There is no better symbol of traditional faith in Alabama than the sign alongside Interstate 65 in Prattville that says, “Go to church or the devil will get you.”

Going to church has been one of the defining regional factors about Alabama through most of its 200-year history. Alabamians were a people of faith, especially defined by practices such as saying grace before meals, attending revivals, singing hymns, teaching Sunday school and sending children to summer religious camps and Vacation Bible School.

“A common Christian identity that stretches across denominations - that was a glue that held communities together,” said Wayne Flynt, Auburn University historian emeritus and co-author of a bicentennial state history. “The kids went to revival meetings together; there was a sort of generic gospel. When you had camp meeting revivals, everybody in a community would come. Nobody emphasized doctrine; they all emphasized the need to be born again.”

Alabama’s religiosity

The Pew religious landscape study in 2014 showed church attendance in Alabama at 51 percent, trailing only Utah.

About 86 percent of Alabamians identified as Christian. Evangelical Protestants such as Baptists and Pentecostals make up 49 percent. Mainline Protestants such as Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians make up 13 percent. Historically black Protestant churches make up 16 percent. Catholics make up seven percent.

About 77 percent of people in Alabama say religion is important in their lives; 13 percent say it is somewhat important.

About 82 percent of those polled say they believe in God with absolute certainty; another 12 percent say they believe in God and are “fairly certain” of God’s existence.

In recent years, that solid bedrock of Southern religious tradition has been eroding.

A new demographic has been emerging as a powerhouse: unaffiliated religious “nones” who say they do not identify with religious groups.

“It’s just the increased secularization of society in general,” said Jonathan Bass, professor of history at Samford University.

Changing beliefs

Beliefs are changing, especially in the younger generation.

“Those concerned about gay and transgender rights feel the church has been incredibly judgmental and exclusionary,” Bass said. “That’s turned this generation off.”

In the South overall, Pew surveys show that 82 percent of people identified as Christian in 2009, but that dropped to 70 percent by 2019.

Those identifying as Protestant dropped from 64 percent to 53 percent. Those identifying as atheist rose from one percent to 3 percent during that 10-year span, while those calling themselves agnostic rose from 2 percent to 4 percent. Those who said they were “nothing in particular” rose from 10 percent to 16 percent. Combined, those who were “unaffiliated” religiously rose from 13 percent in 2009 to 23 percent in 2019 in the South. Nationwide, the trends are more dramatic: The number of unaffiliated rose from 17 percent in 2009 to 26 percent in 2019.

Exceptions to decline

While mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians have suffered drastic losses in membership, a decline numbering in the millions nationwide over decades and thousands per year in Alabama, some segments have shown growth.

Most notable in Alabama is an evangelical megachurch, The Church of the Highlands. Founded in 2001, it quickly grew into the largest church in the state. It has 18 branches and reported an average of 48,434 worshippers weekly statewide, according to its 2018 annual report. That includes 3,656 a week at the new Huntsville West campus, and 2,404 at a new Fultondale campus. New branches keeping opening, meeting on Sundays in schools, and as they grow new campuses are built.

Some critics say the Church of the Highlands is stealing sheep from established denominations by offering high-energy worship services that are like Christian rock concerts, with uplifting lifestyle sermons delivered by a charismatic pastor who caters to youth.

Others say it’s providing a road map for the future of faith.

“I love it because as an introvert I don’t have to make lots of small talk with people if I don’t want to,” said Lauren Harrison, 28, who worships at the McCalla branch of the Church of the Highlands. “I’ve attended small churches before and always felt kind of forced to socialize. At COTH I don’t have to worry about that. At the same time, you can join small groups to meet people in a comfortable setting of a handful of people.”

Roots of faith

Southern religion has come a long way from its roots to the current megachurch movement.

Before the Civil War, there were 1,875 churches in Alabama, according to “Alabama: The History of a Deep South State,” bicentennial edition.

“An emphasis on personal salvation has been a hallmark of Alabama since the brush arbor revivals, when preachers rode horses and mules and wagons, preaching the gospel,” said historian Leah Rawls Atkins, co-author of the bicentennial history.

By 1870, there were 2,095, for a state population of less than a million. Methodists had the largest number of churches, followed by Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Catholics. There were two synagogues in Alabama in 1870.

Baptists surged past Methodists by 1890. Alabama had 559,171 church members, 46.2 percent Baptists and 43.4 percent Methodist, out of the state’s 1.5 million population.

Alabama was overwhelmingly Protestant and conservative. In every mining community and mill town that emerged, churches soon followed. Every town square of any size had multiple churches that offered hubs of social activity and spiritual guidance. The churchgoers, often economically challenged, aspired to the heavenly rewards within their reach rather than unattainable material wealth.

Life for many revolved around homecomings, dinners on the grounds, baptisms, weddings, funerals, revivals, hymn singing and choir practice. People wanted a preacher to baptize them, marry them and bury them. Church was an essential part of their lives from the cradle to the grave.

Small rural towns across the state typically had either a Baptist church, a Methodist church, or both.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Alabama is probably less religious than it was 80 years ago,” Atkins said. “There are probably a lot of reasons. Urbanization has hurt. But there are megachurches in the cities now. On the evangelical side, megachurches such as the Church of the Highlands are very much part of the dynamics.”

By 1906, Alabama had 824,200 church members, including 397,178 black church members, out of a total population of 2 million. Baptists had increased to 53 percent of the total; Methodists made up 31 percent. Catholics rose to third place, with six percent, although they were concentrated in Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile.

Black church ascends

Black Baptists and Methodists found more than spiritual comfort in their churches. “It was most religious among African-Americans, in the profound way you feel you have no power, so you put your complete faith in God,” Flynt said.

After the Civil War, free blacks found power in having their own churches, places where new leaders could emerge and where they could find refuge and comfort from injustice and persecution. “It was the one institution they controlled, that reached out to them in a time of trouble, that was a source of power,” Flynt said.

By the 1950s, pastors such as the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery turned their religious leadership into political leverage as they fought segregation and racial injustice in Alabama.

Pentecostal fervor spreads

Pentecostalism, sparked by meetings led by Louisiana native and son of former slaves William J. Seymour from 1906-1915 at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, spawned new denominations that quickly spread across Alabama and the South, attracting both blacks and whites attracted to an emotional worship movement that emphasized speaking in tongues as a sign of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

In church, everyone was equal in the eyes of God. Faith offered individuals power even in poverty. They could choose their own beliefs about the details of salvation and the anticipation of the end times. They could mobilize politically in their own ways.

Alabama’s first renowned megachurch was Cathedral of the Cross, formerly known as Huffman Assembly of God, which grew so quickly in the 1970s that it built an 8,000-seat building in Center Point in the 1980s. It was led by a charismatic pastor, the Rev. Dan Ronsisvalle, but stumbled into financial problems. Pentecostalism had spread far and wide in the South in just a century.

Alabama’s Pentecostal roots trace to May 8, 1907, when traveling Evangelist Mack M. Pinson received the baptism of the Holy Spirit – speaking in tongues. He set up a revival tent and began preaching in North Birmingham, after crossing paths with former Methodist preacher G.B. Cashwell of North Carolina, who read about the events at the Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street in 1906 and traveled to Los Angeles to see for himself. Cashwell preached in Birmingham’s Southside in 1907 and encouraged Pinson to set up his tent in the north side.

Pinson spread Pentecostalism throughout Alabama and Tennessee, and was an active participant in the fourth General Assembly of the Church of God in 1910 in Cleveland, Tenn. That became one of the nation’s largest Pentecostal denominations.

In 1914, Pinson was a key leader in the formation of the General Council of the Assemblies of God in Hot Springs, Arkansas, which became the largest Pentecostal denomination.

Pentecostalism tapped into the theological needs of Alabama’s working poor, and was popular among blacks and whites. They believed it gave them access to a font of supernatural power, pouring directly from the Holy Spirit. Pentecostal worship was integrated from its beginnings. Though white and black denominations grew out of the movement, it was easy for worshippers to cross back and forth. Women preachers were also widely accepted in Pentecostalism, more so than in other evangelical churches.

Megachurch models

Pentecostalism influenced a major shift in emphasis to up-tempo praise music and lifestyle-oriented sermons that began to dominate the religious landscape.

Megachurches following that model abound, with giant campuses that cater to the needs of families, offering childcare for toddlers, programs for youth and coffee for adults on the way to services.

The Church of the Highlands, founded by Pastor Chris Hodges in 2001, quickly became the largest church in the state, with myriad branches from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa to Auburn, and Huntsville to Montgomery to Mobile, streaming video of Hodges preaching into the services.

Hodges came out of a Pentecostal tradition, although he does not speak in tongues during the seeker-oriented services, which are designed to attract the unchurched and make them feel at home.

Finding spiritual home

Finding a spiritual home is what people go to church to find, Flynt said. “They want to find community, a place of belonging and support,” he said.

“It’s a rootless, amorphous society, where roots are hard to put down,” Flynt said. “People move about, they’re hurt, they’re lonely; they’re looking for somebody to love them and take care of them.”

For the modernized churches of 2019, there is an emphasis on luring people to worship with trendy music and messages, as opposed to scaring them with talk of the devil.

“Practice and ritual and doctrine are not important to millennials,” Flynt said. ‘It’s a sense of community, of belonging someplace when you’re moving from here to there. If you’re lonely, there’s no better way to find a sense of community than through church.”

Church of the Highlands emphasizes “Serve Days,” volunteer efforts that focus on helping the community. “Ministry is important to a sense of community,” Flynt said.

For Alabama’s religious identity to move forward, and continue to thrive, churches will have to adapt to the changing culture.

“Culture is a process,” said Bass, the Samford historian. “For a culture to survive, it has to adapt to new traditions. There are ways the church can adapt to new cultural traditions and still minister to people.”