A damning look at reality.
It’s no secret that the importance and cultural impact of traditional religious faith in America has been declining during the last generation: The number of NONEs—those with no religious affiliation—has grown to 29% —for 18-29 year olds it’s 43%! Two out of three Americans now believe “good morals and values don’t depend on God”. Americans with little or no confidence in in organized religion skyrocket from 11% in 1973 to 31% in 2022. In How Religion Became Obsolete, sociologist Christian Smith doesn’t just share numbers like these, he digs deeply to find out exactly whyChristianity in America has lost so much of its cultural punch and why restoring it will only happen through an act of God.
Smith is a Christian sociologist at Notre Dame who has studied the impact of religion on our culture for more than 30 years. For this project, he took part in and accessed an exhaustive number of surveys, focus groups and on-line analytics.
Smith is best known for coining the phrase “moralistic, therapeutic deism” 20 years ago to define a worldview which sees God as wanting everyone to be happy and good but not involved in their daily lives. This worldview has accelerated in our culture and we are now in a place where traditional religion is obsolete. By this Smith means that the faith isn’t extinct or useless. Rather, it is superseded by “preferable alternatives. Obsolete items are simply less likely to cross anyone’s mind.” Think of all the activities keeping families from coming in your church doors each week and you’ll find it hard to disagree.
A key issue that Smith outlines is a mismatch between what the faith is made for and what most Americans now value from religion. For most Americans, Smith writes that they think religion should deliver: *Morals—“to make people good” *Positive psychology—to help people cope, *Getting along by fostering community *Modeling integrity, decency, honesty moderation and *National solidarity—strengthening the U.S.
Unfortunately, all six are conditional and of course, they are not what most faiths see as foundation offerings! So, what most Americans are looking for in religion is NOT what the church is here for, nor what they really need. The church is to blame, Christian states, by “moralizing religion” and downplaying faith’s transcendent power.
Christians points to 1991 as the beginning of this religious obsolescence, citing two tectonic shifts in the culture that accelerated an already obvious trend: The defeat of “Godless communism” as an enemy and “neoliberalism” that ushered in a new form of globalized capitalism that decimated good paying blue collar jobs in America and “raised the bar” educationally for better paying jobs. A big, contributing factor is the corrosive effective of the digital revolution. Among the 10 harmful aspects he outlines: the time and attention suck from the digital world and how is not only squeezes our attention span, but also has so effectively exposed religious scandals. It has also helped “religious dissidents” gather and disseminate not just the non-Christians failures of the faith, but also spread deceptive material that feeds an already skeptical audience. By the way, he calls those sex scandals involving pastors and denominations (which he exhaustively lists) as the “log that broke the camel’s back.” He also notes that mass consumerism as a way of life that so powerfully shapes too many peoples’ identities. “More fundamentally, this revolution redefined persons not primary as citizens or Presbyterians or proud family farmers but as consumers.”
It’s interesting that the data show this is not simply a “faith vs secular” battle. In fact, Christian maintains that there is quite a hunger among the unchurches for something more than the material world. Unfortunately, this yearning, which Pascal called the God sized vacuum in every human’s heart, has turned so many to the enchanted, New Age and quasi religious.
Christian does an excellent job explaining what we can learn about the collapse of the church’s influence in America. Unfortunately, he is not optimistic about traditional religion making a dramatic comeback among the post-Boomers. While pointing out that God can do whatever God wants to do, this Christian sociologist writes that “Some may hope that a post-Gen Z generation will in time revive traditional religion. But, at present, nothing on the sociological horizon indicates this as likely. Quite the opposite.”
What’s the answer? Well, that’s not Smith’s job; he reports the facts, adds incisive perspective and gives a gloomy outlook: “Religion will not go extinct. But it will likely remain a marginalized species in an unfavorable American sociocultural ecosystem.
It’s the CHURCH that must fill in the “what we must do” section. As he notes, the church has failed to stem the tide by trying to be more “relevant”, with rock music and torn jeans. Step one is admitting there is a problem—-a big first step for many evangelicals. Next, to paraphrase Chuck Colson, the church must be the church. Smith points out that the “expressive individualism” permeating the culture comes with a price: an astronomical increase in the number of mental health issues for the younger generation. The church must demonstrate that following Christ has purpose. It needs to live out the Gospel for all those made imago Dei, in the image of God.
How Religion Became Obsolete is a must read for church leaders not afraid to see the big picture and take big steps to engage with a lost, hurting generation.