In my experience and from the data I’ve read these are some of the contributing factors to church decline. There are several and they all connect in one way or another.
1. The church is confusing modern ( last few hundred years ) of interpretation as traditional. But the reality is that the views are heavily influenced by western interpretations of the Bible going back several hundred years. One of the biggest ones is many Christians lack the skills and wisdom to apply contextual analysis to scripture. By that I mean you have the modern view that Genesis 1-2 is literal history instead of a myth. Because they read it as literal it results in all kinds of beliefs that are out of touch with reality. That same issue of understand genre and literary techniques and devices has also caused people to miss out on hyperbolic language and myths being bleeding with the story of Israel. Like with exodus, 1 Samuel , Esther , Jonah and so on. Instead of seeing how it’s fiction being used to tell stories they argue till they are blue on the face that’s its history full of science and all meant to be read literally.
2. So because of that issue of not understanding the writing styles of ancient near eastern Mesopotamian stories by Jews it causes an overly literalistic concordistic interpretation which demands they reject scientific consensus. So you have forms of intelligent design such as young earth creationism and old earth creationism that is simply pseudoscience and out of touch with reality. Evangelicals often demand that young Christians reject so much science and history. They have to reject geology, biology, physics, archeology, anthropology and even astronomy. They have to reject the new modern synthesis which includes the theory of evolution. They have to reject gender studies and sexual orientation studies. They have to reject the scientific consensus of 99.99% of the roughly 8,000,000 scientists for the fringe non supported nonsense of less than 10l scientists. It requires such an immense form of arrogance and ignorance that teens and young adults just can’t displace the truth with bad lies.
3. All of that combined results in teens being pushed away. The rejection of science means kids struggle with concepts like gender and orientation between the church and the campus. Kids get placed in camps meant to force them to deny themselves and suffer through bizarre sex training to pretend they are heterosexual or cis instead of gay or trans. This same form of bigotry that resulted in racism and sexism has caused girls to feel their bodies are lust traps and they cause men to fail or that they should not have leadership roles inside or outside of the church or that part of their duty is to get on their hands and knees whenever their husband demands it. It lead to the beliefs of colonization which lead to the deaths of almost all the indigenous people and was used to weaponize the epistles to control slaves. This same concept is manifesting itself again in men telling women what to do with their bodies and is now focused on brown people once again, but this time through immigration laws. It’s not racism they say it’s nationalism. So lots of young Christians are disgusted with the church history or hurt by the currently elders in it. Friends see this.
4. Because of all of that accumulating into teens and young adults being pushed away from god they get such a triggering reaction to Christianity that they never bother to learn about deconstruction and reconstruction. They never learn that many Christians reject the backwards interpretations of modern westernized Christianity. That many reject that god breathed means infallibility of scripture. They never learn of universalism or conditional immortality but only eternal conscious torment. They never learn of accommodationism but only concordism. They never learn of affirmation, only bigotry. So they leave and never come back.
Though luckily, many do come back. Just not to church or conservatism. They end up in the very fluid liberal home churches of liberal Christianity and spend more time loving one another in smaller groups set up through initially meeting online and so on. It moves to book clubs and podcasts that they meet up to discuss and read the Bible over dinner or at the movies. Fellowship of the saints are more personal now, with leaders speaking to them through social media rather than at the pew. They prefer the term spiritual to Christian because of the baggage.
