10 Types of Unchurched people - Christianity Today

Not everyone beyond the church walls feels the same way.The term “nominal Christian” is a comprehensive title that includes a wide range of people who are not currently, or never have been, part of the institutional church. In his book, The Unchurched–Who They Are and Why They Stay Away, J. Russell Hale, after touring the country in 1976 and interviewing many unchurched people, developed a helpful categorization:

1. Anti-institutionalists. Those who have rejected organized religion. Some fault the church for its conservatism while others have dissociated themselves on account of its liberalism.

2. Boxed-in. Those who rebelled because they felt their lives were restrained or controlled by churches setting ethical standards to which they were not prepared to submit.

3. Burned-out. Some look back to their childhood years and early adolescence, when they were forced to attend church services and other church activities which failed to capture their interest. For others, the burnout came much later in life as a consequence of their energies being utterly exhausted in serving the church, or from feeling that their talents were not recognized, their efforts not appreciated, or their time constraints not respected.

4. Floaters. Rootless individuals who move from church to church to ensure that they never become involved or make themselves vulnerable. They express no hostility toward the church. The floaters prefer looseness and marginality and express relative satisfaction with their apathy.

5. Hedonists. Pleasure seekers who find their sporting and recreational activities more interesting and beneficial than church involvement.

6. Locked-out. They feel that the church has closed its doors to them because they were not of the right social background. They were discriminated against or simply ignored in the hope that they would get the message, conveyed by subtle innuendo or outright expressions of hostility, that they were not wanted.

7. Nomads. These are the people, so prevalent in urban societies, who are incessantly on the move. Some represent the chronic unemployed, desperately searching for jobs and willing to take anything on an interim basis until something offering better prospects comes along. Others are upwardly mobile, regarding each job as a further step up the professional ladder.

8. Pilgrims. These people are still engaged in a spiritual search. They may be examining the teachings of a number of religions or distancing themselves from the Christian tradition in which they were nurtured in order to look at a broader spectrum from a more objective standpoint.

9. Publicans. This attitude is very commonly adopted by the unchurched. By charging churchgoers with being hypocrites and fakes, they justify their own nonparticipation.

10. True unbelievers. “Nominality” may eventually lead to a complete renunciation of the faith. This category represents a small percentage of the population of the Western world, especially in North America. Among the true unbelievers will be the agnostics, the atheists, and the deists for whom God is removed from this world’s affairs. On the other hand there are the panentheists and outright pantheists, who stress the immanence of God to the point of identifying the whole creation as a manifestation of deity. Technically this is referred to as “monism.” Through the influence of westernized forms of Hinduism and, more recently, of the New Age movement, this option has been gaining in popularity, especially with those espousing a strong environmental agenda.

–Eddie Gibbs

Adapted by permission from In Name Only: Tackling the Problem of Nominal Christianity, 1994 Eddie Gibbs (BridgePoint).

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