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It's Thursday, May 7, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, you had some big headlines coming out in recent weeks about statistics about religion in the United States, in particular about Christianity in the United States, in some studies, Christianity and Judaism. But the big story here is the fact that you have some credible reports indicating that church attendance has gone up for the first time in many decades. So just looking at the period, especially since the end of the COVID pandemic, there has been a significant increase in church attendance. So theologically, biblically, in terms of the Christian worldview, what in the world is going on here? Well, for one thing, you have a big issue in the United States, and the big issue has often been described as American exceptionalism. And then the debate is over how exceptional the United States is. What's the exceptionalism? Well, in the modern age, the trend has been, especially from the midpoint of the 20th century, toward a decline in religious influence, the binding power of religion. And of course, in the Western civilization, that means Christianity, by and large, the waning or the declining social force, social authority, moral authority of Christianity in the culture. And of course, one of the ways that's measured is in numbers, and church attendance is one of those numbers. Now, you also have self identification, and those studies have been all over the place. But secularization is a trend. Whether you're liberal or conservative, Christian or agnostic, quite frankly, something is going on. And here's the pattern. Secularization has really driven through. And that's the thing you have to keep in mind. Secularization theory really emerged in the modern age. The explanation, and it was actually a prophecy on the part of some, they wanted to see a decline in the authority of Christianity in the society. And so they celebrated it, they predicted it, and they said that as a result of the modern worldview, industrialization, modern consumer economy, human beings gaining more and more control over the natural world, they went on to say religion is going to decline. And again, they used the word religion, but. But in the main, they're talking about Christianity. And so what they're saying is that Christianity would have less and less cultural authority going forward, and that that would also be reflected in declining church attendance, religious identification, et cetera. Now, here's the thing. In much of Europe, that particular theory proved itself absolutely right. In other words, the sociologists and others who were saying what's going to happen automatically due to the modern age and its arrival is the decline in religious authority. The decline in the cultural influence of Christianity. Now you also have a pattern, and that is that sociologists will say, look, this is happening primarily in the west defined over against Christianity, because Christianity has been the major formative religious influence in Western civilization. But of course, there are others. And so one of the interesting things is that secularization theory also suggest that Judaism would have a very similar experience, especially in Western modernizing, industrializing societies. And by and large, liberal Protestantism and liberal Judaism have done exactly what the secularists had predicted. But it's also important to understand that it's geographically different. And this has to be explained. And this has been a major preoccupation of sociologists and others from the late part of the 20th century. You have what's been defined as American exceptionalism, because Europe, much of Europe was right on schedule in terms of secularization. You had the numbers or percentages of people attending church just plummeting. You had the social impact and the moral authority of Christianity virtually disappearing. You had Christianity, which had been the authority structure for most of these civilizations, most of these societies, most of these nations. And they secularized, secular space replaced Christian dominated, influenced space. But as I said, it wasn't even, it wasn't even, even in Europe. But by and large, Europe represents a pretty radical secularization. You cross the Atlantic and you come to the United States or you come to North America. And here the picture is different. We've talked about how the picture is different right now in Canada because Canada has increasingly begun to just model the European pattern. The United States has been different. Church attendance rates have been higher, Religious identification rates have been higher. And you also have waves of religious interest, Christian interests that have shaped the United States. You still have a public authority of Christianity, at least in some places, at least. One of the main distinctions between, say, red states more conservative and blue states more liberal is that you often have a correlation. It's directly observable in terms of the kinds of churches, the number of churches, the percentage of people who go to church. Christianity comes with a big difference. It makes a big difference. And Christianity claims moral authority. And so that helps to explain that picture. But recently there has been news, and it's come out of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. As I said, it's indicating that for the first time in recent decades, worship attendance has actually gone up, gone up in raw numbers, gone up in what are believed to be authoritative numbers. NPR reported it this for the first time in decades in person, attendance for worship at congregations in the US has increased, and that is tied to what's described as a massive new study out. And that study is out from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The head of that program, in terms of the research is sociologist Scott Thuma. He is identified as the report's chief investigator. We're told that this particular research looked at a base of about 7,500 congregations. Let's just say that is a large sample. And the Hartford Institute for Religion Research began to crunch all these numbers. Scott Thuma said that this increase in worship attendance from one report to the next has not happened. It has not happened in his lifetime. He said, that hasn't happened in my whole career as a researcher. He went on to say, looking at that pattern, when we ask, you know, how strong is your congregation? He says, quote, a large percentage of them were saying, it's stronger than it was before the pandemic, that there's a different atmosphere here. Okay, so that's what's really interesting, because the sociologists understood that the pandemic created a whole new social situation and church attendance began to thin out. And that was particularly true in liberal churches. Particularly true. And yet the claim here is that worship attendance has now increased to the point where the numbers are higher than the numbers reported before COVID So this is big. Scott Thum is not exaggerating when he says this is something very new. So new, as he says, he hasn't seen anything like it in his old career as a researcher. Religion News Service, predictably and understandably did a major news story on it. The headline, worship attendance at churches up for first time in decades, according to new report. And the authors in the report also said, quote, across a range of indicators, there are signs of recovery and in some cases, renewal. The study tells us that what's identified as median in person attendance, which, by the way, really went down during COVID it has returned to some pretty healthy numbers. We're also told that Catholic and orthodox congregations had the highest reported median attendance, as the report says, quote, in part because those traditions have fewer parishes than Protestants. The median, that is the average evangelical congregation. In the report, 7,500 churches reported 75 worshipers, while the median mainline church reported 50. Okay, so those numbers are very small, just in relative numbers. When you think about a church that has 75 worshipers, that's evangelical, more liberal churches, 50. And yet there's another overlay you have to keep in mind, which is age. Because when you're Talking about the 75 in one church and the 50 in another in attendance, that can also reveal a tremendous, tremendous difference. In pattern when it comes to age, mainline Protestants traditionally a good deal older than evangelicals. Okay, a couple of interesting things from this report. And again, statistics should not drive our theological analysis, but they can inform our understanding of the context in which we do our work. This report also tells us that larger congregations are now more likely to grow and smaller congregations are more likely to decline. Let me just say from looking at a lot of this research at this point, the context has a lot to do with it as well. What many denominations are facing, at least in terms of the most acute pattern, is the decline of rural churches. And that is largely tied to the decline of rural populations. And so during a time when the rural population was much higher and represented a much greater percentage of, of, say, a state's population, the fact is that there were so many churches, and the churches were often just a matter of a few miles apart, if even that, and many of those churches did well for a very long time. But when you have a net decline in the population, you're going to have a net decline in everything. And that includes, by the way, school attendance, which is why in many of these areas, you have elementary schools and middle schools and high schools closing as well, or if not closing, then consolidating. I don't think it should be a real surprise that it is many of the larger congregations that are likely to grow. And of course, virtually all those congregations began as smaller congregations, but they grew. And a part of this is because the very size of the congregation has, at least in all likelihood, something to do with the gospel that's preached, with the message that is communicated, the substance of what is taught. That's not really a surprise. It also has a great deal to do with the fact that in the United States right now, it is simply a sociological fact that institutions are healthier if they reach a certain size relative to their community. And that just has to do with presence, momentum, even the ability just to conduct the ministries of a local church. Looking at this just in terms of the sociological data, what comes to mind is that, yeah, this is big news. It is big news that for the first time in a very long time, Scott Thumas says for the first time in his lifetime, his career, it is true that these numbers net are going up, or at least were when they were reported here. And as I say, there's a big difference between conservative Protestants and liberal Protestants and their churches on this score. The liberal churches have been hemorrhaging members far faster than the evangelical or conservative churches. But the fact is that in some settings, it's increasingly difficult. A secularizing society puts all kind of pressure on churches. And so it's going to be interesting to see where this goes. I do think it's interesting that even the secular press has picked up on this. And, and if nothing else, it just goes to show, at least for now, that the predicted automatic, unavoidable pattern of secularization, which has affected so many European cultures and others so demonstrably and even across the northern border, has really run its course to a far greater degree in Canada. The reality is that in the United States it is still true that millions of people attend church services and the cultural left doesn't like it, wants to ignore it. The sociological community has been predicting the end of it. And I guess it is headline news when it turns out that at least for some time, for reasons that even the sociologists are having to scratch their head about, the numbers are going up rather than down. Now, I don't want gospel Christians, evangelical Christians, to look at this and say, well, I guess we're in pretty good shape. That is not the message. But the message is, you know, there is still an opportunity in this country, a gospel opportunity. There is also a continued opportunity for Christian influence and for the authority of Christianity in the larger society. And that's where I want to say to Christians, it is there. It is a matter of our stewardship to apply that. And when it comes to so many of the issues we discuss on the briefing, let me just say this is a report that just encourages us that there is the opportunity for influence. That doesn't mean that we're not losing on many fronts. It doesn't mean that we do not face incredible challenges. It doesn't mean that the cultural elites are with us. No, the realities to the contrary. It is true, however, that there is an opportunity now faced by churches in the United States that appears not to be such an open door elsewhere. And that, I think we in America have to understand, is good news, and it's also a stewardship. Finally, on this issue, let me also say that there are some big comparisons once you begin to look at the data, and I downloaded all the reports and been reading through them, including this latest report. One interesting thing is that you have a geographical disparity. So, for example, congregations in New England in the mid Atlantic, we're told, experienced the greatest losses, whereas those in the south central and mountain regions saw the strongest gains. That's pretty consistent with what we have seen in previous reports, and frankly, it's fairly consistent with what most of us see by experience, looking at these different regions in the United States, the fact is that there are certain regions that are far more secularized than others, just in terms of this process and not coincidental. Incidentally, in terms of worldview, they tend to be a good deal more socially liberal and politically liberal than where you see higher church attendance as well. I think Christians understand that is not an accident. But there's something else we need to consider as we're looking at our culture today. And this has to do with the fact that if you look at where we are right now as a culture, and you were to rewind, say, 30 or 40 years, one of the most significant differences is the way news and information is delivered and the amount of it and the constancy of it. So let me just say that I'm old enough to tell you that when I was a little boy, when you had the news, it was on at a certain time of the evening. There were three major television networks in terms of the national news. And at one point There were only two, really. And you could say that by the 1960s, there are three. And most of them were presenting a 30 minute, very professional news program as a news report in the evening. And if you saw it, you saw it. If you didn't, you didn't. There it was. And so it was something you couldn't just pull up at will. It wasn't something you could stream on some kind of electric or electronic device. It was basically something on the airwaves. It was the television as successor to radio. In that sense, if you saw it, you saw it. If you didn't, you didn't. However, those news sources were incredibly privileged, which is to say they had control over what the American people knew. And so you had major newspapers, and especially at that point, print media is really the biggest, most influential, most authoritative media sources, the big newspapers in the country. You also, as I say, had radio. But television began to encroach upon the territory of first radio and then newspapers with its greater immediacy. And of course, you had the visuals, so now you could see a major news story. It's not just hearing about it on the radio, it's not just reading about it in newsprint. It's something you can see. However, you couldn't just see it over and over again. And if you missed it, you missed it. So again, it was something that was scheduled. You also had outsize authority. You're talking about Walter Cronkite at cbs, Huntley and Brinkley at NBC. And they were Overwhelmingly liberal, just in terms of being attached to the cultural elite. Now, by the way, little story there, little footnote, which is to say that the cultural elites, being elites, are not really fast to latch on to many of these new communications platforms. They're rather slow. And it's because they've got a great deal invested in the previous system. So the cultural elites had so much invested in newspapers. What's this upstart radio? Then they invested in radio, along comes television. But television quickly became authoritative, legacy, and commercially, let's just say, extremely successful. But you did have a monopoly. You had NBC, CBS, ABC. That was it. At least until June 1, 1980. What happened on the 1st of June, 1980? The launch on cable television, as it was known, of cnn, the Cable News Network. It was part of a larger empire that was pioneered by Ted Turner, a major businessman in the south, located there in Atlanta. He created not only cnn, but also the Turner Broadcasting System, later known as tbs, tnt. A lot of the initials in terms of cable television are directly traceable to Ted Turner. Ted Turner was an outsized character. He died just days ago at age 87. He was one of the most transformative figures in modern culture. And it's at least important for Christians in thinking about how worldview issues play out in terms of the culture, how cultural change happens. It's important we realize that the landscape as we know it today so shaped by streaming media, the Internet, the digital revolution, and all the rest. The really transformative moment came back in 1980 with the establishment of CNN. And by the way, the legacy networks made fun of it. Ha ha. Who is this upstart? Who in the world would have any respect for news that was broadcast on cable television? So here's another thing to watch in the society when you have a certain kind of media platform like broadcast television, cbs, NBC, abc, they are established. Well, CBS was actually called the Tiffany Network. You know, how elite is this? And then you have cable. And cable, when it really started out, was a lot of, say, lower bottom feeder media and a whole lot of reruns and all the rest. By the way, Ted Turner also understood that there were billions to be made in reruns. And that had a great deal to do with TBS and its success as well. But anyway, when it came to news, Ted Turner understood there was a real opportunity here. But, you know, he had the imagination to see something that others didn't see and quite frankly dismissed as being ridiculous. And that was news available on cable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Whereas the legacy networks had 30 minute live programs in the evening. You missed it. You missed it. When it came to cnn, well, it was coming around constantly and it was live. And then Ted Turner put an enormous amount of money into cnn. He put an awful lot of money into it. He put an awful lot of time and space into it. He put a lot of veteran journalists back to work. Some of them basically had retired from some of the legacy networks. He gave them jobs, they had names. He also created a stable of names and he created a 24 hour news cycle. Then other things happen. So that was 1980. And just understand that at almost the very same time, history changed. And one of the main ways that happened was with the Iranian revolution. How relevant is that for today's headlines and the holding of all those American captives in Tehran? You did have the legacy networks pioneer some new programs, such as Nightline on ABC with Ted Koppel. It basically reinvented late night news on the legacy networks. But CNN was there and CNN had professional journalists, had very good technology, and it was able to, to broadcast things long before some of the network personnel could ever get there. It's because CNN was very mobile, it was very agile, and it had to fill 24 hours of programming. Some of it repetitive, yes, but it had to fill the programming. And with the development of what was called headline news, every 30 minutes it rotated so you were only at the very most, 29 minutes away from a full broadcast. On cable television, the cable revolution took place. Cable went into a majority of American homes, and all of a sudden CNN goes from being one man's folly to being one of the dominant brands in media all the way till today. Now, we also understand there have been some big changes in terms of competition. So for example, coming from the conservative side comes Rupert Murdoch and Fox News. And yet Rupert Murdoch, speaking of the death of Ted Turner, said, quote, Ted Turner's vision for 24 hour cable news transformed the media industry and gave viewers everywhere a front seat to witness history unfold. His impact as a trailblazer has left an indelible mark on our cultural landscape. He was a great American and friend. Now that's an interesting thing because Rupert Murdoch was one of his major competitors. But Rupert Murdoch basically got the model, at least in large part for Fox News, from CNN itself. Rupert Murdoch was the one who understood that taking a stronger conservative position and offering an alternative to the liberal, liberal media would be a great cultural and commercial opportunity. And so over the course of the last decade or so, Fox News has actually often eclipsed CNN in terms of viewership. Now, Ted Turner had a very unhappy boyhood, and he was pretty honest about that. He did inherit some wealth, and that wealth was largely in the business of billboards. Ted Turner did understand communication, and he understood the opportunity. And so he began buying up other assets and redeploying them. And so it wasn't just cnn, it was also tbn. And it was the understanding that, you know, Americans, especially with kids, they are not going to like a lot of this modern fare that the networks are putting on and Hollywood is putting out, so reruns of, you know, the Andy Griffith show and et cetera, all these things actually built a huge, huge viewership, which meant massive, massive money. And Americans were demonstrating their more conservative tastes by the fact that they wanted to watch programs done 30 years before rather than the one being produced right then. Ted Turner did make a fortune, and at one point, he sold his assets for multiple billions of dollars. He was an extremely wealthy man. He became a major landowner in the Rockies. He also moved significantly to the political left himself. And so even as he had been something of a conservative, actually probably more a libertarian as a young man, he moved into more progressive, more liberal territory. And by the way, one of the symbols of that was he married Jane Fonda. He had more than one marriage. That was the last of his marriages. And that in itself communicates a great deal. So again, just days ago, Ted Turner died at age 87. A milestone and one that helps us to remember how our society and culture have taken the shape that they have. Okay, another big event this week and before the weekends. I just want to make reference to it. This is the Met gala. Met Gala 2026. And this was huge news and a lot of photographs. The New York Times released at least one article that I think 100 photographs. All these celebrities, all the cultural elite, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, along with its Costume Institute, have held this for a very long time. It is the high elite culture coming out party every single year. And honestly, it is a cartoon of itself. So I could take time to talk to you about how flamboyant the costumes were. I could talk to you about how pornographic some of the costumes were, how outlandish. And you look at this and you recognize who with a straight face can wear some of this. It's also highly artificial in which you also have people who are commenting on the event, comment on all of the, let's just say, aesthetic surgeries that many of these people, overwhelmingly women, have had. And these outlandish costumes and so it is really one giant, fleshly demonstration of carnality and consumerism and the cultural elites at their most cultural elite. It's also a political event. And the politics of it have had a great deal to do with the progressivist wing of the Democratic Party. But, you know, if you look at this ostentatious display of massive wealth, and we're talking about something like $100,000 for a table, this is a fundraiser. It raised more than $30 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it is really about people like Jeff Bezos and his wife, who were the chairpersons of this event, really showing off ostentatious wealth and buying culture. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to buy culture. And some of the people inside the fashion industry were appalled that some kind of Silicon Valley barbarian like Jeff Bezos could come in and win this. The founder of Amazon, after all, what does he know about fashion? And then, of course, he marries a woman heavily involved in this as well, and, by the way, pretty much symbolized by exactly what this event comes down to. And so you had the people say, we don't want these people. This is the hoi polloi. These are people who are just buying influence, but we need their money, so let's make them chairman Kofima, writing for USA Today, offers an argument. Here's the headline. Fashion is political. It's why Met Gala matters. And of course, it does matter. It doesn't matter to you? Not really. You may have seen some of the costumes, you may see some of the people. And by the way, they are acting like they are intending to be a parody of themselves. So, I mean, honestly, you could make a movie out of this. Wait a minute. They just did make a movie out of this. Wait a minute. It's a sequel to another movie, The Devil Wears Prada. Now, Part two. It's really a glimpse into this particular world, not a very flattering glimpse. But in this article, Kofim from says quote, the Met Gala is all a bit of Vanity Fair. Its opulence can read garish. But to dismiss it and the entire fashion industry, by extension, as meaningless and unnecessary disregards the importance of preserving fashion history, especially now, and needlessly delegitimizes an art form that is as personal and political as any other. End quote. In other words, he's making the argument that what you see there in all of its garishness is not just about culture. It's not just about elite, elite culture. It is about politics. In that I simply have to say he is right. Or to put it another way, you don't see much of, let's just say, normal America in that room. You don't see people representing the middle class in that room and you don't see many conservatives in that room. That room really illustrates how the cultural change takes place at the elite level. And the big danger is of course that what happens there doesn't stay at the elite level. But of course the big danger there is that what happens at the elite level doesn't stay there. And I think it's good for Christians to understand that's one of the looming issues before us. By the way, I'm not encouraging you to go and look at the photographs, but I'll tell you about one of them, and that was a woman who decided to make an eco friendly statement about climate change by dressing as a tree. No kidding. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to sbts.edu for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.