally woke and has become soft on the gospel,
00:06:22.600 has become just, in many people's views, kind of a theological joke.
00:06:29.320 And that's a state-run church.
00:06:32.720 I think state-run churches are a mistake.
00:06:35.360 That's not how the church ought to be flourishing.
00:06:37.760 But that's one example that I think is influencing England.
00:06:41.440 But again, the factors that would encourage someone today to be an outspoken Christian are not what they were back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
00:06:55.820 Back then, it was socially acceptable to be a Christian.
00:07:00.400 Nowadays, you may run into some professional headwinds if you're an outspoken Christian.
00:07:06.840 And depending on where you work and what you do, it may not be the smartest thing to proclaim it. 0.74
00:07:12.860 They may kill you.
00:07:14.200 Charlie Kirk was the modern-day Billy Graham meets who was the big Rush Limbaugh. 0.98
00:07:19.460 I've always said Charlie's the combination of Rush and Billy, and they killed him.
00:07:24.540 They killed him for it.
00:07:25.620 That's right.
00:07:26.480 So there's all these negative headwinds.
00:07:29.560 And I think it's a pruning process where the people today who are proclaiming that they're followers of Jesus probably really are followers of Jesus.
00:07:39.580 You know, George Barna, who does a lot of surveys and so forth, did a study.
00:07:43.260 He came up with five questions to try to determine, is someone a legitimate Christian?
00:07:48.520 Five theological questions.
00:07:49.820 Do you agree this, this, this, this?
00:07:51.660 We can't tell.
00:07:52.480 God knows the heart.
00:07:53.680 But five questions to try to discern.
00:07:55.440 Then he went to various denominations to try to figure out how many people in that church meet those five criteria and are true Christians.
00:08:02.720 What's his outcome?
00:08:03.420 What's he trying to solve for?
00:08:04.560 He's trying to figure out, you may have a thousand people at church, how many are really Christians?
00:08:10.200 And so he went to Baptist churches.
00:08:11.860 You know what he found out?
00:08:12.640 What's that?
00:08:12.980 About 29%.
00:08:14.040 That's my recollection.
00:08:15.940 It was like 29%.
00:08:17.200 Can you pull this up, Rob?
00:08:18.780 Baptist 29% from tracking.
00:08:20.540 Yeah.
00:08:21.120 Catholic.
00:08:22.200 About the same.
00:08:23.060 Okay.
00:08:23.420 Not much different.
00:08:25.020 I can't remember.
00:08:25.660 This came out a number of years ago, so I can't remember all the other ones.
00:08:28.620 But my point is he was trying to get beyond what people say versus who they are.
00:08:36.740 The incentive to be a Christian today is not what it used to be.
00:08:41.540 I'm getting death threats.
00:08:43.440 Who am I?
00:08:44.220 The risk of being a Christian today versus what it was back then. 0.91
00:08:48.140 You were safer back then.
00:08:49.220 That's right.
00:08:49.740 It was more popular.
00:08:51.500 Again, the question becomes, Lee, why?
00:08:53.880 What changed?
00:08:54.760 I think it's, A, social media.
00:08:56.520 I think it's mass media.
00:08:59.780 As you said, a guy like Billy Graham is not going to get the exposure today
00:09:02.640 that he got back in the 60s.
00:09:05.240 I think it's, in many ways, the rise of Islam 0.99
00:09:09.140 and a squelching of Christian beliefs, people expressing them.
00:09:16.320 Look at this NBA player you mentioned who lost his opportunity
00:09:23.120 because he was outspoken saying something that an average Christian would probably agree with,
00:09:28.880 that there's an unrighteousness to certain behaviors that culture says are fine
00:09:33.900 and we ought to celebrate and be prideful of.
00:09:37.560 So there's a squelching of Christian belief in that way
00:09:45.040 that I think makes it uncomfortable for some people to say,
00:09:47.720 oh, yeah, I'm a Christian, because now all of a sudden you go,
00:09:49.380 oh, well, you don't believe in choice?
00:09:52.480 You don't believe in abortion as being opportunity.
00:09:56.260 It's a women's health issue. 1.00
00:09:57.420 You want to come out against that?
00:09:58.740 Really?
00:10:00.240 And you're likely to get challenged today.
00:10:03.040 Well, you wouldn't be challenged back in the 60s.
00:10:04.840 You'd be celebrated.
00:10:05.860 I mean, everybody claimed to be a Christian, regardless of how many truly were.
00:10:10.940 Hi, I'm Lee Strobel, atheist turned Christian, author of several books,
00:10:15.120 including The Case for Christ and Seeing the Supernatural.
00:10:17.920 You might have questions about faith, about how we know that Jesus is who we claim to be,
00:10:24.060 and that there really is a realm beyond what we can see and touch and put in a test tube.
00:10:28.700 So I'd love to chat with you about that.
00:10:30.580 Just go to Manect, and then we can connect and talk about these matters of faith that
00:10:35.520 are so important to our lives.
00:10:41.840 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:10:44.820 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.
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