The State of Religion in America
By now most of our news-hound readers have likely seen reports of the American Religious Identification Survey which found, generally, that America is becoming a more secular society. The percentage of Americans claiming no religion has nearly doubled to 15% in 2008, a stark difference from 8.2% in 1990. The number of Christians dropped from 86.2% in 1990 to 76% in 2008. If not for Latino immigrants who are typically observant Catholics, the percentage of non-believers may have been much higher.
Nuances within the poll are not altogether surprising. Mainline denominations continue to hemorrhage adherents, with non-denominational evangelicals one of the few categories to see a rise. One might be tempted to conclude that evangelicals are one of the few “healthy” branches of Christianity today. Yet Michael Spencer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, makes a persuasive case for “The Coming Evangelical Collapse“.
Update: The Internet Monk offers some good additional commentary.
6 Responses to “The State of Religion in America”
This is disappointing, but not at all surprising.
However, my guess is that the drop in religious identification is due mostly to an increase in people being honest about their secularism, rather than an actual loss of faith.
It would very interesting to see a breakdown of the amount of people within that 76% who are professedly religious while really knowing next to nothing about their religion other than that they have a loose cultural affiliation to it. I would argue that the amount of religious people within that group of people who proclaim a religion would be much smaller.
Regarding Spencer’s first point: “Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism”…
That’s not a problem in and of itself. What is a problem is a phenomenon C. S. Lewis once pointed out. Imagine Christianity as a list of 100 directives. Trouble arises when the church pays inordinate attention to (say) items 41 to 50 such that other items get neglected.
We should pay attention to cultural and political influences that threaten us or our neighbors’ well-beings, but not so much that we sluff off other duties.
One of my concerns is overemphasis on the Spectator Church. Too much lecture hall, not enough relationship building.
One of my concerns is overemphasis on the Spectator Church. Too much lecture hall, not enough relationship building.
Interesting in that one of my concerns is nearly the exact opposite.
You’ll notice that the biggest rises in people who don’t have any religion are in majority Catholic states that are not receiving immigrants (New England and Upper Midwest). I think this is in part because from about 1965-1985, Catholic theology entered what I call the “Era of Compromise,” in which almost all of the Church’s traditional teachings and doctrines were reinterpreted or explained on the local level in ways that represented a compromise with secular thought. It began with Vatican II and it ended with the teachings of John Paul II reaffirming the absolute truth of traditional Church teaching.
Note that I say “on the local level,” as the these teachings were never presented in such watered-down form by the Vatican, but many liberal theologians in the Church took Vatican II as a sign that the door had opened up for their style of loose interpretation. They have now seen that the Church is not following their course and their numbers and influence are quickly fading, although still not back down to pre-Vatican II levels.
The result of this period is that a generation of Catholics grew up without much in the way of real catechesis (the traditional Baltimore Catechism was largely dropped in the 1960’s, leaving youth education in a state of confusion and flux) and with a liturgy that was too often trivialized and shorn of its psychological power. The belief set in among the laity that everything was optional and subject to individual caprice. Church attendance dropped sharply, and those who kept attending often took much of what they heard and did in the Mass much less seriously than their parents. In many cases, people no longer found a compelling reason to remain in the faith and left entirely.
I believe that the Church is rebounding from this, thanks largely to Rome’s intransigence on core matters, but that its revival in America will spring from new places and with somewhat of a new look than the Church had either in the Era of Compromise or before it.
I think Eric’s remark about honesty over secularism is a factor. I was raised in a Presbyterian household but, at a certain point, came to understand that I didn’t see any compelling evidence for believing in the divinity of Jesus.
For cultural reasons, it was pretty tough to get to where I’d openly admit that I wasn’t a Christian.
I wonder how applicable that is generally. I also wonder how important it is to the future of Christian churches to maintain that cultural inertia against openly disavowing belief.