The faith of the Dones

We had a morbid joke when I was on the staff of a large church: after someone completed a term as moderator of the church council, we would ask, How long until she leaves? The same applied to past chairs of senior pastor search committees—they had all moved on.

Amid all of the discussion about the denouement of mainline Protes­tantism, there has been no lack of books, articles, and blog posts about the nones and the SBNRs (spiritual but not religious). Soci­olo­gists Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope focus on a smaller subset of those who have left organized Christianity—and who took a lot with them when they did: the Dones, whom the authors also call church refugees and the dechurched.

This book was written by evangelicals for evangelicals, but it resonated with my own experiences in parish ministry and as a seminary educator. Mainliners will simply have to do some on-the-go translation as they read.