The evangelical Lausanne Movement defines a nominal Christian as "a person who has not responded in repentance and faith to Jesus Christ as his personal Saviour and Lord"... e"may be a practising or non-practising church member. He may give intellectual assent to basic Christian doctrines and claim to be a Christian. He may be faithful in attending liturgical rites and worship services, and be an active member involved in church affairs."Christian Witness to Nominal Christians Among Roman Catholics
Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization Occasional Paper 10. (LCWE) American Reformed theologian Douglas Wilson disagrees with the category of "nominal Christian" and argues that all who are baptized enter into a covenant with God, and are obliged to serve him; there is, therefore, "no such thing as a merely nominal Christian any more than we can find a man who is a nominal husband." There are, however, "wicked and faithless Christians." According to data from the European Social Survey in 2012 show that around a third of European Christians say they attend services once a month or more.Christianity and church attendance
/ref> More than two-thirds of Latin American Christians and 90% of African Christians said they attended church regularly. Missionaries Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, estimate that 1.2 billion people are "nominal and non-practising 'Christians'."Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, '' Operation World: 21st Century Edition'' (Paternoster, 2001), 13–14. According to a 2018 study by the

Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center (also simply known as Pew) is a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world. It ...

, Christians in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...

and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

have high levels of commitment to their faith. The

studied the effects of gender on religiosity throughout the world, finding that women are generally more religious than men. Pew Research Center data in 53 countries, found that 53% of Christian women and 46% of Christian men say they attend services at least once a week. On the other hand, Christians of both genders in African countries are equally likely to regularly attend services.

Sunday Christian

A Sunday Christian or Sunday morning Christian (also once-a-weeker) is a derisive term used to refer to someone who typically attends

Christian church In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus Christ. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a syn ...

services on Sundays, but is presumed or witnessed not to adhere to the doctrines or rules of the

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

(either actively or passively), or refuses to register as a church member. These members are sometimes considered to be hypocritical in how or what they practice due in part to their confusion or cherry-picking how they live their religion.

Cafeteria Christianity

Usage

The ancestor term, " cafeteria Catholicism", was coined by E. Michael Jones's ''Fidelity Magazine'' in 1986. The first use of Cafeteria Christianity in print has been dated to the magazine, '' The Month'', in 1992. Another early use was by Richard Holloway in an interview in ''

Third Way The Third Way is a predominantly centrist political position that attempts to reconcile centre-right and centre-left politics by advocating a varying synthesis of Right-wing economics, right-wing economic and Left-wing politics, left-wing so ...

'' in September 2001. Since the cafeteria Christian may be someone who wants "to reject the parts of scripture they find objectionable and embrace only the parts they like", the term can be used ad hominem, either to disqualify a person's omission of a Christian precept, or to invalidate their advocacy of a different precept entirely. Equated with "Christianity Lite", it is sometimes used to deride the mass-appeal subculture of megachurches. "Cafeteria Christianity" is a derogatory term to accuse other Christian individuals or denominations of selecting which Christian doctrines they will follow, and which they will not. The related term "cafeteria Catholicism" is a pejorative term applied to Catholics who dissent from

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

moral teaching on issues such as

abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...

, birth control, premarital sex,

masturbation Masturbation is a form of autoeroticism in which a person Sexual stimulation, sexually stimulates their own Sex organ, genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. Stimulation may involve the use of han ...

or homosexuality. The term is less frequently applied to those who dissent from other Catholic moral teaching on issues such as social justice,

capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence (law), sentence ordering that an offender b ...

, or just war.

Interpretation

Cafeteria-style means picking and choosing, as if "sliding our food tray along a cafeteria's counter". The term implies that an individual's professed religious belief is actually a proxy for their personal opinions rather than an acceptance of Christian

doctrine Doctrine (from , meaning 'teaching, instruction') is a codification (law), codification of beliefs or a body of teacher, teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a ...

. The selectivity implied may relate to the acceptance of Christian doctrines, or attitudes to moral and ethical issues (for example

, homosexuality,

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...

or idolatry) and the applicability of Old Testament laws to Christians. As the Christian version of " cherry-picking theology", it is seen as a result of postmodern reading of texts, where the reader goes beyond analysis of what requires interpretation, adopting an approach where "anything goes". In ''The Marketplace of Christianity'', economists Robert Ekelund, Robert Hébert and Robert Tollison equate Cafeteria Christianity with self-generated Christianity, i.e. the religion of many Christians which "matches their demand profile" and "may be Christian or based in other areas of thought". They conclude that "Christian religious individualists have existed in all times."

References

{{reflist

Sunday Christian

Cafeteria Christianity

Usage

Interpretation

See also

References

Further reading