A Harvard-trained sociologist gives us far more than downward church attendance graphs and the “rise of the nones” that Pew and Gallup dish up

None of our listeners would be surprised by news that religious faith is in decline. Pew and Gallup have been talking about “the rise of the nones” and of the “spiritual-but-not-religious” for many years now. Church attendances are down; church closures are up. Again, this is not news.

But we talked to Dr. Christian Smith, a Harvard-trained sociologist who’s just published a book entitled Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America. “Obsolete” is very different from “in decline”! And he doesn’t say that it’s “on its way to obsolescence”: he says it’s already gone obsolete! And to add insult to injury, he says this obsolescence was unplanned (in contrast to the planned obsolescence that our Western economies are built upon) and largely self-inflicted!?

He delineates dozens of factors and events that contributed to this phenomenon. Far too many to list here. You’ll need to listen to the episode to hear some of the more important ones, and then read his book to fully unpack all of them. But suffice to say that these factors include a variety of slowly-developing trends …. changes in demographics, society, culture, science, politics, and the economy …. as well as a number of key events (the 9/11 plane attacks; church scandals; end of the Cold War; the internet). He refers to a series of perfect storms converging. The pivotal year was 1991, and everything was in place by 2009.

He does concede to some caveats. Most importantly, he concedes that he’s not talking about religion in general: instead, his story is about “TRADITIONAL religion” … “in the US.” And he defines what he means by “traditional” (mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Mormonism) and “not traditional,” at least not in the US (Buddhism; Hinduism; witchcraft; astrology; New Age beliefs; the Laws of Attraction; alternative healing; crystals …. and a long list of other belief systems that ARE indeed growing in America). And that’s another thing about obsolescence: it doesn’t mean useless. It just means that fewer and fewer people want to use it, and that more people are choosing something else (for example, music aficionados will never give up their vinyl records, while a vast majority of people opt for digital media). Just think about all the Baby Boomers who grew up in religious homes in the 60s and 70s, but who have raised a generation of Millennials who don’t go to church!? And how church-ey will be the yet-to-be-seen generation being raised by those unchurched Millennials!

Another concession: he doesn’t think that America will go totally secular. Humans are fundamentally spiritual/religious at their core. In every part of the globe, every civilization and culture all through human history, we’ve always had religion. Religion spans all ages, all genders, all races, and all socioeconomic brackets. And see what happened in cultures that intentionally tried to suppress religion: Communist Russia/China, or the French Revolution.

So what does Dr. Smith see replacing that traditional faith in America? A new millennial, post-boomer zeitgeist. A cultural re-enchantment. Something that is individualistic, anti-institutional, anti-authority, presentist (not a deep sense of history), very relativistic and subjective (think Postmodernism, and people talking about “my truth” versus “your truth”).

We also talked briefly about whether this book has anything to say about the apparent or claimed growth of Protestant and Catholic faiths in Africa, in South America, or even recently in Britain. And what about us Canadians who live just next door to the US and are so deeply tied with it? The short answer is: yes …. and no.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find more information about Dr. Christian Smith at his faculty page, and about his book at Oxford University Press.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like a mini-series of episodes we did near the end of COVID entitled “Back to Church.”

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