As a scholar, he’s charted the decline in religion. Now the church he pastors is closing its doors

They plan to gather one last time on Sunday — the handful of mostly elderly members of First Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.
他们计划在周日最后一次聚会——伊利诺伊州弗农山（Mt. Vernon）第一浸信会（First Baptist Church）的少数老年成员。

They’ll say the Lord’s Prayer, recite the Apostle’s Creed and hear a biblical passage typically used at funerals, “To everything there is a season ... a time to be born, and a time to die.” They’ll sing classic hymns — “Amazing Grace,” “It Is Well With My Soul” and, poignantly, “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.”
他们会诵读主祷文，背诵使徒信经，并听到通常在葬礼上使用的圣经段落，“凡事都有季节......一个出生的时刻，一个死亡的时刻。他们会唱经典的赞美诗——“奇异的恩典”、“我的灵魂很好”，以及凄美的“上帝与你同在，直到我们再次相遇”。

Afterward, members are scheduled to vote to close the church, a century and a half after it was created by hardscrabble farmers in this southern Illinois community of about 14,000 people.
之后，成员们计划投票关闭这座教堂，一个半世纪后，这座教堂是由这个拥有约14,000人的伊利诺伊州南部社区的勤劳农民创建的。

Many U.S. churches close their doors each year, typically with little attention. But this closure has a poignant twist.
许多美国教堂每年都关门，通常很少受到关注。但这种结束有一个令人心酸的转折。

First Baptist’s pastor, Ryan Burge, spends much of his time as a researcher documenting the dramatic decline in religious affiliation in recent decades. His recent book, “The Nones,” talks about the estimated 30% of American adults who identify with no religious tradition.
第一浸信会的牧师瑞安·伯奇（Ryan Burge）将大部分时间作为研究员，记录了近几十年来宗教信仰的急剧下降。他最近出版的《无宗教信仰》（The Nones）一书中谈到了估计有30%的美国成年人不认同任何宗教传统。

He uses his research in part to help other pastors seeking to reach their communities, and he’s often invited to fly around the country and speak to audiences much larger than his weekly congregation.
他利用他的研究在一定程度上帮助其他寻求接触他们社区的牧师，他经常被邀请飞往全国各地，向比他每周的会众大得多的听众讲话。

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Southern Baptists are poised to ban churches with women pastors. Some are urging them to reconsider
美南浸信会准备禁止有女牧师的教堂。一些人敦促他们重新考虑

Southern Baptists reject formal ban on churches with women pastors
美南浸信会反对正式禁止有女牧师的教会

From women pastors to sexual abuse to Trump, Southern Baptists have a busy few days ahead of them
从女牧师到性虐待再到特朗普，美南浸信会成员们前几天都很忙碌

But it’s no academic abstraction. Burge has witnessed the reality of his research every Sunday morning in the increasingly empty pews of the spacious sanctuary, which was built for hundreds in the peak churchgoing years of the mid-20th century.
但这不是学术上的抽象概念。伯奇每个星期天早上都在宽敞的圣所越来越空的长椅上目睹了他的研究现实，这个圣所是在20世纪中叶的高峰期为数百人建造的。

“It’s this odd thing, where I’ve become somewhat of an expert on church growth, and yet my church is dying,” said Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University. “A lot of what I do is trying to figure out how much I am to blame for what’s happened around me.”
“这是一件奇怪的事情，我已经在某种程度上成为了教会增长的专家，但我的教会正在消亡，”东伊利诺伊大学（Eastern Illinois University）政治学教授伯格说。“我所做的很多事情都是试图弄清楚我应该为周围发生的事情负责多少。

Burge started leading the congregation in 2006, when “there were about 50 people on a good Sunday,” he recalled. In the years since, he’s earned his doctorate and begun working as a professor. He’s gained a wide online and print readership, in part by converting dense statistical tables into easy-to-comprehend graphics on religious trends.
伯奇从2006年开始带领会众，当时他“在一个美好的星期天大约有50人，”他回忆道。在那之后的几年里，他获得了博士学位，并开始担任教授。他获得了广泛的在线和印刷读者群，部分原因是将密集的统计表格转换为易于理解的宗教趋势图形。

All this time, he’s continued to pastor the small church.
在这段时间里，他一直在牧养这个小教会。

“I’m willing to admit that I’m not as good as I could be or should be” as a pastor, he said. “But I’m also not willing to admit that it’s 100% my fault. If you look at the macro level trends happening in modern American religion, it’s hard to grow a church in America today, regardless of what your denomination is. And a lot of places have way more headwinds than tailwinds.”
他说：“我愿意承认，作为一名牧师，我没有达到我可能或应该达到的水平。“但我也不愿意承认这是100%的错。如果你看看现代美国宗教中发生的宏观趋势，无论你的教派是什么，今天在美国发展教会都是很困难的。很多地方的逆风比顺风多得多。

The church’s American Baptist denomination is part of a cluster of so-called mainline denominations — Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran and others that were once central in their communities but have been dramatically shrinking in numbers. The nation’s largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, has also been losing members.
该教会的美国浸信会教派是一系列所谓的主流教派的一部分——圣公会、卫理公会、长老会、路德会和其他曾经在其社区中处于中心地位，但数量急剧减少。美国最大的福音派教派美南浸信会（Southern Baptist Convention）也一直在失去成员。

While there’s no annual census of U.S. church closures, about 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, according to the Southern Baptist-affiliated Lifeway Research.
虽然没有对美国教堂关闭情况的年度人口普查，但根据美南浸信会附属的生命之路研究，2019年约有4,500个新教教堂关闭。

Scholars say churches dwindle for various reasons — scandal, conflict, mobility, indifference, lower birth rates, members shifting to a church they like better. To be sure, most Americans remain religious, and some larger churches are thriving while many smaller ones dwindle. Some surveys suggest that the long rise of the “nones” has slowed or paused.
学者们说，教会的萎缩有各种原因——丑闻、冲突、流动性、冷漠、出生率降低、成员转向他们更喜欢的教会。可以肯定的是，大多数美国人仍然虔诚，一些较大的教堂正在蓬勃发展，而许多较小的教堂则在减少。一些调查表明，“无”人口的长期崛起已经放缓或暂停。

But the nonreligious are far more common today than a generation ago, in the U.S. and many other nations.
但是，今天在美国和许多其他国家，非宗教人士比上一代人要普遍得多。

“If Billy Graham would have been born in 1975 instead of 1918, I don’t think he would have been as successful, because he hit his peak right as the baby boom was taking off and America was really hungry for religion,” Burge said.
“如果比利·格雷厄姆（Billy Graham）出生于1975年而不是1918年，我认为他不会那么成功，因为他在婴儿潮起飞时达到了巅峰，美国真的很渴望宗教，”伯奇说。

Things are particularly challenging where communities are shrinking, such as the Rust Belt and rural areas.
在社区萎缩的地方，例如锈带和农村地区，情况尤其具有挑战性。

Burge hopes his research, and his personal experience, can offer some consolation to other pastors in similar circumstances.
伯奇希望他的研究和他的个人经历能为其他处于类似情况的牧师提供一些安慰。

“This is not all your fault,” he said. “You know, in the 1950s, you could be a terrible pastor and probably grow a church because there just was so much growth happening all across America. Now it doesn’t look like that anymore.”
“这不全是你的错，”他说。“你知道，在1950年代，你可能是一个糟糕的牧师，可能会发展一个教会，因为美国各地都在发生如此多的增长。现在看起来不再是那样了。

Gail Farnham, 80, has seen that trajectory of church life first-hand.
80岁的盖尔·法纳姆（Gail Farnham）亲眼目睹了教会生活的轨迹。

Her family began attending First Baptist Church when she was 5. Her parents quickly got involved as volunteers and “never looked back,” she recalled. Like many American families in the ‘50s, they joined during the booming rise in church involvement. First Baptist peaked at about 670 members by mid-century, leading to the construction of a large new sanctuary and a suite of Sunday School classrooms.
她的家人在她 5 岁时开始参加第一浸信会教堂。她回忆说，她的父母很快成为志愿者，“再也没有回头”。像50年代的许多美国家庭一样，他们在教会参与的蓬勃发展期间加入。到本世纪中叶，第一浸信会的人数达到顶峰，达到约670名成员，导致建造了一个大型的新圣所和一套主日学教室。

Farnham went on to raise her own children in the church, and as the congregation’s moderator, she still holds a top leadership role.
法纳姆继续在教堂抚养自己的孩子，作为会众的主持人，她仍然担任最高领导职务。

First Baptist has had its share of schisms and controversies in the past, but it largely followed the typical arc of many Protestant churches, thriving in the 1950s and only gradually losing sustainability. Last Sunday, eight worshippers attended.

The remaining, primarily older members, found a new mission in recent years despite the uncertain future. They joined a program to provide bag lunches for needy schoolchildren. At one point they were providing 300 meals per week.

The closure is “bittersweet,” Farnham said.

“It’s something we’ve seen coming,” she said. ”It’s not a surprise. We’re thankful we’ve been able to serve and meet a need in the community. We turned from being a church saying, ”Oh me, oh my, what are we going to do?’ to being a church that said, ‘We’re going to serve as long as we can with the best we can.”

Now everyone, Burge included, will be looking for a new church. “I have been preaching every Sunday since August of 2005 and I need to be a member of a church for a while, not up front,” he said.

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