Helping Nones (Re-)Discover Mystery in the Body of Christ, His Church

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the 𝘉𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘈𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳 𝘔𝘢𝘯 broadcast, comments on an article in USA Today by Deena Yellin, entitled “Millions Giving up Organized Religion—America’s Fast-Growing Movement: The ‘Nones’” (October 4, 2021). ‘Nones’ have no religious affiliation. Yellin explains that a “sea change” is taking place in our culture. Something is “replacing organized religion.” This “hard-to-define” something “can manifest as a devotion to nature, meditation, yoga or political activism, among other things.” According to polls, Nones—“as many as 70 million American adults”—“still believe in a higher power, or even the biblical God—but on their own terms.” The truth, however, is that Church is never optional. What is needed is to find the mystery that can be found nowhere other than in Christ’s Church, because the Church is the sphere within which union with the one true and living God in Christ is accomplished. It is through the Church that God’s saving power is mediated to the whole of humanity. While the article talks about lone-ranger, individualized spirituality, Christianity knows nothing of the sort. The Church is the reincarnation of Eden. The place in which we may access the Tree of Life replete with its eucharistic bounty. It’s in the Church that we receive the graces that transform us and satisfy our deepest needs, and such cannot be accomplished in isolation—but only within the community of the body of Christ.