A big part is whether ur in a receptive area. Some places are simply closed and there's no hope while others have possibilities. There are 2 ways that I can think of to open up receptive areas. One is to figure out how to approach the people. That's hard. Another way is to find someone who intuitively knows what to do and then support them and do anything u can to make their job easier. That's what I did and it's my wife who's made things happen here.
From Pew Research 4 years ago:
The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
Those two add up to 91% in 2019, so religions other than Christianity make up 9%. In 2009 other religions would have made up 6% of the population. It seems as though as Baha'i is "other" it should be going up as a share of the population. I doesn't look like that is happening. The number of Baha'is has stayed level over the last 4 or 5 years.
Additionally in the same report:
Furthermore, the data shows a wide gap between older Americans (Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation) and Millennials in their levels of religious affiliation and attendance. More than eight-in-ten members of the Silent Generation (those born between 1928 and 1945) describe themselves as Christians (84%), as do three-quarters of Baby Boomers (76%). In stark contrast, only half of Millennials (49%) describe themselves as Christians; four-in-ten are religious “nones,” and one-in-ten Millennials identify with non-Christian faiths.
Only about one-in-three Millennials say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month. Roughly two-thirds of Millennials (64%) attend worship services a few times a year or less often, including about four-in-ten who say they seldom or never go. Indeed, there are as many Millennials who say they “never” attend religious services (22%) as there are who say they go at least once a week (22%).
A lot of Baha'is in the Baha'i Faith now in America are "Baby Boomers". The greatest growth happened in that generation. We are an old community of believers. I happen to know you are a Baby Boomer who pioneered to Panama. That we are Baby Boomers affects the picture in America. We are dying off. Why there such a spurt in the sixties and early seventies I don't know.
