The white evangelicals are obsessed with the idea that secularists are at war with them . Ross seems to echo that feeling. But i don’t hear anything like that from my secular friends. It’s live and let live. We can all believe as we choose but no one forces their beliefs on others. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion. There is no one “true” faith.
33
Jesus' teachings are still as beautiful and relevant as ever. They have taken a back seat in the modern church.
You want to save religiosity? Resolve the moral conflict arising from the Church's insistence that we should organize our lives around bronze age eastern mediterranean mythology and miracle stories, rather than on the results of reproducible scientific experiments performed on the world we live in. Call me crazy, but if there is a God, I think it would communicate to us through the natural world, rather than through the psychotic fever dreams of dehydrated shamans in a desert 2000 years ago.
22
What "anti Christian" policies is he talking about? The fact that we refuse to allow religion to discriminate?
25
How is a smart guy like Ross still under the spell of this mysticism? I don’t understand.
17
It is at times like this that I hear with a hint of nostalgia, 'Edmundo's footsteps going to Mass on Sunday morning. My uncle, a devout Catholic and deacon of The Church, would have had the utmost reverence for Pope Francis, and this column on Religion would have been forwarded for his opinion.
All this talk of 'Christianity' has removed some of its mystique and spirituality, leaving one standing on the shores feeling bereft, as a ship carrying a loved one moves farther away into the fog.
When placing some flowers on the grave of de Tocqueville's cousin and childhood friend in 2012, I sensed Democracy in America was succeeding, where there was no conflict of interest with one's own spiritual constitution.
Orwell's least popular novel, 'The Clergyman's Daughter', addresses the matter of living after having lost one's almighty faith, and the irony of it all, is that the readers of the above are asked by the author for an act of belief, which for the most part, they deny him.
If and when next asked for my religion, I shall reply that I am a 'Japhethite', adding that The Professionals built the Titanic, while Noah built The Ark.
Mr. Douthat will remember The Caravan, carrying immigrant children, denied access at the Border this Christmas last. American Christianity, placed to the test, was tainted and diminished once more.
8
I am a late Baby Boomer. I have friends & acquaintances that are Catholic or LDS who still regularly attend church, likewise, a couple Jewish friends attend services. I know two Fundamentalist Christians. I know a few people that have become Buddhists. I would say >70% of the people I know attend no religious institution, half of those agnostic or atheist. Of friends Millennial offspring >80% are unaffiliated, the ones that are identify as Jewish or Catholic. I don't know a single offspring of Fundamentalist Christians who have stayed in that church. Of the Generation Z people I know >90% have no affiliation, would say most indentify as atheist, not agnostic. Is there a pattern?
8
Having a religious affiliation for the far right conservatives is about belonging and being on high more than faith and service. When the dwindling ability to Christ Love their fellow couldn’t bring other faithful into the fold anymore, they had to face their own demise. Seeing themselves as victims instead of the perpetrators of their own problems is the answer they go to in their “faith” and politics to further their same judgements.
Many have fled to the more open minded doors that are, like Christ, inclusive.
As far as their persecution complex I see plenty of full church parking lots, no Christian of their persuasion being taunted, judged or persecuted just themselves harping that this is so because they are no longer the Christian Authority they think they own.
4
Americans should consider themselves fortunate to enjoy LIBERTY of religion. It is true that Christianity has been kicked around in the USA more than others.
But spare a thought for persecuted CHRISTIANS in places like INDIA where the ruling BJP and NARENDRA MODI is systematically clamping down on Christian freedoms effectively relegating them to THIRD CLASS CITIZENS. He will smile before the international community but execute his hatred against his own citizens.
Christians in India look to the powerful Christians in the USA to help their downtrodden brothers and sisters in India. For this, they still have HOPE and they are GRATEFUL for this blessing.
5
The best indicator of the decline of Christianity is the increasing scarcity of people that follow the simple tenants of charity, humility, service and compassion that Christ taught. To ordinary people of common sense, the garish displays of wealth and plunder in the Vatican and the modern megachurch scream hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy. I believe that a decline in church attendance is the logical response to a clearly corrupt and decaying remnant that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the body of Christ.
17
Yikes!
So far, the most popular comment on this opinion begins with "Jesus had no church."
This, from readers of the New York Times!
One reason for withdrawing from organized Faith is the recognition of its unbelievable claims.
No one can assert the bible, for example, is all fact-based truth. Everyone recognizes that Faith stories are designed to attract and keep followers (and donations).
If our prosecutors could proceed free of prejudice, wouldn't they hold accountable all those religion salespeople who claim followers will get in heaven?
Modern, informed citizens reject the hype and greed (except Trump supporters?).
9
Mysticism peddled by scoundrels is a good thing?
12
Your Tea Party, Ross...and the Republican Party, paved the way for Trump...and it signals the beginning of the end of Evangelicalism as we know it. Good riddance.
17
Douthat seems to think there is some kind of conflict between secularists and religious. No. Most secularists just don't care about religion.
Until, that is, the religious use politics to force their absurd views the majority. Douthat's religion may compel him to reject abortion, but it has nothing to say to me on that or any other subject. His co-religionists, which he admits are a minority, thinks they are entitled to ban abortions. That and similar absurd views create the battlefield.
16
It will be very interesting to see what happens to society when most people realize that free-will is an illusion and they are only automatons. It will be a "Brave New World." Someone please pass the "soma."
3
By what percentage have non-Christians been increasing in the US? While we have mostly Christian Hispanic immigrants, today we also have large immigrant pools from Asian and Middle Eastern countries, so presumably the percentage of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, etc have also increased. This would mostly not be due to Christians leaving their faith, but to immigrants and their descendants maintaining their affiliations, just as European Americans have done in the past.
1
It's not that hard to see why religion is on the wane. People simply don't die as often as they used to. Here's a statistic: in 18th century Sweden, a modern nation of that era, 1 child out of every 3 died. Venetian noblewomen would write a will a few months before childbirth. But then germ theory and vaccines were discovered and the deaths of children and expecting mothers became far less common.
Well, if there is a God and he wants people to believe in him the course of action to take is quite clear. Loose the angel of death. Unleash global destruction. That works every time. Growing up I always assumed that's how the world would end. But now I wonder if mankind will take us there first. The typhoon we just had in Japan was the biggest in decades. Storms. Fires. Nuclear meltdowns. Maybe if God returns it will actually be to stop us from destroying the planet ourselves.
2
I "pray" for the day that critical thinking and discourse replace religious dogma. Religion has been a power play against the weak in power, wealth and intellectual capacity since day one. Religions get people to follow paths that are antagonistic to their own best interest in the promise of some future after life. What a con, has anyone come back to say how great that is? As for Christianity, I love how a monotheistic religion has three gods: god the father, god the son and the holy ghost. Who do you pray to, when and why? Let's not even get started on Catholicism. The most recent christian amusement is this whole "prosperity gospel" thing. How big of a church and how many private jets does your minister need? Where does Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount fit into that scenario? No wonder some many fundamentalists have fallen for the Trump narrative. A bunch of Lemmings who risk dragging the rest of the country over a cliff....
7
American exceptionalism can't shield the United States from challenges to religious belief.
When people accepted that the earth goes round the sun and slaughtering witches is wrong, it challenged religious beliefs. The fight against slavery challenges those Biblical texts that seem to endorse it.
Two centuries ago, the dissonance between Biblical texts and general beliefs was not so great, but discoveries in geology and the theory of evolution were body-blows to Biblical literalism. Traditional sexual morality was first challenged when divorce was legalised, and the fight for birth control challenged Catholics.
The sexual revolution in the Twentieth Century obviously challenged Christians, but the Holocaust also forced Christians to reconsider their attitude towards Jews and those New Testament texts that sound anti-Jewish. At the same time, the development of medicine and psychiatry challenged texts about demon possession in the New Testament.
Globalisation can challenge the idea that there is only one way to heaven, when people of other faiths and none settle in traditionally Christian lands. Even Christians from other lands can challenge Americans with their rejection of American customs such as routine circumcision and the persistence of the death penalty.
In all, the increasing gulf between traditional Christian beliefs and modern ideas makes it increasingly difficult to maintain faith. The cognitive dissonance is just too great.
8
It's true that Evangelical Christianity has kept higher numbers, but that's misleading. Recent studies have suggested that it was the association between Evangelical Christianity and right wing politics that drove many of the weakly religiously-affiliated Americans (particularly the liberal ones) away from religion altogether. And the effect among Evangelicals seems to only be delayed. Something like 25% of those over 75 are Evangelical compared to 8% of those under 25. It's unrealistic to expect life course changes to balance that out.
As an atheist, I would humbly suggest Douthat and other religious Americans include the non-religious interfaith outreach and perhaps joint charity projects. Only positive interactions will derail the trend of declining religion and mutual hostility between the religious and non-religious.
2
The Church of Rome under Pope Francis is a more pastoral and compassion filled Church. Under Pope Francis: less emphasis on control, more emphasis on a compassionate presence and listening and faithful accompaniment. Pope Francis stresses truth and a charity in action that leads others to see Christ in us.
4
I was a teen-ager during WWII, which means that my generation was raised by women, not men who were in the military. The most important men in our lives were the RC priests and the men of the local fire department. We thought that the priests were the wisest and most informed males we knew. In those days the church authorities regularly posted films which we were to avoid, such as detective stories or rather bloody Westerns. Also on the list of forbidden viewing was Casablanca. Of course, that is the film I and my friends went to see. We loved the film, especially when Strasser is shot permitting Elsa and her husband to escape. We thought the film was about loyalty, so we never grasped that there was an adulterous relationship or that when Elsa visits Rick to obtain the letters, they engaged in a sexual relationship. That was totally beyond our comprehension. This was lost on us, but it was the reason for the church's condemnation. At our usual Saturday confession I was first on line and my friends insisted that I ask the priest why was Casablanca on the list. In the confessional I asked him. He never answered me and, suddenly, gave me a penance which ended my confession. Obviously, he didn't know why the film was restricted. His ignorance, or misdirection, was a shock to me and shook my naive adolescent faith. Other incident followed and within a few years, I concluded that the church's answers to the dilemmas of life were useless. I never looked back.
5
Christianity is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't - branches can bend and twist themselves so out of shape that their constituents are as far removed from Christian behavior as is possible, like the Evangelicals bending to nationalism, racism, and the promise of a theocratic judicial branch. . .or they can refuse to bend at all to the changes taking place in society, like the Catholics, and make themselves entirely irrelevant to new generations who believe in equality.
The Evangelicals are concentrating themselves into a minority of fanatics and the Catholics are alienating everyone to their own extinction.
Spirituality is individual, private, and satisfactory for most people now-a-days, as is hedonism, agnosticism, atheism - or just a good yoga practice. Religion, just like civilizations die out and fade into obscurity too.
2
I grew up in a Lutheran School. You either went to heaven or hell. Simple enough.
Then, I left the organized church and discovered what I refer to as God for lack of a better term. And God showed me that there is no such thing as hell. Cool.
One day God and I were talking. He said, "So, you don't believe in hell anymore, correct? And after death everyone returns to bliss, correct?" That sounded about right. "So, that means you are going to spend eternity with your mother and your ex-wife. You might want to start preparing yourself for such an event."
Now, I realize that there is nothing but hell waiting for me no matter what I do.
2
@tom harrison
Dear Tom Harrison:
THANK YOU! I am cracking up here!! Laughing out loud. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The NYT should definitely make your comment a Times Pick!
1
@Lisa Simeone - :) It was a real conversation with God but I am working on making it into a full stand up comedy bit. Too much to work with:) God is good.
1
Honestly, reading this article is about as boring as going to church for me. Let me scan the comments.
9
The Apostle Paul created a religion tailor-made for the masses of slaves in the Roman Empire: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28, WEB) It offered slaves an afterlife in freedom once their transient days on Earth were over.
That characteristic made Christianity a perfect instrument of control, first for Constantine and later for the Catholic Church. Heavenly afterlife became contingent on receiving Sacraments from the Church. Obey the Church, respect your divinely-ordained place, and in due time you'll enjoy eternal bliss in Heaven. Step out of line, or do anything to anger Church officials, and you'll endure eternal suffering in Hell. That Church monopoly held feudalism together, and in particular kept the serf majority docile and accepting of their status. (It also gave clergy considerable license to abuse their authority and to enrich themselves.)
There is no longer a Universal Church with a monopoly on Heaven. And while many Catholics and Evangelicals believe their version of Christianity is the only way to a heavenly afterlife, many more people have rejected the core Christian belief that Adam's sin condemned everyone to Hell, a fate from which only belief in Jesus can save us. For many of us there is no compelling reason to be Christian-- especially given the hypocrisy of Evangelical leaders and the abuses of Catholic clergy.
8
The right-wing holier-than -thou religious zealots have helped me decide to contribute to Ron Reagan, Jr.'s Freedom From Religion Foundation. While I am comfortable being labeled an agnostc, I, too, am not afraid of burning in Hell forever.
8
I can respect Christians who truly believe in kindness, love, and acceptance toward others. But that's rarely the case and when it is, it's sometimes a front. I've been told by one of the ordinarily kindest Christians I know that I, as a Jew, am going to hell. To me, if the kind behavior is an overlay over the belief that people of other beliefs, sexualities, etc. are sinners, it's not really kindness at all.
6
As a GenXer, when I had my kids I didn't go back to the religion I was raised in (every Sunday for 18yrs) and tried to believe as an adult for over 20 years.
After much consideration, I consciously choose not to raise them in any religion, or even in any 'god'.
You can't believe what you can't believe. I wasn't going to risk putting them through lifelong guilt by brainwashing them into thinking the whole world believes something that they just can't. Nor have to face the conundrum of a loving god who would send them to everlasting hell for it.
If they 'find' god/s, that's fine. I don't own them.
1
Lower your head, say the words and drop a coin into the slot. All those who don't will burn one way or another. Every religion is the same.
3
"Catholic Hispanics as well as Whites." This is a strange way of categorizing people, when roughly half of Hispanics are largely descended from Spain, a European country. Aren't they White?
5
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
Napoleon Bonaparte
5
And how do the “ super Mormon moms “ feel about THEIR lives?
Does it even matter ? Breeders and unpaid “ help “.
SAD.
6
Religion, all of it, is a hoax perpetuated on mankind through the ages for the sole purpose of control. You'd think people would grow out of this superstitious Easter Bunny mentality but, just like Trump supporters, they can't admit they've been had.
5
Good riddance to religion of all forms especially the Abrahamic ones (Christian/Muslim/Jew)
Religion has done nothing but delay humanity and science. It has supported hates against the ‘other’ (LGBTQ, people
of color and really anyone whose different)
It has held women down.
Tried to tell people when and how they can have sex.
Tried to control women’s bodies
Sexually abused millions.
All in the name of some ‘god’
What religion really wants to do is control and repress.
Some of the most judgmental hateful people I have met in my life were religious Christians.
Good riddance.
Some of the most loving kind accepting people I have met in my life were atheist. 
10
To be frank, if American Christianity means overlooking children torn away from their parents and locked into cages because "this president is going to end abortion!" then the collapse of this sham religion can't come too soon.
We'd all be better off.
13
Superstition has no place in a civilized society and I can only encourage religion's collapse. From encouraging hatred of marginalized societies to its use as a weapon against colonized people, and let's not forget it's hypocricy and pedophilia, "The Faithful" don't appear very pious. Good riddance.
7
"Overstated?" There's a certain ridiculousness about this ... how can one discuss the "collapse of American Christianity" without mentioning that both Catholicism and those who claim the title "evangelical" have demonstrated themselves to be morally bankrupt? Maybe Ross is better suited to write for the Catholic Reporter?
8
Establishment christianity makes me sick. It wallows in hypocrisy and then gets its acolytes to shove it in our faces. Tax the churches, and if they won't pay, raze them and build housing for the homeless.
7
Who cares if religion fizzles?? Not me.
Perhaps god will stop the carnage in Syria and every other part of the world where powerful people do miserable things to other people.
I and now in Burma and Thailand what are the monks doing?
Vietnam
5
It’s the hypocrisy stupid! The Christian church might be more attractive if it acted more according to Christ.
Catholics dominate the pedophilia field while preaching morals and denying birth control to those who need it. They want tax exempt status while building up great bases of assets and making political expenditures; they don’t need the exempt status if they truly operate at break even since there is no net income to tax. They support the guy who cheated on all three of his wives, who bears false witness against all his neighbors, and is actively and intentionally destroying God’s creation.
2
What, in the name of all that's secular, is a "Jack Mormon?"
3
Who will start a crowd fund for Ross to have a mirror?
4
The Roman Catholic faith has been tarnish by the clergy Priest the have no boundaries, you would think if Christ was walking on the road in Galilee, preaching goodwill to men. Peter and the disciples trying to hide the little ones children of the faithful, and Christ saw this and told his disciples to stop it.
You said you had to be in as a child and the gates the kingdom of heaven not stop these children but who ever do so is like tying a rope around her neck the rock plumbing to the depths of the seas.
Roman Catholics have forgot that saying for years that hired pedophiles that feed on children the evil that talked about. I don't believe the Pope condone such actions . Their only mistake try to hide the facts.
The Mormons on the other side tried to gather up men if they were fishermen's not like the Catholics of long ago that used to be fishermen. Christianity has been under attack, by extremists Muslims that you can't be a Christian or be executed. If you look at Turkey years ago half the population's were Christian half Muslim. But now the Muslims have given them out of Turkey you see few churches.
The only thing I can say if your Roman Catholic walk the road to Galilee.and pray with Christ.
Ross. How do you expect me to read your columns when you throw 53 word multi-syllabic sentences at us? You guarantee that the reader will completely lose the thread of the point you are trying to make, or explanation you think can survive in such a sentence structure. Please rethink your presentation skills. They’ve got to be better than those you display in your column today.
6
@Mike
Thank you.
1
The only way to rid our society of religiosity is to force closure of religious schools and all religious tax exemptions. Religious schools amount to nothing less than child abuse by teaching children archaic falsehoods, myths and right wing politics. The tax exemptions for religion have allowed them to evolve into a platform for right wing ideologues and charlatans. Removing children from religious schools will eventually allow our society to move on to a more progressive and healthy future.
4
Special thanks to the Episcopal clergy of the National Cathedral who recently published their open letter "Have We No Shame." This gives me faith and hope that Christianity might survive the dark, horrific reign of DJ Trump.
3
Jesus Gave---He didn't take. When he multiplied the loaves of bread--it wasn't to increase profit. He said the rich cannot get into Heaven, He owned nothing, He was inclusive. The Church has used Jesus name for Profit--none of it for he really believed in.
6
Did I ever mention that I don't believe the white evangelical mega-church crowd are actually Christians. I wish someone would read the parts in the Bible where Jesus allegedly said this or that, and make that strong distinction.
3
The Catholic Church ruined its claim to any moral authority over the last 50 years, by consistently protecting and abetting abusive, pedophilic priests, while failing to protect the women and children it needed to nurture to continue having a faithful base. Why is the author confused about this issue?
The line between deep faith and delusion is sharp as a razor’s edge. Those evangelicals who talk about the persecution of Christians in America, don’t seem to notice that most of the time they come across as being so fragile and unable to tolerate any world view but their own, that they seem out of touch with reality. When they seek to exercise power over others to justify their world view, and see any disagreement as the work of the Devil which must be punished, they become scary and dangerous, and clearly lost from Christ’s path. The impulse to control and punish is not the Christian way.
7
Spiritually, I pray (not) to the Rickiest altar of Rick while watching Sunday football in my underpants and jamming Steven Martin. (That all means I'm an atheist.) Maybe not the best use of my time, but I make up for it with my public service work.
Ethically, I teach my kids proper to be nice to others through tolerance, kindness, respect, and appreciation for both our community and our world, then I go practice what I preach.
Morally, I recognize that no one is perfect and apologize when I do make mistakes.
I haven't set foot in a church in 20 years, but I'm more than open to my kids attending church with my incredibly Christian parents. I'm sitting across from a lesbian Jewish woman without crossing myself or praying for her soul. I have great talks with my Catholic neighbors, even if they can't hang on Sundays.
Collapse, don't collapse. I don't care. I shouldn't care. No one should care. Your spiritual life is your business, not mine. Yet so many Christians try to make me/us care, because the proselytization foundation of modern evangelical Christianity seems to think that it's your job to stick your nose into everyone else's business.
If Christianity the (I'm In Your) Business Model collapses, parents everywhere will still teach their kids to play well with others, to dream big, and to question our existence. You don't need a outdated rulebook to teach you how to do that.
Now go help fight climate change so you can have someone to prostelytize.
3
US big-brand Church is so ludicrous that it's a cartoon meme in Europe. It's a reverse meme of Islamist fundamentalism, but it predates that, having been around in European cartooning as long as 100 years ago. Seems to me that US Christianity has a brand problem. It's not going to get better, and don't pray for a mass revival. Besides, the power-gods in the US these days are Wotan and Mammon.
1
In progressive societies and the world of technology that we live in with each passing day religion is seen for what it is a myth used since the beginning as a social control agent by the powerful. Having lived in Alabama for five years I always loved it that the idea that you maybe poor here and work hard and those in power that control you have it all, but when you die the last shall be first. Mombo Jumbo. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school all those wonderful Sisters of Charity who loved to beat on kids me because I was left handed. It dawned on me in the Marines over fifty years ago when a priest told me and my men to kill more Commies for Christ. Not just Catholics someone here talks about Mormons on the block how the wives stay home and the kids are wonderful. Yes, home school I bet big among certain religions where they insulate themselves and never get into the outside real world. Mormons believe women are second class and yes, that is their job to have kids and stay home. I always love the Trump supporters like Farwell, Graham who fly around the world in their million dollar aircraft live in million dollar houses and have cottages big cottages. At 73 I know no one who is still into religion. Churches where I live have sold out the land and there are condos. Religion is part of the corrupt power structure and people who can't go outside and look at the stars and think for themselves follow it. Att. General Barr is a case in point. Jim Trautman
2
"Lukewarm Christianity may be declining much more dramatically than intense religiosity."
So we are left with religious fanatics trying to turn America into a theocracy. Can't wait.
4
I was brought up as a Jewish atheist. My parents taught me that if there was a god, who by definition, is all knowing and all powerful, then how could “He” have let the holocaust happen? When I was in my teens, I was drawn to cathedrals with stained glass windows. I would sit there in the silence and feel a sense of mystery and awe. I even asked to talk with a priest whose robes swung through the air as he walked and made him look so regal, so holy as he tried to answer my questions. I didn’t believe anything he said, I tried to hide my nervousness, my sense of discomfort. Yet the feelings of mystery and awe still fill me with wonder, with a need I still can’t quite describe.
2
What you feel is real- but it’s not expressed in traditional religion. Continue the search outside of organized religion and you’ll find the peace you’re looking for inside yourself.
2
Ross, the reason that Americans are turning away for "Christianity" is that "Conservative Christianity" has wholehearted endorsed Trump, the most evil, unchristian like President in the history of the USA.
4
I confess I love to see Mr.D. try to salvage the boat...
The news are clear : Religion is on a descending path in the US, not an ascending one.
Given the fact that its religiosity has always been one of the worst traits of the US, these news are good.
How good is of course a matter of discussion.
Of course, religion is alas here to stay.
Of course, rampant pedophilia makes the Catholic Church suffer more than throws who peddle the Prosperity Gospel.
So ?
The news are still, clear, reason, at long last is on the way up in the US.
Not in the political field, granted.
But no hair-splitting can hide those good news.
2
Unfortunately Russ, Yahweh didn't know about the surveys.
He will catch up with it later.
Its a cycle that comes and goes. The secularized will find their way, and frozen chosens will have to start over.
Have faith.
One must distinguish "being religious" and "attending a church".
1
I read that religiosity is highest in poorest nations. If the standard of living in the US falls, like many say it is, I wonder if this might increase religion here.
1
If there's one thing I could not possibly care less about, it's the state of Christianity in America. Whatever. It would be nice if dishonest people stopped trying to use it as a wedge issue, though.
5
The problem with Christianity is that it is provably wrong. The message is that "Jesus loves me" , "God will not give you a problem you can't handle" " Trust in the Lord". Theses are believable when you are sitting in 80 degree sunny weather in Jupiter Fl, collection a nice pension and Social Security but if you are a 4 year old in Aleppo or the slums of India, or one of many African nations you might believe that God hates you or worse doesn't care.
If Christianity was so important why did it take 1000 years or more for most of the people in the world to even hear of it? Did God not care about the people in North and South America or large parts of Africa? Really, the arguments for Christianity are quite weak.
3
The real problem is the perversion of American Christianity.
When you combine the hate, the "prosperity gospel" nonsense, and the End Times histrionics of the evangelicals, it is more like some sort of crazy cult than the religion described in the New Testament.
In the long-run, hate kills its host and that is exactly what we are seeing now.
Millenials simply are more tolerant and pen-minded than their parents and grandparents. They are rightly disgusted but the disparity they see between what is in the teachings of Christ and the weaponized Christianity of Trump and the Republicans.
The haters are dying off and there are no new recruits to replace them. Collapse? Perhaps not. But to deny a long-term decline is simply to deny reality.
What I find so ironic is that the founding fathers warned against religion in politics. Republicans ignored that warning and tried to create a theocracy. Christians should have known to stay clear but they engaged. They are paying a huge price for that stupid mistake.
5
Well, I just went out into the backyard, killed a chicken and after rattling its bones around in a bag, tossed them.
Good News, Mr Douthat. Your bastion to powerful white men who do whatever they want and punish the rest of us for even the smallest transgression is safe.
The bones do not lie!
3
Great article in the Atlantic last month, does a much better job of explaining this change in trend.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/atheism-fastest-growing-religion-us/598843/
2
Argue all you want about the decline, or not, of religion in this counrty. Just keep it out of the laws that regulate my life.
5
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"...it's already here.
Attorney General Barr's recent speech at Notre Dame should be a wake up call. He warned that “militant secularists” are behind a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order”.
5
Perhaps,too, it could be that whole nasty moneychanger thing. It is ludicrous that many,many "Christians" conveniently omit this parable when proclaiming Christian values.
3
The decline in religion is perhaps because, while about 6000 years ago God created the universe, and 1000 years ago flooded the planet, today appears on toast.
2
We need less religion, not more.
4
So glad the writer is happy contributing to a church who will take his money to pay for pedophile-supporting lawyers and Mercedes/mansions for clergy. You know, just what God wants. I remember growing up THREE priests had a house built just for them. It had 4,000 square feet and a three-car garage (unheard of in the area at the time) that housed their Cadillacs. Couldn't figure out where the vow of poverty fit in but, you know, I'm rational and logical. Want modern proof? Read about the Catholic renovation of the Crystal Cathedral.
2
How ironic that I see this article at around the same time I see Douthat's column:
"Former Vice President Joe Biden was denied communion Sunday at a Catholic church in South Carolina over his support for abortion rights."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/29/politics/joe-biden-denied-communion-south-carolina-catholic-church/index.html
I do have to laugh. That's what you get when you put your faith in superstition. And sorry, that's what all religions are: superstition.
OK, start pelting me with figurative tomatoes.
3
The more secular a society becomes the better it treats it's people.
That's where we were headed before Reagan married Torquemada
2
When some self-righteous blind man in SC decided he can own Holy Communion and deny it to a deeply conscientious Catholic like Biden, then we do need the Second Coming. Because some folks didn't register the first one.
2
So say I were a extraterrestrial who happened to be visiting your lovely little planet, maybe on vacation?
What gifts could I give humanity as I was leaving for a new adventure?
1. Erase all the old "holy" books.
2. Ice-9 the Oil.
People create religion when they are unhappy with their world and the fashion gods in the ugliest of their own image.
The Hierarchy that religion imposes is a perfect tool for exploitation and justification of horrible acts towards one another and the lovely world you all got here.
- Spaceshot Houls.
1
Exhausting. Must we now wring our hands about the decline of Christianity as we have been obliged to do about white middle Americans?
You all are welcome to keep on keeping on. But no, you're not the center of attention any more. We wish you'd stop writing columns as though you were.
4
when all people are enlightened all religion will fade into oblivion.
1
Thank you for your provocative and always thoughtful columns. Swimming against the tide is tough.
Evangelical Protestantism seems to thrive mainly in the South and in rural areas. Unfortunately, the concomitant factor, is poor education. Home -schooling has become more enticing for many Protestants. The Bible is being used as fact, i.e., the world is 6,000 -years old, science is denigrated, and standard texts, discarded or censured. Education and knowledge is denigrated, with the sense that all you need to know is verse x, line y, or many such verses.
And, as these children grow and propagate, we get a less broad-minded, cultured, tolerant demographic, and a people more able to be led by a dictator. All results rests in some god's hands, and of course, a candidate, backed by the Protestant church is that much more admired. So much for critical thinking, and preserving our democracy when religion enters the public square, which unfortunately, it has. As Europe gets more secular, the US seems to get more religious. It's a rather insidious crusade, wreaking its havoc at the already compromised ballot box.
2
Earlier in the day I made a comment about an article I read in the Times. The article was about Elaine, Arkansas, if anyone is interested. I feel that if people who consider themselves religious can do such a thing then religion is of no value.
1
In general, we have more restaurants now and fewer churches. To me that is a good trend, as I feel restaurants and bars add more to a community than churches - and you can pray in them.
4
Its a flawed premiss in some ways but read : "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes
God is just the lingering "voice" of the Alpha in our great ape/hunter gatherer lineage. Nothing more. Before our minds became self regarding and bicameral we were more broadly unicameral and carried schizoid voices of the alpha as a matter of survival for the group.
Sub note: the title of the book is possible the greatest charade title ever.
1
Ross Douthat finds the right trend, but the wrong explanations.
America is becoming both more secular and more fundamentalist simultaneously. The middle, just as is true economically, is disappearing.
Our fundamentalists tend to political action as a remedy for perceived moral failure when their own preaching and teaching cannot get the job done. Listen to our own home grown religious politicians on the subject of including the 10 Commandments in law and ask yourself how that differs from Sharia law. Ditto with the focus on controlling a women's reproductive rights - not just abortion, which is an unsolvable philosophical disagreement, but birth control too, which should not be.
Our political religious see their rights to practice and dictate morality as a greater right than others to not have such religious beliefs thrust upon them.
And finally, the collapse of Catholic Mass attendance did not happen because of Vatican II; Vatican II was a response to the same forces that were causing the collapse. We didn't stick to the liberalization, and gained a large chunk of Africa and lost a large part of Europe and America.
Religion in America is entrenching into the same type of polarization as our politics are. It isn't a healthy thing for our democracy.
6
I think a lot of the younger people have realized that modern organized religion has more affinity for political power than spirituality.
Spiritual needs of average people aren't being recognized by by doctrinaire pundits like Douthat and Brooks who value Canon law (decided by people) as the final say. Whether a priest is married or not isn't a spiritual question, nor is who you love.
7
Statistics do not show an essential feature of American Christianity since the founding of this nation : all social movements in America, even those which are non affiliated or claim to be "a-religious", have a moral streak that stem from the religious culture in this country. From abolitionism in the 1830's to the radical movement of the 1960's and 70's (and later) the moral grounds on which they founded their arguments were mainly Christian.
Although the minority of Americans claiming to be "atheists" is growing today, I feel cultural Christianity still thrives on. This can be seen each times readers post comments about important social and moral issues (such as the #Me Too movement, police behavior, death penalty, racism, social discrimination, mistrial etc…) reported by major newspapers and magazines online, such as the NYT. Most comments have a religious subtext that can be traced in the vocabulary : "redemption", "sinful", "evil", "fault", "pay for one's crime", "malevolent", "punishment" etc…
All societies have their own set of norms.
American society's norms are still based on the Bible and Christianity : you don't need to be a conservative evangelical for keeping America deeply Christian.
It seems to me the "Collapse of American Christianity" relates only to church affiliation and service attendance.
Christian and Biblical roots remain intact.
3
Douthat writes that something or other "might be this..." or maybe become that..." or "could be some such..." Well, sure, maybe, maybe, maybe. Or maybe not.
It's sad to watch people like Douthat and millions of others like him, including some in my own family, cringe in denial of what is right before their eyes: their most important tenants are crumbling and their religious beliefs are just hopes, without any basis in reality.
4
@Tom
Well ------- depends on how you define Reality.
In the past, folks in their 20's might have drifted away from the church they were raised in only to return later. My guess is the current downward trend is fueled by folks raised by late-Boomers and those after them who never took their kids to church. Religious observance is something inculcated in childhood. Few adults who have never attended church are going to be inclined to join either the Catholic Church with it's sex abuse scandals or the fundamentalist Protestant churches now so firmly backing Trump.
3
The dominant religion in America is not what you would think. It is not an institution but a tendency. It is in fact an outgrowth of American Protestantism, and arguably a form of it, though it is not based overtly on God, and is not a form of Christianity nor does it draw from either of its two sisters religions.
This new religion may be called "therapy." Another name for it is "spirituality." Therapeutic spirituality promises to make you happy. It offers techniques for managing your life.
Like most religions, it tells you what is, and what you should do, and these opinions are not based on scientific thought or philosophical ethics. In America, everyone is supposed to have some connection to a numinous, transcendent spiritual-ethical realm of the good. Its truths are true because they believe them, rather than believing them because they are true.
The mental health system that increasingly asserts control over everyone's thought, feeling, and behavior, and offers only forms of management of these things, has adopted a secular business-friendly Buddhist "mindfulness" and openly advocates and draws on other "spiritualities." This system feeds on the larger ethos.
What people are asked is to be managed, and they are offered happiness. What is excluded by this? Scant care for justice, weak sense of the political. The post-Protestant ethos is one more individual salvation.
A step forward would instead embrace the arts and learning from them.
1
The entire approach of Pew to religion is distorted by their "1950s" grounded terminology. 'Church' attendance may have indicated something about spirituality in the Post-War world, but - after the spiritual revolution of the 1960s, both "church" and "attendance" are archaic measures of spirituality. So, too, terms like "belief" and "religious affiliation". If one asks how often a person attends church, or prays, or believes in God, one is loading the question, and simply a catch-all term like "Nones" implies a lack of spiritual interest, quest or allegiance by the nature of the term. The Pew people should have all sorts of premise self-examination from such stats as 'atheists who pray' showing up in their "nones" or the difference between lack of affiliation with traditional 'religions' and sense of spiritual interest or quest. It reminds me of the European 'religion' survey that asked the loaded question, "Are you absolutely certain of the existence of God" and, predictably, likely interviewed regular people, the answer one is likely to get is to the (implied) question of allegiance and commitment, rather than some sort of absolute knowledge. As I follow Reform Judaism, if I answered such a question as a question of hope, desire or loyalty, I'd have to say "yes". But, as the question is stated, almost everyone and perhaps everyone would have to answer "no". Pew, by not updating its premises, is purveying a questionable set of conclusions.
1
You make no religion seem like a bad thing.
132
@John The evangelicals are alive and kicking in the deep south.
For me religion is a convenient thing. The best time to go to Publix is Sunday morning when the church people aren't around.
Sometimes I wish the rapture would happen just so the church people would go away.
32
@John Monsignore Douthat has this bad habit of believing that religion is a good thing.
No wonder then that he believes that when atheism reigns supreme, anomie, crime, despair and mayhem will be the law of the land.
We all have our little pet delusions, don't we ?
23
@Marian Librarian
The Rapture: Population Control.
Who knew ???
13
I had never heard of Jack Mormons.
2
I don't see a mention in the comments on the passage, "that resilience also puts some limits on how successfully anti-Christian policies can be pursued." I'm glad Ross Douthat reassures devout Christians on that but he also validates their victim complex. Ending prayer in schools (prayers that were always Christian) back in the 60s wasn't anti-Christian but rather removed a pro-Christian preference. Protecting abortion rights and gay marriage are not "anti-Christian" in the sense that the policies are not intended to disadvantage Christian beliefs. Calling these things "anti-Christian" is playing into the victim complex that unfortunately contributes to so much political nastiness.
10
It's always hard to know where to start with Ross Douthat. Just one small point in reference to his remark about "a decline in Mass attendance after Vatican II". The decline in admitting to one's Catholicism, mass attendance, and adhering to all things strange and meaningless, i.e., beliefs dating back to the obscure Dominican monk, Thomas Aquinas, for example; the breakdown in American Catholicism began when its hierarchy became actively engaged in the early '80s w/the political right. At that point, they relinquished any moral authority, separating themselves from worthy parish priests and laity working in parishes across the country to bring the message of the Second Vatican Council to people in the pews; working
to reflect an openness and renewal in ministry and liturgy as espoused by church fathers at the council.
I don't know what church Douthat was raised in, but the church in Chicago flourished in the 1950s right through this current decade. Now, the call is for a needed restructuring to shape a stronger witness and a more merciful and compassionate church for the future. Sadly, he projects a type of sour-grapes, chip-on-shoulder harkening back to another time. For what purpose? If he wants to read something that reflects trends and movement in the church today he should pick up a copy of the CARA report published by Georgetown University. I dare him!
4
The recent hypocrisy of both Evangelicals, who turn their heads to this administration's egregious moral failure, and Catholics who look away from the unspeakable abuse of children, affirms my departure from Christianity. I do, however, dig Jesus the radical.
5
The Evangelicals have been diminished through their association with Trump. The Catholics have been diminished by their pedophile priesthood. The Protestants have been diminished by their materialism-as-predestination ethic.
It would seem that the only thing left to believe in that is larger than ourselves is the categorical imperative Golden Rule.
6
Whether or not increased apathy toward religion has occurred, I think it's pretty obvious that less religion and less devotees of religion is a good thing for our society.
Christianity, in particular, has shown itself to be astoundingly hypocritical and cruel. No one who truly cares about individual rights, the freedom we all share, or compassion for others can possibly believe that Christian churches share those values.
Moreover, Christian - and, especially, Evangelical and Catholic - churches are cesspools of abuse and danger. Clerics have raped and sodomized children with impunity, children are brainwashed and forced into marriage by Evangelical "pastors," and tolerance of hate and discrimination and prejudice is a routine feature of these churches.
Plus, Christianity has somehow decided that it is the same thing as Republican. But if the churches are going to play partisan politics, then they are proving only that they care about power and not about God.
8
Having interactions with the most heavily-religious people is the best way to be turned off of religion for good.
8
Ross - why do you believe the nonsense that is religion at all? You haven’t provided any thinking or feeling person a convincing reason why any of your high-minded flailing matters at all.
Those who believe have a magic notion of how the world works, no matter what the faith, dress it up how you will. If one has somehow avoided being indoctrinated as a child, then very little of it appears noble or worthwhile - in other words, without that early exposure, religions fail many basic tests of reason, logic and morality. In that light, the differences between variations - e.g., Catholicism vs. Protestantism - are trivial distinctions without real meaning.
You haven’t convinced me that there is a “there” there.
9
"visible among Hispanic Catholics as well as whites."
Are Hispanics definitively non white?"
Ross, you are likely to find yourself crucified, and not in a good way.
3
Any organized religion that worships a deity reportedly obsessed, to the exclusion of most all else, with women's reproductive organs is unlikely to be a growing concern.
8
Hey Ross. News flash. When you die you cease to exist. Exactly as it was before you were born. All that bit about eternal life is a myth. If it (Belief) helps you keep fear at bay- good for you. Better, if it helps you live a better life somehow - great. But for those of us stumbling along as clear eyed as we can - respect our choice, equally, if you’d like yours respected in the same measure.
Even though he’s somewhat out of favor Woody Allen said something once to this effect: ”When you think of the world God created all you can really say is - such an under achiever”. He also replied when asked what he thought of the process of dying, “I’m against it”.
Cheers.
5
Bears repeating: the USA was not founded on Christian principles.
Article 11 of the Treaty with Tripoli signed by John Adams reads:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
A treaty becomes the law of the land once it is ratified by Congress. I don’t understand the bellyaching; we are discussing issues that are not based in reality.
On the other hand: Organized Religion is the best business there is ... let’s discuss that.
8
Whether the trend away from Christianity increases or not, it will continue as more and more people acquire a college education. Belief in miracles and things like virgin birth, resurrection, and other breaks from logic and reality simply cannot be sustained and religion will simply die with it.
5
Religion and the age of dogma may be declining but faith, morals and asking questions about ethics, I see, is alive and well. Harvey Cox explained it all in the prescient "The Future of Faith."
The issue is when your loved one dies how do you reconcile this to yourself first? What does the Spirit tell you? What is the faith system rather than the belief system that you operate with? What is the alternative? Do you have to build a system for yourself?
The surveys by Pew, which I read, were studying cohorts both Christian and "nones" about what their religious affiliations and how strong they are. However, a better survey would have been to ask if they still believed in the same beliefs taught to them as children. Can they explain the tenets of their beliefs? Do they put them to practice and how. That would show some trends only conjectured in the article.
I suspect that " Silent Generation" and" Boomers" have not grown their religious life and beliefs - through no fault of their own. The Roman church wanted belief , obedience and orthodoxy with a smattering of antisemitism. Thankfully, this is subsiding.
I think the new trends by "nones' reflect a stasis or lack of growth of their belief systems while also looking for an individual experience. If you still believe in the stuff you were told as a child you are likely not to have any maturity in your faith. We don't eat the same food we ate as children do we?
2
"But religious attendance ebbs and then flows across the life cycle, falling when you leave home and then increasing with child rearing and with the encroachment of mortality."
Sure, take comfort in this if it gives you some peace. Keep believing that one day the prodigal child will return, instead of examining your perspective, acknowledging the holes in your beliefs, and addressing the hypocrisy and rot within your communities.
I have read so many of these articles trying to explain the flight of young people (or people of any age) from the church. When are they going to stop and actually ask the people who left?
As a millennial myself, who spent nearly twenty years believing and attending church, I will give you my personal explanation. I no longer believe, in your god, or any god, astrology, or any sort of mysticism. The christian god that I was raised to believe in is as real to me now as Zeus or Santa Claus. Don't count on my return or any of my offspring filling your pews.
7
As long as people feel a need to shield themselves from the terrific impassiveness of the universe, there will be religion. Because the truth is, no-one knows what happens when we die. Presumably it's pretty good, though, because hardly anyone ever comes back to complain.
3
It absolutely is collapsing, its supposed to in the last days, the Bible says its "waters will dry up" meaning its funding will dry up and they will wither away until the politicals see that they have shrunk enough that they can completely destroy her forever. This event ushers in the Great Tribulation.
"The subsequent Catholic ratio of deconversions to conversions, of ex-Catholics to new ones, is a grim indicator for the church..."
Well, the Catholics need to make it easier for an adult to become one. After we were married my wife wanted to convert to Catholicism but we found that she would have to attend classes for at least 6 months and we would need to find a sponsor. Conversely, to convert to her protestant church I had to take 3 30-minute classes over 3 weeks--that's it.
3
Regardless of all what you say about Christianity, the only question that matters is that if any of the religions is true and how do you know that? For Christ sake don’t say that you know it through personal experience.
2
They have been exposed with their being outed as Trump supporters. It was never about morality, or patriotism, or faithfulness, or hope, or charity, or honor, or love, or the Jesus guy. It's all about obedience and hatred. And where are the ones who are supposed to not be like them? Hiding under the porch. I would say shame, but they have none.
3
I eventually became bogged down with imagining the afterlife, as I couldn't get beyond the idea that it really might not be so cool to live forever.....doing what?! But now that I've seen Maleficent 2, I kinda like that for an afterlife, so, back to pretending.
1
I've been an atheist for a long time but where I start to see the value of religion is in how it has allowed people to share stories that provide a powerful sense of belonging. Stories on where we came from and on what is good and evil have been a hallmark of human society. The loss of shared stories has, perhaps more than anything else, contributed to the immense alienation many experience.
In our connected and global society we urgently need to develop new stories that allow us to come together and solve our pressing problems. Religion may no longer provide the answers, but we have to.
3
Labels indicating identity and affiliation seen to be what a lot of chatter about religion is all about.
There is a need for serious talk about religious behavior other than church-going. Has anyone surveyed peoples' conduct as a reflection of their religious orientation? Does protesting outside an abortion clinic count as Christian or specifically Evangelical or Catholic? Does serving at a soup kitchen count as Christian? Christian only?
1
The trends are discouraging. And I say that as a 52 Sundays-a-year church attender. Church attendance was always a datum that got a lot of suspicion from public opinion researchers. A lot of pollsters suspected self-reporting consistently exaggerated church attendance. Sure, Douthat is right when he notes there are still plenty of intensely religious people. But the congregationally affiliated who wouldn't call themselves core members still gave congregations civic and financial heft, and they are disappearing, along with their even less affiliated adult children. I know the columnist thinks it's part of his job to push back against "everyone says" concepts in American life, but this one must be heeded. Few people with strong congregational ties are the sons and daughters of people with no connection at all. In churches we watched teenagers disappear from the pews, winked at each other and assured ourselves, "They'll be back." We expected them back when they got married, had kids, and jobs that rooted them in a community. But now they are hardly in evidence as teenagers, are mathematically more likely to marry someone equally unaffiliated (there are so many of them!) and not come back after the reassuring family ritual of a baptism is done. The numbers crisis long facing Mainline Protestant denominations now inflicts evangelical churches...sure the stadium seating is full on Sunday, but that congregation is always churning...big, but turning over all the time. Don't relax!
2
Maybe my experience is provincial, but it is incredibly easy to embrace the theology of evangelicalism and reject the politics that many evangelical leaders have adopted. I do and so does virtually every other evangelical I know (and I know a lot of them).
Evangelicalism predates President Trump and it will outlast him. The President gives evangelicals a chic reason to leave their faith. This reason will soon fade, but another will arise to take its place.
The misuse of something does not invalidate it. Every good and true thing, like the Christian faith, will always be misused. Instead of being rejected, it ought to be (perpetually) reformed.
6
@Monte K
Well then you personally could start by asking your friends and family to vote their faith and surely that can't be voting for Trump
2
Mr. Douthat, as do many religious critics, confuses inner faith with outward physical manifestations of faith. He confuses attending church, and or aligning with a religion, with faith, and specifically confuses it with faith in his characterization of a "God."
Adherence to Christianity, and especially a specific sect or denomination of Christianity, is not the sole arbiter necessary to determine what is or is not being spiritual.
Douthat's, as is that of others, presumption of sect and denominational adherence is peculiar given that one can isolate the Red Letter Text of what Jesus said into a space equal to a short story, not even a novella, let alone a novel.
There's no indication that Jesus established a Church, especially since his followers were Jews and remained only Jews until Paul and his adherents began proselytizing Gentiles, and remained mostly Jewish even long after that.
Christianity, and then Catholicism, were backward characterizations of those who wrote the books of the New Testaments decades and possibly a century after Jesus was killed.
In short, we don't have to be concerned that people don't go to Church. We need to be concerned that they act inhumanely as even many Christians do, as this Age of Trump is depressingly revealing.
7
@John F McBride
Please note that even the "Red Letter Text" on display in Christian Gospels are not the words of Christ. They are the supposed words of Christ. What Jesus did or didn't say will never be accurately known. There were no recording devices in his time. It can be safely presumed that most of his followers didn't write, and probably didn't read, whether their own language or the common other languages of that region, notably Koine Greek and Latin. In short, 99% of the argument over modern Christian and other expression of "faith" is not over what Christ said and meant, but is over the large library equivalent of what has been supposed by religious writers over the many centuries since Christ was put into a tomb.
8
In all honesty, I don't think the Christian faith will ever truly go away. It's mores and traditions are too tightly wound into our society for it to ever truly disappear. And though I am pretty agnostic and critical of organized religion these days, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
The true battle lies in how Christ's message will be interpreted to future generations. A church that is exclusive of gays and hostile towards women's rights will not survive this coming century, but churches and Christian denominations that emphasize the original tenets of compassion, inclusiveness, and humility before the divine will continue to have relevancy, so long as those tenets are actually followed.
5
In his usual way, Mr. Douthat misses the main point. Christianity has already collapsed. Its dominant institutions have no genuine connection with any of the values that the underlying religion professes. It has failed in the most stark and central way that a religion could fail: as a coherent faith. My sense, as someone who works regularly and closely with young adults, is that a religion focused on the message of Jesus would thrive among members of this ethically-oriented generation. Christianity simply does not appear to them to be that kind of religion any more. Which is too bad, because a great many of the ordained religious leaders who I know personally want to profess that faith. But they are regularly drowned out by the louder voices of hatred and hypocrisy that now clearly seem to speak for Christianity.
8
Surveys and polls are the least scientific of all endeavors, more like deadline journalism than science. And when it comes to religion, they are near worthless. I refuse all such surveys. I have evaluated this kind of research, and I am always dismayed that it is taken so seriously.
"Religion" is extremely complex when it comes to what people might say, in different circumstances, about what they believe. Charles Taylor has shown in brilliant historical detail how something like religion shows up in all sorts of forms. We are in a moment of rapid social change thanks to the historically extreme wealth and peace we are now experiencing and the shock of the digital world and social media and the attack on our brains by AIs and algorithms that get us hooked on anger and outrage and even hate--as a way to keep us clicking and imbibing the propaganda they feed us. Religion, the sanctity of life, the dignity of individuals, the fundamental importance of freedom, and the need to limit State power over individuals and their pursuits of meaning and happiness--all of this will return to us again if we manage to negotiate the strong currents in which we are currently caught.
@Nathan
Lovely and succinct Nathan
It’s not overstated, especially as it concerns Catholicism. People are tired of going through a middleman with nonsense rules and rites that victimize more often than uplift. That goes double when said middleman is the self-appointed arbiter of God’s grace, but too all often turns a blind eye to its own moral failings. People wise up to it fast, and decide they don’t need it. Hypocrisy, and faith used as a cudgel, are poison to any religion that thinks the road to salvation runs through its particular door.
To me, rightly or wrongly, it’s that simple.
6
It will be a better world without the need for bickering over whose Imaginary Friend is better or who best can interpret the word of the Imaginary Friend, especially with your credit card. Time for humans to grow up.
12
There is no heaven, there is no hell, there is no god, there is no satan. god did not create man, man created god.
9
@John
You must be God --- as you are apparently All
Knowing.
1
This makes some good points and announces some helpful statistics. But it ignores the surge of Christianity world-wide, in Africa, China, and even India. This is mostly "evangelical" or else some version of "protestant mainstream"--the divisions within Christianity are getting harder and harder to classify. And has anyone in the secular world listened to Kanye West's "Jesus is King" album? I was riveted by it and listened three times. Here is a fresh, maybe unclassifiable version of Christian zealotry which is resonating with many African Americans and others such as myself. One of the glories of Christianity is that the Gospels and the letters of Paul are sufficiently ambiguous on some doctrinal or theological points--some would say contradictory, I say properly paradoxical--because all know that G*d cannot be reduced to the feeble categories of human reasoning. This makes room for fresh versions of the old faith. As Charles Fillmore, founder of the Unity movement, stated, "We believe all the doctrines of Christianity spiritually interpreted." That leaves a lot of room for expansion, liberalization, and growth in comprehension or mystical awareness.
1
I see the decline in membership in churches as distinctly different than a decline in spirituality. The internet in all its forms provides us with a steady stream of information about the corruption of organized religions and their move away from traditional Christian beliefs (Commandments, Corporal Works of Mercy, loving your neighbor, etc.). Churches, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Evangelical, have become wealth-seeking, political entities and rarely seem to care about teaching God’s word. For example, how many “Christians” voted for Trump only because he vowed to fight against Roe v. Wade? How many millions of dollars go into funding the Annual March for Life? Yet, I doubt very much that Jesus would fight against Roe v. Wade, or show up to give a speech at the Annual March for Life. If there is any truth to the Gospels, while the organized Christian Churches were putting all of their energy and money into re-electing Trump, dismantling Roe v.Wade, and spending millions on the Annual March for Life, Jesus would be far more likely to be in the meeting halls, neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, war zones, and immigration detainment centers helping those in need. (Yes, Evangelicals, the Jesus of The New Testament did care about the plight of the marginalized. He was pretty much all-inclusive.) If church leaders want greater membership, they need to ask themselves how they would behave if Jesus were standing right there side-by-side with them. Then act that way.
1
Thank God I'm an Atheist (a joke son, get it?). Just trying to leave the world better than I found it is reason enough for my existence. Eternal rest in peace, or pieces, without that perpetual light shining on me, keeping me awake, suits me fine. I welcome becoming stardust at the end of my life's journey. And "Even this shall pass" is a credo I wholeheartedly embrace, despite some believing that words in a Holy Book will never do so. Words written by men who have passed on to something we will never know as long as we exist here. And if this is all there is, or isn't, so be it. It is not for me or anyone else to ascertain with any sense of absolute certainty or proof. Just MHO which may be at odds with your own indoctrinated beliefs.
6
You are missing the primary story of American Christianity in our time, which doesn’t show up in statistics.
White conservative evangelicalism has in every way bound itself to Trump, and to the ideology of Trumpism.
Mainstream Christianity (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant) has not, and is in fact increasingly and publicly warning of the dangers posed by white conservative evangelical ideology to the very heart of the gospel.
Behind this upcoming election is a church struggle.
The question is not whether Christianity has a future in America. After all, that is not ours to decide, but the One who holds the whole world in his hand, including our nation.
The question is what kind of gospel it will profess, whether the misguided distortion of Trumpist evangelicalism or the one true hope of God’s redeeming love for the world.
That is the story, yet fully to be written....
163
@Paul C. McGlasson Numerous Catholic priests and pastors support Trump openly. Others constantly insist that you can vote only for a candidate that is opposed to abortion in every way. My brother, one of the few remaining Mass goers, had to shop around for a Catholic parish that did not preach pro-Republican politics. He finally found one, a Maronite (Lebanese) parish. We are not Lebanese.
The Catholic church may issue high sounding manifestos about helping the poor. Any politics that favors benefits for the poor is considered optional by most church going Catholics. Being completely anti-abortion and anti-same sex rights, on the other had, is the kind of politics that is considered binding.
And you ignore one BIG political reality: since the pro-Republican alliance of the fundamentalist Evangelicals and the Catholic hierarchy the Evangelicals have been "converted" to the Catholic position against abortion. Up into the 1970s it was normal for conservative Evangelicals to assert that the Bible says that life begins at birth.
35
@Paul C. McGlasson
From the Wall Street Journal: 'Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York lamented that the Democratic Party’s shifting principles have effectively shut out and alienated orthodox Catholics.' Having grown up Catholic I was surprised at the "orthodox" distinction among Catholics. Cardinal Dolan has been very critical of Democrats for years. I no longer regard the Catholic Church as mainstream. Catholics are in the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorney General Barr is a Catholic and a member of the far-right Catholic group Opus Dei.
20
@Paul C. McGlasson As a secular Jewish person of faith, I lament the reduced clout of the mainstream Protestant denominations that seemed to endorse, along with faith, prudence, reason, and tolerance; more than any of the fundamentalist evangelicals, Catholics, or Jews, whose bywords seem to be patriarchy, superstition, and ignorance.
13
People of faith will never lose their faith, regardless of the decreasing number of churches scattered across the land.
What the Christians are afraid of is "losing" is their political power and influence, which is--as a natural process of better education and the denial of superstition--a logical progression.
Who really wants people who believe the earth is only 6000 years old running the country?
14
I grew up as a Methodist and went to church every Sunday until I was 18. In the 30 years since then I drifted away from the church and now consider myself an atheist. I can't point to any one moment or event the perpetuated my departure, but certainly the politicization of religion and my increasing view of religion as a tool to promote hate against gays and members of other religions (Muslims) played a role. I suspect there are others like me who were turned off for similar reasons.
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@Art Were only many more in Ohio to do the same, we wouldn't have Trump as Emperor.
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@Art I also was raised Methodist, left when I was 9 years old, never felt the need for religion to live a moral life, was indifferent to religion, but lately have become more hostile to religion. I don't support tax exemption for religion any longer.
Mr. Douthat, there are myriad people like me.
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@Art I think Methodist churches in Ohio are a more complex story. For many years I have looked for my mom in the congregation at her church in Westerville on their internet broadcast.
Two observations: First, the number of people per pew seems to have declined from about 8+ to 4-5. Second, this church has been upset by the decision earlier this year to roll back support for LGBT rights. When this happened, the main minister seemed clearly struggling.
My takeaway - Mainstream faiths, at least in Ohio, probably are not doing as well as they were 40 years ago when I was a Sunday School teacher at this church. It appears that other evangelical churches seem to be doing better in the northern Columbus area.
5
In the age of Trump the Golden Calf, it's hard to take religion seriously. The hypocrisy burns.
There's fetus adulation unaccompanied by caring for the children, mothers, families and communities once children are born.
The "success" doctrine enables victim blaming. Jesus didn't teach that (try the Gospels).
Exclusion of those who are different is all too common; religion is used as an excuse to blame and hurt "outsiders".
There is no "god-given" right to own high-powered killing machines. Rage killings and hate crimes are on the rise with the phony religionism that promotes wealth, power, and money as god-given.
People worship what's in their head, and leaders exploit that, often for profit and domination.
People like Joel Osteen are nauseatingly self-righteous and phony, the apotheosis of hypocritical exploitation. The elder Graham would not care for the direction his son has taken. Bullying and appropriation are ugly.
Moneychangers in the temple
Casters of the first stones
Whited sepulchers
"Christianity" might take a good hard look at the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. There's a lot of good there. Jesus was a socialist, and he would sure as heck be put in Gitmo or some such were he to appear today.
We live on a wonderful hospitable planet, and it is not the design of any benevolent deity that we should plunder and poison and destroy it. If you are a believer, remember to listen and give, not hate and destroy, the gifts you can find around you.
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This is the second editorial about the decline of Christianity in America in a week. NYTimes, do you listen to your commentariat? STOP. As a member of a minority religion in the United States, I feel alienated by the constant barrage of Christianity articles. We are not a Christian nation. We are a secular nation with a Christian majority. Stop bemoaning your privileged situation and listen to the rest of us for a change. Maybe we have valuable things to say, and one of them is that we just want you to be quiet for once.
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@Liza Sorry, but Christianity is big in the US --- and Trump would not have won if he did not make a devil's bargain with to many "Christian" Churches. Better learn what it's all about to call it on its Hypocrisy. Religion is NEVER going away. PS --- Human nature is what it is -- and any political party that can be slotted as the anti-God party will ALWAYS lose. The GOP has been working on this one for years.
Ross, I know you live to provoke liberals - but just give it up. It sounds like a boring broken record.
People are leaving religion behind because they are realizing that it is a flimsy foundation on which to build a society – a cult maybe, but not a society.
People are recognizing religion for what it is: false hope, smoke and mirrors, hypocrisy, sexual predation, and power.
More than anything else religion has always been about power, about controlling people’s behavior, controlling women, and as a tool to gain personal and political power and wealth. “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” We build altars to power, gods are just stand-ins.
In this precarious time of huge social challenges, like climate change, are we to turn to religion and hope for an answer to appear in a burning bush? Or do we take our fate in our own hands and actually DO something about it?
If you want to go into a church and eat wafers, drink wine and engage in cryptic rituals that’s your business. But here’s the problem: you won't be satisfied with that. You want to demand that everyone believes what you do. You want the wall between church and state to be torn down.
With all due respect: that is a threat to democracy and to my freedom.
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Quite scholarly and carefully analyzed....... excepting that you have missed (on purpose?) the one thing that now is and will in the future have the greatest impact on many Americans' views on Christianity. The Giant Elephant in the room here: Donald J Trump. The embrace of white Evangelical Protestantism and Conservative Catholics on a man who, perhaps more than any other public figure, real or imagined, could hardly be more diametrically opposite in words and actions to the central figure and teachings of Christianity --- is beyond Mind Boggling. It is not only the young who are completely flabbergasted by the Extreme, almost comical, HYPOCRISY. And all the "creative" rationalizations for this remain pathetic and idiotic at best.
I can get through the Priest scandal -- as Everyone agrees in the clear Evil there, but this is out for all to see. Christian education has clearly become inexcusably shallow and scarce, ---and this has clearly taken its toll. And don't blame the current decline on secular culture etc, etc -- human nature is such that people will always seek the Good. When too many Christian Churches appear to be serving up Donald Trump instead, (or just remaining Silent), -- they will look, run, elsewhere.
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Evangelical churches have followed in the polluted footsteps of the Catholic Church in demanding recognition of their supposed moral leadership while covering up hundreds and thousands of cases of sexual abuse of their most vulnerable adherents.
The concepts of The Golden Rule and of an ultimate Judgement are central to these religions. The fact that they routinely rape little children, protect the rapists, enrich themselves while espousing poverty and oppress and discriminate against anyone who does not toe their moral line proves that they do not believe what they preach, much less practice it.
They insist that they are above the earthly fray and thus refuse to pay taxes even as they preach from the pulpit and give money and platforms to politicians who will 'deliver' by pushing through legislation and appointing judges to inflict their worldview on everyone else.
Spirituality and the central tenets of Christianity do not require a church structure to promote a moral vision of a more loving world. Churches that have sold out their integrity for self-protection, political prominence and the opportunity to force their beliefs on others should be taxed out of existence.
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I'm retired & don't know many under 50 (or over 50 for that matter) that go to any house of worship regularly. A few do, but not many.
And younger family members for the most part don't have any religious affiliation.
The biggest enemy in my view is ignorance & intolerance. And because of that too often religions descend into a kind of organized ignorance. Many examples in this & every age.
I always liked the teaching from many sages that boils down to: the only god responsible for your destiny is your own consciousness.
You don't have to go to church or believe there is only one path to the divine to be moral, honest, responsible & compassionate. But living those values seems to be hard for everyone, with the religious no better than others.
The golden rule really is golden if one honestly tries to follow it, and of course we all mess up now and then, but if we sincerely try, religious or not -- it's about all most of us can do to be truly fair & good most of the time.
I think a fair number of religious people are decent, but I'd invite them to ponder that many that don't belong to a formal religion are good and do good too. To each their own.
I'd add that I don't think any of us really has a clue as to what's on the other side. But I bet the endless adventure continues, at least in some fashion...even for Ross.
And maybe the universe itself is a kind of consciousness that just wants us to keep learning & truly try to do the right thing. And that's good enough.
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“But for now that resilience also puts some limits on how successfully anti-Christian policies can be pursued....”
I am curious as to the thinking behind this statement. The phrase “anti-Christian policies” seems to jump out of the blue and then disappear again as suddenly as it came. Who is it that is pursuing “anti-Christian policies?” What are those policies? What are they designed to do? Who will enforce such policies? Do the policies have any purpose other than to battle or destroy Christians or Christianity or some sub-division of either? The leap to this statement covers ground that I am not familiar with and that might explain at least some of our current political division. The statement as it stands is as provocative as it is meaningless.
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Mr. Douthat - I believe your analysis is fundamentally flawed. I would welcome an opportunity to debate you on this. Apparently you can't help politicizing our issues of faith, but seeing the Faith through a politicized lens as much as anything has led people to stay home on Sundays. Your politicized approach is apparent everywhere in what you write. Your phrase for what Pope Francis is doing is telltale: "the liberal-Catholic program" under Pope Francis. Well it's not a "liberal-Catholic program". It's a Catholic program. The Second Vatican Council was not a "liberal" Council. It was a Catholic Council. There is a way to get past the polarization that you claim to be so concerned about. To do that we have to start by not importing polarized political thinking into our religious thinking. You are doing a serious disservice to serious practitioners of the Faith. Was Saint Francis of Assisi a" liberal" or a "conservative"? What about Jesus of Nazareth? Why don't you get serious and try a new approach based on the core beliefs of our Faith?
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I would encourage all to visit a First United Methodist Church nearby. The love, witness and service of these Christians is both unmatched and immeasurable.
I was raised Catholic, but no longer belong to any religion. That, however, does not mean that I am not spiritual.
When young, several things concerned me about the Catholic religion, first and foremost, was it's ban on contraception. It is hypocritical to ban abortion, and to ad to it a ban on the means to dramatically reduce abortion.
When I was born 76 years ago there were about 3 billion people on the planet. If I live another 15 years, there will likely be 9 billion people on the planet by then. I blame the Catholic religion for much of this tragic situation.
Tragic, you ask? Yes, because you cannot fool Mother Nature for long. She will have the last say about human population control, and as we all know, Mother Nature's ways for controlling population are brutal and far from humane.
3
Science and religion don't mix. As people become more enlightened, they turn from faiths based on phantom supreme entities. Now with Evangelicals in full support of an anti-Christian in the WH, that faith is doomed as well. Bad politics will be the end of Christianity.
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As a gay man who went to all Catholic schools all the way through high school I can tell you there has never been a place for me in the Catholic Church so I left and have never considered going back. Many other minorities feel the same and we ESPECIALLY don't feel comfortable being anywhere near the Christian Right or the evangelical nutjobs. I consider myself a Christian man in that I try to be kind to others as much as I can and think of myself as spiritual. I don't need a monolithic Church stuck in the 3rd century (even with a slightly more liberal Pope Francis at the helm) telling me who I can love or that I'm a sinner that they forgive. Except for some of the protestant Churches that work very hard toward inclusivity all of these religious institutions are about to go the way of the dinosaur because vast majorities of young people under 35 have no religion at all in their lives. They know their history too and know that the Jesus myth (virgin birth, crucifixtion, rose from the dead) existed in hundreds of other iterations in the decades before Jesus was said to be born. Not to mention that many of those same young people seem much more Christian and moral than many in the Church today and they give me hope for the future. As all of these organizations shrink and shrink over the coming decades they will wield less and less power in modern life and we will all be the better for it.
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People, including the author, should keep their religious beliefs to themselves and not subject the populace in the public space to their sectarian world or ethical views. The public space is NON SECTARIAN. This is not a matter of free speech. The NYT is not obligated to print all viewpoints. It should not be printing religious ones, but rather, NONSECTARIAN ones. There are plenty of religious periodicals for those interested in such subjects.
5
Agreed
Meanwhile, history is repeating (or rhyming).
Once again, a church has refused to give the sacrament of communion to a Democratic presidential candidate because he’s pro-choice. Last time it was John Kerry; this time it’s Joe Biden.
However, christian churches — of all types of denominations and sects — are just fine with serving parishioners/congregants who strongly adhere to racist, misogynistic, and homophobic views and practices.
So glad to be a “none.”
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"Measured by religious affiliation, yes, the millennial generation is the most secular in modern American history."
It's important to understand that this type of rhetoric is naive, in the non-pejorative sense of the term. "Secular" is a church word. The people being regarded by Douthat and his fellow -ravellers have no self-conception of being "secular" any more than someone playing basketball has a self-conception of being someone who is not playing hockey, or any other random sport you might think of.
Only people who believe in wizards in the first place talk about muggles.
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I think you're pretty on point in stating that we are moving into a post-Christian landscape. Witchcraft, paganism, spirituality, and mysticism are rapidly gaining popularity again. People won't stop craving transcendence, community, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, or a deep felt connection to Nature and the world, they'll just give their beliefs new clothing.
I myself grew up Catholic, identified pretty strongly as Catholic, and now I am a pagan degenerate. So it goes.
2
@Blaire Frei - I met my ex-wife in a Pentecostal Evangelical cult (no joke on the cult part). She is now a witch and I hang out in a gay leather bar thanking God for my new found solitude.
It is getting hard to say with a straight face to our children that there is a Person Who Has Everything Under Control somewhere, out there; that the Christian religion, as represented in America, is the Only Truth; that Catholic's and conservative Christians' insistence on Male Leadership Only is required; that the Christian Bible is literally true and "inerrant" (and no other religious writings are;) and on and on. Our children have access to more information now and we simply are not going to get away with pretending that religious writings have been faxed from Heaven somehow. Our religions and the scriptures underpinning them are important, not because they are literally historical, but because they are OURS. A representation of human history, thought, life experience and most of all, our need to make sense of consciousness, our human life. Religion developed in the first place because our existence is so perplexing, scarey, tragic, exhilarating and increasingly, satisfying. But humans had to develop rationales and scenarios out of whole cloth, over thousands of years. Newer generations are going to demand that energy and resources be marshalled for a society that nurtures and takes care, instead of developing the earth into an unliveable void. So, yeah, something new and more believable and serviceable, above all, has to develop. And it has to work for everyone. Hopefully, enough people will survive the global warming catastrophe this century to be able to rebuild.
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@Gary Pippenger I believe religion predated politics as an institution of control of the populace.
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@David S
Absolutely it did. That's why the middles ages was ruled by Kings who ruled by divine right.
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@David S But the king's used this as the opiate of the masses to control them. People aren't that naive and disenfranchised anymore.
6
Douthat's paranoid vision of American politics is getting more intense, as witness his talk of "post-Christian coalitions" (whatever THOSE might be) and anti-Christian politics.
You'd think we were living in 19th century France, where anti-clericalism was a political position and there was a constant public struggle over the nature of public space, as the building now known as the Parthenon as it were shifted affiliations between secular and religious functions.
I've lived in different sections of the country, including the South, but I've never met any "anti-Christians."
Many, perhaps most Americans are now more or less indifferent to the Christian message, if they even know what that is, as I have discovered from years of teaching at a selective university, where the "Christian" knowledge of students was almost non-existent. Only rarely could a professed Baptist, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian explain the nature of the domination to which they "belonged." A widespread notion among them was that Catholics are not Christians. Few could say much about key concepts such as grace, atonement, sacrament. the Trinity, and resurrection in the body. They had never heard of the Nicene Creed. One wonders if their parents knew more about their religion than these offspring.
If this ignorant of its nature and purpose, do you count in any sense as a member of a religious tradition? What if, like white evangelicals, you profess adherence to beliefs counter to that tradition?
4
Freudian slip? “The domination to which they belong.”
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Continued fractionation leads to further division and separation. Reformation, however, exists within all spiritual paths, always and everywhere. For western Christians, it may be found in the basements of their churches. There one will find spiritual treasures, in plain sight. They may be found in the acronym rooms; aa, oa, da, sa, etc. Those “many mansions” of “dying to self.”
Wishful thinking. Whimper whimper. The only benefit of a continued Catholic Church is to save adult Christians from admitting to themselves what the Catholic Church has been and continues to be, a denial, a perversion of one’s responsibility to think for oneself. If there is an omniscient omnipotent god, it gave us a brain for a reason.
2
It’s incredible that in 2019 you and your fellow Christian columnists keep wringing hands and clutching pearls over the alleged decline in Christianity and do not mention the rise in American diversity and non-Christian faithful.
How imprisoned by narrow outlook.
“Either Christian or secular” is a false, hegemonic and outdated dichotomy.
Catch. Up.
5
Delete the word "Christianity" and substitute for it the word "Religion" and you got something. Otherwise you got nothing. Over the last decade there has been a great "turning away" from the organized, traditional Christian church in the United States. After all, who really needs to meet once, twice a week in a stuffy building with stuffy people to make a statement of your faith. Come with me to the South or North Rims of the Grand Canyon and I will show you there is a god.
2
@Jean W. Griffith - I knew there was something much bigger than me the time I dropped some windowpane in high school. I was at a midwest pond and listened to the crickets, the frogs, watched the lightening bugs talk to each other, all while heat lightening lit things up.
1
Organized religion has always been a vessel to absolute power by those wielding sway or conducting the religious followers. Vote this way, persecute those to believe that way....etc.
Once organized religion of all kinds and their entirety have been purged from our politics and written law, will sanity and science truly reign supreme. Until that time, those like myself whom see no benefit in believing in other worldly control over one's action are left to sit and wonder what tin pot dictator wannabe will use religion as their vehicle to stardom next.
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It's a lucrative sham, just as Ralph Reed.
No, the numbers aren't just church attendance.
The numbers are who self identified as none.
Let me state initially, I am a hard atheist. Hard atheism is a sad and humble pill to swallow. First, I'm going to die and disappear. Second, I'm universally insignificant.
There is a silver lining to both of these. If (in an absolute sense) I'm insignificant, so is everyone else. This means I can assign significance to people. The lead cheerleader said "no" when I asked her out, and dated the quarterback Bummer. However, I can realize that neither she nor he, despite what they may think, have any absolute significance either. I can move my relative significance to include someone who may actually say "yes" when I ask them for a date.
Second, I think that when I die, I will simply stop functioning. I don't have to adhere to the strict rules of the Bible, such as hating gays, not eating shellfish, not wearing mixed fabrics, etc. I don't worry that doing any of the many proscribed behaviors will result in me not getting to see my loved ones in heaven, but instead result in me being tortured forever.
But a lot of people just aren't cut out to handle these two ideas: I'm cosmically insignificant, and when I die, I'm gone. In my dream scenario, I see something like Great Britain or Australia. There are churchgoers in both places, but there is not much danger of them passing laws that require a homeless fentanyl addict to carry a baby to term, and their legislators aren't invoking Sharia law to force women to wear body length bags.
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@Andrew
Well done you!
Most of the ethical, kind, moral people I now are not believers. I have nothing against religion, but I wish that the faithful would carefully read their texts, and, for example, follow the Jesus they find therein.
Making the choice to treat life as real is more likely to lead to caring conduct than joining a community that is all too prone to dominating behavior that has everything to do with power, wealth, and authority and embraces hypocrisy.
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@Andrew
You are not universally insignificant; you are a component of a cosmos in which all components are quite remarkable albeit transitory. That doesn't make you or a flower or the gases that comprise the rings of Saturn "insignificant". It makes you evanescent.
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@Laurence Bachmann I like to look at both ways. Because I am so small and off in a corner of the cosmos I'm kinda insignificant, and so I am also incredibly unique/special. To me and a few others.
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Organized religion has to be doomed to fail as so many of us finally realize that you don't have to believe in myths to be a good person.
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Each human being wants to feel somehow special and also needs others to recognize that specialness. Religion has fulfilled the personal need (God loves me) and the group need (We love God and each other).
Now, in our secular society nothing is stopping a religion from building a place of worship, going to services on whatever day is deemed appropriate, or practicing a particular lifestyle unless it harms others. But what it does do is take away the public recognition of specialness. “I am an Evangelical Christian!” “Oh, that’s nice”, instead of “Hallelujah!”.
While the practice and vitality of a religion is completely up to the actions of the individuals involved the lack of outside recognition is felt as an existential threat because what’s the use of feeling special if no one else knows it!
Of course the actions of movement zealots (I want a Christian cake at my gay wedding even though there are 10 other bakeries available) doesn’t help the situation.
The way to be special is to act special. While not one of my favorite movies, “The Shoes of the Fisherman” is a good example. The young want to be inspired. Do something special to inspire them.
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@C. Neville What, pray tell, is a "Christian cake"?
Perhaps people are finally growing up and have stopped believing in fairy tales?
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@Citizen - Not even close. Republicans recently believed that Mexico was gonna build them a wall (fairy tale). And Democrats before that believed that the war in Afghanistan would end (fairy tale).
1
Dear Mr. Douthat-
How can you live the life Christ promoted without Liberalism? Trying to separate the two is as useless as trying to separate wetness from water.
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What the black African enslavement and separate and unequal while black African in America don't you accept nor understand that there have never been any white European American Judeo-Christians in America?
Same question for brown aboriginal First Nations pioneers who were colonized and conquered?
John Brown was a Christian.
Abraham Lincoln noted in his 2nd Inaugural address that God apparently only heard and answered the prayers of the enslaved black Africans.
See Matthew 19:24; 25: 31-46.
This is 400th anniversary of the beginnings of black enslavement by white European English Protestants.
The Spanish and Portuguese Catholic ethnic sectarian supremacist terrorist cleansing began 100 years earlier.
2
US evangelical christians ignore everything Jesus said to promote one thing he never talked about.
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Unless Christianity is going to be replaced with parents who are well versed in virtue ethics and raise their kids accordingly, I wouldn't be super excited about its demise.
I teach philosophy and a lot of my course load is in ethics. And let me tell you, students who are not Christian are WAYYYYYY more comfortable with relativism and hostile to the idea of objective moral standards than students who are not.
I'm atheist on lazy days and agnostic on better days, but give me "dumb" Christians who think there is actually such a thing as right and wrong every day over the "enlightened" who think moral values are subjective and mere historico-cultural artifacts. 'Cause who is going to stand up and be willing to suffer for a cultural accident?
Non-religious Liberals, please don't be so quick to dismiss the possibly very necessary role of religion in a healthy republic.
The problem with American Christianity is that a subsection of it is VERY nasty.
11
@The Lorax - The religion of liberals is global warming. They use the same language as the Evangelicals. Both tell me the world is coming to and end any day now and I should be very afraid. Both call anyone who disagrees with them "deniers" and think they should be shunned. Yet neither group personally acts like the end is near. The global warmers all still drive big vehicles and keep having kids. The Evangelicals haven't started beating swords into plowshares. Both groups point to the printed word of their sages as proof.
I am an agnostic and have been in combat and seen men die. The bible was written over several hundred years by mostly men from all over the med.
My favorite preacher is Jimmy Swaggert - a local Atlanta evangelical preacher - google him.
Prior to the evangelical right caused by Karl Rove there was a better balance to Christ and politics. Now it's bled and I think the theocracy aspect of it is very off putting. I don't want our government to be of any religion but all religions. Whether you worship nature or Thor or nothing here is a place you know you will get equal representation. I mean that's not the truth, but it's something we should all hope for. Christianity is on the decline because it has been weaponized as a political instrument to get people riled up. Often times, making deals with the devil, like the evangelicals and Trump. Trump is like oil to Christ's water, yet because evangelicals want to rule the country they are willing to sign on the line at the crossroads.
Catholics ruled all of Europe for a time and we see how that went, not so great for the Jews or Muslims or libertine thinkers. If Catholics had their way the Earth would still be the center of the universe, women would be bearing 19 children and power would rest in Rome.
Religion for a millennia has been used by the rich and powerful to subjugate the weak and repressed. The religion is morally superior to us, so shut up and do as religion says. Everything is going to be ok for that 20% tithe.
The reality is no one knows anything. I know about as much of God as does the Priest or the Rabbi. I experience god everyday through the sun, laughter, a smile. FYI, if being Christian means I have spend eternity with Falwell you can have it.
2
@Johnson - God recently dropped a bombshell on me during a conversation. He said, "So, you know there is no hell, correct?" Yes, I replied. "So, you do realize that means you will spend all eternity with your mother and your ex-wife. You might want to start wrapping your head around that one."
Well, I no longer believe in heaven but I sure do believe in hell now.
If anything has led to the collapse of Christianity, it is self-described Christians like Ross Douthat defending the most reprehensible anti-Christian policies targeting the most vulnerable Americans. It is self-described Christians like Ross Douthat condoning it when their Republican leaders smear those who lay down their lives for this country because they weren't Christian. It is self described Christians like Ross Douthat enabling and abetting those who preach hatred and violence and everything Jesus stood against.
Ross Douthat, when you stop claiming that Republicans who worship only money, power, and Trump are the "true Christians", because they want to imprison or execute women who have abortions, then perhaps the collapse won't happen.
But if it does, it is people like Ross who aided and abetted it by promoting a version of Christianity that worships Trump as their moral leader.
=
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Frankly, I would submit that in America and probably statistically, more than any other country in the world their exists a multitude of multi-millionaire TV preachers and otherwise whose main purpose is to"prey' on those believers, get rich, and do it all under the protection of tax free status and non-accountability. It would seem a growing number of "thinking" people are wondering the same thing especially when the bulk of taxpayers who are ultimately "footing the bill" for what are nothing more than scams. They support Trump because they are "predators" like him.
How can anyone with any semblance of intelligence at all look at Christianity with any credibility whatsoever, when people like Kenneth Copeland whose is now worth over $750 MILLION DOLLARS, lives on a 1500 acre compound, a multitude of homes built on the land and owns NINE airplanes?
So Ross still believes the collapse of Christianity is overstated? Just wait.
3
In 1922 Ludwig Mises, the founding father of neo-liberalism, wrote:
"One thing of course is clear, and no skillful interpretation can obscure it. Jesus' words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor. The only reason why Jesus does not declare war against the rich and preach revenge on them is that God has said: "Revenge is mine."
.
Fortunately, Mises added, the ethos of Capitalism was "the work of the Church, not Christianity." and "the social ethics of Jesus have no part in this cultural development."
1
My Methodist upbringing focused on a relationship with God through and good works. I still believe in though things to center myself. Beyond the Sky Fairy tale, how can anyone believe in a “loving” God who by design came up with decades long wars, childhood cancers, terrible crime and crushing poverty? I just can’t. I can not.
1
This statement will give me a chance to retract a statement I made last week in NYT comments about "NEVER" converting to an American Catholicism that supports Mr. Trump, whom I believe to be a very evil president. What was wrong with that statement is the underlying premise that truly serious Catholicism supports Trump, which I don't believe. Pope Francis has implicitly condemned Trump and inferentially or more directly in many statements. Moreover, Mr. Trump will be gone, sooner or later, Thank God.
The real issue for me is not whether God expects me to convert to Catholicism but whether he expects me to be a Christian. I have always been heartened by the greeting "fellow Christians" which Pope John Paul II gave to a group of Methodists (and other Protestants, I believe) when he journeyed to St. Louis.
Christianity in America (and the West) will survive, but it will survive if and only if we ALL give up our obsessions with sexuality and other matters and take seriously that it is exactly such obsessions that are distracting us from what's necessary. We desperately need what is common to us all.
Here's what I heard in my local Presbyterian Church last Sunday about the murder of a young woman who refused to renounce Christ at gun-point in the Columbine CO School massacre. Her witness, he said, is promoting its own growing following among young people. Such witness will prosper and endure, fellow Christians. Thank God.
1
I just want to know what these "anti-Christian policies" are? Where is the national Jewish/Muslim/Hindu holiday?
Where is the effort to keep Christians from worship?
Where is the effort to keep Christians from teaching their children their religion?
Nowhere.
What we see as "anti-Christian" are efforts to assure that Christians who choose to operate in the larger society are not allowed to discriminate. That is what is at the heart of the baker case, or the pharmacist who doesn't want to provide an prescription, etc.
You are not allowed in this country to discriminate your public behavior against others because of your religion.
Remember, it was Christians who believed enslaving Africans was in the Bible. Don't let religion enter the public square at all, ever. Keep it in church.
4
It's humorous to read all the Christianity defenders, with their sappy views on home, hearth, and god. I'm proud to say that I left Christianity after I couldn't deal with the overwhelming bigotry and hypocrisy that I saw, and I taught my millennial children to be highly skeptical of organized religion. They all turned out very well, thank you, with college educations, good jobs, and liberal beliefs. Millennial make this world a better place *because* most of them are irreligious.
1
I see Christ's fundamental teachings about service to the poor, about forgiveness for the sinner, about acceptance of the diseased, best represented outside the church, in the hearts of punks, public school teachers, poets, nonprofit workers, civic leaders, bartenders, millennial entrepreneurs, chicken plant line workers, immigrants (just as a very short list).
Forgive my ad hominem, but op-ed writers too frequently come across as if they have very little worldly experience. The academia they've been enmeshed in cannot replace experiences in the streets, at homeless encampments, inside community meetings, among high school teenagers. This is where the best journalists and writers reside; not in books or imagination, but in people's lives. Mr. Lopez at the LA Times is a fine example.
1
Of course our proud college graduates if the post-Vietnam era will line up to sweqar they don't anyone who ever even walked by a church.
Progressivism is a fine religion as long as nothing untoward happens, like your acknowledged Source of All Light and Goodness doesn't get beat in a national election by a pro-American capitalist too busy to not step on some toes.
Should THAT happen, all you have left is rage and shrieking.
2
Say what you want Ross, but the church (in all its guises) is not building a future. Instead, it is sending people running for the exits. Its continuing attacks on LGBTQ Americans, its denial of equality and parity for women, Its dubious dealings with the corrupt Trump all spell hypocrisy to the very people it needs to remain viable. Young people. Christianity has undermined itself by turning away from the most basic teachings that made it relevant. Take care of the poor. Love thy neighbor. Be kind. etc etc.
Instead it rants about the gays. It boils over with red faced rage over women having sovereignty over their own bodies and reproductive future.
It adoringly sides with a president who has more in common with Satan than he does with Jesus.
It preaches a "prosperity gospel" at the expense of Christ's most fundamental teachings.
So what did "Christianity" expect? I sure can't tell you. But what I can tell you is that they are most certainly getting what they deserve.
5
Douthat wrote:
"That resilience should not be entirely comforting for Christian churches, since both their everyday work and their cultural influence depends on reaching beyond their core adherents."
Why should any religion care about their "cultural influence?" Should a religious person worry more about their own religiosity than about what other people believe?
Oh, that's right; one of the tenets of Christianity is that their way is the only "true" path to salvation and righteousness (OK, Judaism believes that too), and that God commands them to go out and convince other people to convert to Christianity to save their souls (which Judaism doesn't do).
Fine, I don't care if every religion believes that they have the only "true" path to righteousness. That's fine, as long as you keep that as your own concern. However, once you start trying to convince me that my beliefs are wrong, and that your "job" is to try to convert me, then that crosses the line.
Sorry, but once religions try to out-compet each other for "cultural influence," the spiral to religious strife and conflict is unstoppable.
In other words: Keep your religion to yourself. I'm happy that you're happy with your religion; but let me be happy with mine.
the Bible starts out with a complete fabrication in the creation myth. Why should we believe the rest of it? Evangelical Christianity's alignment with trump and the GOP are further proof of the ridiculousness of this religion."Jesus wept" indeed.
2
What American Christianity? They don't care about the poor, social justice issues or various disadvantaged & vulnerable minorities.
It's more like a political organization working to advance white supremacy.
4
@Daniel Solomon do you have this same audacity to call out the barbarity of Islam? Stoning rape victims, enslaving Yazidi for mass rape, forbidding girls to read once they reach puberty?
I left Christianity as a teenager but I am aghast at the lefts hatred for such a benign religion.
For secular leftism to dominate, they must ridicule and destroy Christianity in every denomination and manifestation. This has been escalating since the footprint of political correctness as replacement values under the primary architect Hilary Clinton. A purposeful and left directed media campaign has sought to discredit and destroy all western religion through the weaponry of guilt and intolerance. It has been effective via indoctrination, primarily through the education system and currently the political architecture of the Democrat party, now appearing as Godless and completely mankind-centric.
Actual religious life exists far removed from the media narrative template and goes quietly unnoticed as the politicized media fortuitously live entirely within its own echo chamber and are unable to fully notice, comprehend, or participate in anything outside of its own rote pattern.
3
I don’t buy what Christians are selling. They worship Jesus while blissfully ignoring what he taught. Most Christians are so busy digging around in the Old Testament to back their views they forget what Jesus actually said. I doubt most Christians today have even heard of the Beatitudes. If they have they do a great job of blissfully ignoring them. They certainly don’t live their lives that way. They want the Ten Commandments plastered around government buildings. Never hear them wanting the Sermon on the Mount put there - Jesus’ own words! If a Christian today carried a sign supporting the Beatitudes they’d be called a Snowflake by their fellow “Christians”.
1
In 352, Emperor Constantine convened various Christians, who had widely-varying beliefs, to unify the faith. They "negotiated" the Nicene Creed, which set forth Christian beliefs. This unified the church and state, giving them control and money. Followers got a roadmap to heaven.
Ross, and people like him, believe that to atone for Adam eating the apple (after being tempted by the talking snake) , God sent 1/3 of himself (his son) down to live on earth after being born to a Virgin. Then, when we crucified him, for some reason, all was forgiven, Adam's "original sin" was washed away, and the gates of heaven were opened to all who believe in Him. God keeps close tabs on all 8 billion of us, and will decide who gets to join him in Heaven when we die. And, or yes, Jesus could return to Earth at any moment, and there will be a reckoning for the non-belivers.
It is amazing that so many people, like Ross, continue to believe in this preposterous tale.
4
Secularism is a reaction to science and education.
2
You should use the correct terminology here: Christianity is not "collapsing" it is driving people away, beating them about the head and spirit with undeniable evidence that the churches are places of power, money, and corruption offensive, no doubt, in the understanding of whatever Lord or Force or Spirit one imagines supports this whole sad mess of a universe.
Churches are a place of rapacious demandsa. Demands for proof. Demands for obedience, dominion, money, and power. Demands for the right to control the lives, the minds, the spirits of those who do not voluntarily agr5ee to be ruled.
Mostly, churches are at the center of The Big Lie.
No, not that one; to dismiss all this as a fairy-tail phantasy may be a bit much. No,The Big Lie is that churches, organized religion, has some creed, some Savior they follow and honor, some kind of discipline beyond "Gimme that, shut up".
Until you boys, and You Extraordinarily Conservative to the Point of Mocking and Demeaning Your Own Liberal Pope Boys especially, Ross, get over that one, you are going down, Baby. And, really, good riddance.
1
People are free to indulge in magical thinking and that there's an invisible friend out there either making their lives miserable or miraculously pulling their chestnuts out of the fire according to a "divine plan" only it is allowed to understand. As long as they cease attempting to pollute our Constitutionally-derived and secularly mandated body laws with their "spiritual" nonsense.
Voltaire reputedly said, “Less superstition, less fanaticism; less fanaticism, less misery.” He wasn’t wrong, and the sooner America realizes that, the better.
2
I think it would do the author well to ponder the other collapse of American Christianity--that is, the collapse of values. Eighty-one percent of Evangelicals voted for the current president, and the overwhelming majority still stand by him. According to a poll from a week ago, 99% of white Evangelicals oppose impeachment.
The president has not been faithful--he is twice divorced and cheated on all his wives. He has not welcomed the foreigner or suffered the children--he has put the children of legal asylum seekers in filthy cages where many have died of preventable illness. He has not housed the homeless, fed the hungry, given water to the thirsty, or cared for the sick. He has cut social programs to do all these things, and given industry carte blanche to pollute our water and contaminate our food, to boot. He has taken from the least and given to the rich.
Christ told us not to pass by on the other side. He turned over the tables in the temple marketplace and shamed the Pharisees. He said sell what you own and give it to the poor and go with Him.
It's strange that when asking whether American Christianity is dead, the author would choose focus on declining attendance--that is, on a collapse of appearances instead of on the collapse of values. Because when it comes to the latter, the only words that come to mind are whited sepulcher. What's the point of counting how many people call themselves Christians if no one is going to act like it?
3
"God is a concept by which me measure our pain."
John Lennon
Ross — my question may be an important one: who cares?
With so-called “evangelical Christians” wholeheartedly supporting a degenerate troll in the White House, and Catholic priests being exposed for centuries of child sexual abuse, one can only hope that the churches from which this type of behavior arises go away as quickly and quietly as possible.
People can have whatever faith brings them comfort as long as that faith is compatible with long term societal cohesion, inclusion, and sustainability.
2
No one is stopping anyone from going to church.
Catholics let your priest get married, let women say mass and allow openly gay people to be part of the church.
1
"No I'd rather go and journey
Where the diamond crescent's glowing
And run across the valley
Beneath the sacred mountain
And wander through the forest
Where the trees have leaves of prisms
And break the light in colors
That no one know the names of
And when it's time I'll go and lay
Beside the legendary fountain
'Till I see her form reflected
In its clear and jewelled waters
And if you think I'm ready
You may lead me to the chasm
Where the rivers of our visions
Flow into one another
I will want to dive beneath the white cascading waters
She may beg, she may plead, she may argue with her logic
And mention all the things I'll lose
That really have no value in the end she will surely know
I wasn't born to follow"
Songwriters: Carole King / Gerry Goffin
October 29, 2019
The cultural American is as much a claim to the tradition of Western Enlightenment and with allegiance to one nation under God and as such Christmas and Easter are traditional obligation eternal. Let's not parse the national soul and best to say solidarity to the Abraham Judaeo Christian Islamism humanism enlightenment for right spirit in our high tech information age of connectivity to high and esteemed grace as available via the information electronic connectivity to all greatness......
1
How's this idea: Jesus (christianity) was never about churches? Big C versus little c.
The crisis for christians today is self inflicted and centered on the fact that christians are the one's today who seem so challenged in fulfilling the promise of their creed and the fruit of their convictions.
If Jesus were around today, he wouldn't recognize Christianity in any of its mutant forms. I think Christ understood from what he saw in the way back, any form of organization brings hierarchy and the inevitable power struggle.
A man was walking along with the devil when they saw someone pick up a scrap of paper, look at it, and put it in his pocket.
The man asked the devil, ‘What did he pick up?’
Devil, ‘Oh, he found a bit of the truth.’
Man, ‘That’s very bad for you then.’
Devil, ‘Not at all, I’m going to help him organize it.’
Great column, crisp and full of insights.
The real collapse of Christianity is that most of its practitioners aren't very Christian.
Want to slow the decline of abandonment of organized religion? Simple...keep politics out of church...or synagogue...or mosque. Why should I donate money to a church only to have it pocketed by the obviously money grabbing clergy or handed off to politicians? Answer...I should keep my money in my pocket and steer clear of the all-too-numerous snake oil salesmen posing as clergy.
American Christianity is not Christian. Read Matthew 5, the definitive instructions of the Son of God, as they claim to see him. And ask how many of those the "American" Christian ignores, attempts to explain away, or flatly refuses. The commandments of Christ elsewhere? "Forgive your enemies," "Be kind," "Love your neighbor as yourself." Is that what we hear from them today? Much less "I was hungry and you fed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me." Not suggestions. Commandments. But nearly all the "Christians" I know (or know of) are the last even to desire that such things be done by anyone, much less themselves. Their choice of president's first advice to a "Christian" college this last spring was "Always get even." If there were an anti-Christ--well, I won't finish the thought. It's not Christian.
1
White, right-wing Evangelicals seem"...Angry About Everything, All The Time...".
The Catholic Church? Its 24-7-365 Charity Worldwide is grossly overshadowed by the scandals engulfing the priesthood and the hierarchy. Whenever I see a priest, especially an older guy, I think "...What did you know and when did you know it?..."
Mainline Protestantism? Still doing some Good Work but otherwise adrift.
Or maybe that last statement is more of a personal confession?
The pope wants priests in rural South America to marry, and that in itself should be great news for any revival of the Catholic Church. However, until they stop hiding the truth about pedophile priests and protecting them, they will flounder and diminish. Then there is the nonsense of evangelical belief in the end times where a vengeful(?) Jesus comes back to take the faithful, and only the faithful, to heaven with him, leaving the rest of us(Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) to suffer in this hell on earth. Isn’t that contrary to everything we are taught that Jesus believed in? Sorry, Ross, religion is killing itself, and doing a fine job of it.
Christianity soared in popularity when heresy (or just about anything else the Church didn't like) was punishable by all means of the most gruesome torture imaginable. And who did all this torturing? Yes, that's right, the Catholic Church.
The various Popes, Bishops, Priests etc. over hundreds of years extorted and tortured the masses.
How many innocent lives have been lost to the countless religious wars, crusades and inquisitions of the Roman Catholic Church. And don't get me started on child abuse.
2
Religious declination will probably exhibit an asymptotic function. The limit will be something above zero. Collapse of American Christianity is a sort of 'clickbait' headline. Well done, you got me.
If modern american Christianity had anything to do with the teachings of the Jesus Christ, it would be an unstoppable force against against our current president - an obscenely selfish man, morally and ethically bankrupt in every way imaginable. And yet, Donald Trump is president because of Christian America, not in spite of it.
I can only reply with an editor's comment to an opinion piece I wrote many years ago, "Or perhaps not."
Christianity in entirety and Catholicism in particular have a long history of hypocrisy, exploitation, abuse, violence, and war. I am a non-practicing Jew who believes that this experience on earth is all there is. Promises of the afterlife have led us to destroy our planet and each other in the name of one or another god of man's creation. All that is out there is the moon and stars and distant galaxies. Let us tend this garden, care for our fellow humans and other life forms, and live in the here and now. The Catholic Church should die the death of all institutions that have lost their ethical grounding and are now morally bankrupt.
2
When are people going to wake up? Religion has lead to more suffering than anything else all throughout history. Matured adults have moved past Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy. When will we move past religion? I blame our failing educational system.
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me”.
-1 Corinthians 13:11
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines"
- Bertrand Russell
@Don "We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." -Richard Dawkins
1
Former Vice President Joe Biden was denied Holy Communion at a Catholic church in South Carolina on Sunday morning because of his views on abortion, a priest said in a statement.
Need anyone say anything more about how far the Church has departed from the teachings of Jesus?
Mercy, even Judas Iscariot had his feet washed and was served the first communion by Jesus at the Last Supper!
2
Yeah, but since two out of three preachers are hucksters..............
1
There is a critical distinction to be made between being a Christian vs. living by the examples of Christ. The former, a human construct biased by subjective cultural norms, can prove to be an obstacle to the latter, divine grace through mercy and compassion for all. The same goes for all religions.
Here’s the thing: the message is utterly simple (do what Jesus would do), but the mass is utterly dull. Mumble the same prayers week after week. Hear a sermon that’s always a variation on the same theme.
As a youngster I attended because not doing so was a sin. Whoever thought that one up was a marketing genius.
1
Pew is not a reliable resource as it is funded by Sunoco oil heirs who are notoriously conservative and sit on their board of directors.
Faster please.
1
Good riddance to all organized religions that promulgate hatred.
5
The Catholic Church was the dominant force in Quebec for a very long time, but it is now viewed (fairly or unfairly) as having meddled too much in people's lives and in society as a whole. For many, it was seen as complicit with the Duplessis government, and a contributor to the economic subservience of much of the francophone society to anglophone business powers from the rest of Canada. Following the "quiet revolution" of the 1960s, those who felt betrayed by the church turned their back on it and never looked back. It has been said that, today, Montreal has more Catholic churches than most cities, and more empty Catholic churches then perhaps anywhere in the world.
I think this may be viewed as a cautionary tale. Keep your church out of the public sphere, and you will be free to prosper as popularity allows. Get too involved in politics or societal mores, and you risk being cast aside by a resentful population.
Look at our supreme court, FIVE catholics now sit on it. Our constitution, and all of us, are so screwed.
Organized religion has no ethics, no morals. It is another predatory business, like predatory capitalism we have now. It is all about power & money.
5
@M. Henry - - The original and early U.S. Supreme Courts were all solidly manned with believers in the God of Israel, and we seemed to get along just fine. Sorry about my pesky bubble-bursting.
Christianity is the world's source for the idea of separation of church and state.
Christians were the only group to propose the end of human slavery.
Orphanages? Charity hospitals? You're stuck with thanking Christians for them.
But angry progressives do know how to grab a rifle and go hunt their political enemies, so at least you can claim that.
2
I'm leaving Christianity for Judaism. Could no longer stand the right wing ideology that has zero connection with Christianity that has come to dominate Christianity today.
First of all it is about actions not profestations of faith. Think Dorthy Day and Catholic Workers not televangelists and Evangelicals.
1
Douthat does not discuss whether evangelicalism will survive the moral compromise - actually, moral collapse - in their blind support of Donald Trump. That has reached the level of idolatry well beyond their previous infatuations with Reagan and big-haired preachers (99% support, no matter what he has done or will do). Children don't know much, but they can smell hypocrisy in adults like nothing else, and the evangelicals might already have lost the next generation.
1
Maybe. But despite my grateful heritage, my children know religion and politics to simply be a vehicle for evangelical and republican greed and power.
Mr. Douthat:
Do you support the tax-exempt status of churches, synagogues, mosques and the like?
This is surely an issue you have an opinion about.
Thank you.
1
President Trump is the perfect example of the rejection of religion, and it's apparent in his life and judgments.
1
Interesting. I was under the impression that ours had pretensions of being a pluralistic nation. If many more “Christians” were a little better at accepting the concept and practice of separation of church and state and a little less focused on the supremacy of their beliefs over those of their “non-Christian” neighbors, the decline in “Christian” fervor would be less troubling for them.
1
One reason religion is resilient in American with ebbs and flows is the separation of Church and state. When religion is protected by not being identified with the policies of the state, religion can remain viable. When the wall between church and state comes down as has been championed through Trump, Billy Barr, certain Supreme Court Justices, and the evangelicals, religion will share the same fate that the European churches that were linked to the state have faced.
1
Didn't Elijah Cummings possess many traits that Christians profess to revere?
And yet, wasn't he a weekly subject of vilification on FOX, eagerly watched by large numbers of American Christians?
Ross, the problem is not declining numbers of adherents, the problem is lack of adherence. Will you address that in your next column? That despite Christian quantities in the US holding steady, fewer and fewer Christians act in support of Christian virtues? Nay, do they not revere a man that possesses the seven deadly sins?
3
The observation that religious faith, “ebbs and then flows across the life cycle,” suggesting that as we have children and get closer to death faith increases, but so what.
Uncertainty about the answers to big questions become more pointed when we confront death, since questions about what happens after we die tend to become more urgent as we approach death. But even as this is an accurate observation, it doesn’t change the reality that no one alive truly knows what happens when we die. Humans have struggled with this throughout our history, and religion is the result of that struggle. We want to know and can’t know, so a common human response has been to make stuff up. Pick a religion and chances are good that you will uncover a set of beliefs created out of imaginings that people who lived thousands of years ago worked into a set of rules about the meaning of life.
Yet religion has served a critical purpose for people beyond the comfort it provides about death. Religion traditionally provided and enforced rules governing how people got along with each other. These rules have made it possible for communities of humans to live together successfully, which we need. Religion, though, isn’t necessary for those rules. We can figure out what the rules should be without the baggage of the made-up conceptions of life after death. In fact many less religious societies have successfully done so.
We don’t need the superstitions of religion to be good.
1
Christianity can not survive in a vacuum, and must adapt to present day circumstances. As spiritual beings we will always look inward for strength and sustenance. Jesus, and Christianity, is supposed to be a manifestation of these inner truths but it has been distorted by various powers including organized religion and Catholicism. I am heartened by Pope Francis' recent consideration of opening the priesthood to married men, (hopefully women at some point also). It is these kinds of changes that I feel the church must undergo to stay current with humanity. God is always the same. It is just our unfolding understanding of him that must change as we confront each other's humanity.
1
Did Mr. Douthat read the same Pew report that I did? Religiosity is in decline across all ages, genders, and races, both numerically and percentage wise. The least decline is among the elderly, Mormans, and Protestant born-again. There is not a whole lot of nuance here. Mr. Douthat’s column is an exercise in wishful thinking.
1
Religious organized church dogma as practiced by many for as long as history stretches, whether Christian or otherwise, are primarily a lust for power & control by men cloaked in a vanieer of holiness.
I will grant that they can also do good things, and for many, faith in a God provides is a psychological strength. But it all goes bad when their practice devolves into a belief that they have "cornered the market" on who and what is considered right and good, thereby thinking they have a right to impose on everyone else.
1
I do believe that Christianity is changing, and in ways we do not anticipate. I am a Christian but I do not attend church? Why? Because I simply can not stand the inner conflict that every church seems to have. There is always some drama going on, always some kind of exclusion. Instead of focusing on helping the less fortunate they seem to be in a ceaseless battle to show who the biggest Christian is. My mother is a Christian baby boomer, but never attends Church, simply because she is busy. If there was a Church that I could join that actually helped others in ways I could see and participate in, I would jump in.
2
Facing modern reality without the comfort of invisible friends in the sky is always going to be a challenge for some. Ross does make an oblique reference to the value of conducting religious rituals in a language that most of the flock can't understand, it being an easier way to sell irrational mumbo-jumbo.
US Christian ‘patriots’ might consider that the US Constitution was far more influenced by the post-enlightenment ‘secularist’ thought of Voltaire and Rousseau than the Bible. In fact, US separation of church and state was reactive to the abuses of Christian state religions that were used in Europe to promote monarchies and totalitarianism.
4
Raised within and committed to a “mainline Protestant denomination,” I found myself committed to the values my upbringing instilled but drifting away from church organizations I felt had, if not abandoned, certainly deemphasized. I joined with others in the formation first of an informal and welcoming group of truth seekers and supporters of social justice. Our group did not seek a label or formal association with any particular religious denomination or orthodoxy, only to welcome all to our midst regardless of their views but to focus more on our shared values. We eventually decided to adopt the “label or brand” of Unitarian Universalism as one that best fit our culture and values. We meet regularly each Sunday and share many other activities and interests. We welcome all to our midst and do consider ourselves a congregation. We actively participate in and support many community activities and social causes. Although we are a lay lead congregation, we do have a formal relationship with a part time pastor who provides various pastoral care services and occasional leadership of some services along with our members. I have found a comfortable home for my values and views amongst my friends. Are we a church? Who cares? We are friends who enjoy and nurture each other and welcome all to our midst who care to join with us.
3
Christians now are far more likely to be deliberate and intentional about their faith; casual, ‘social’ Christians have fallen away.
What's more important is that there is an “emerging church” movement which is bringing Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, and Protestants together.
It has several elements:
1. a radical ‘new’ way of understanding Scripture, more akin to that of the early Church than to literalism or ‘critical analysis’. See Rob Bell, and Jordan Peterson’s 12-part 30-hour series on the Bible on YouTube.
2. A growing understanding that our task is to build local community in order to build the Kingdom of God here and now on earth, not to be worrying about getting into heaven.
3. A growing emphasis on the crucial importance of daily spiritual practice: prayer, meditation, contemplation, study.
4. An understanding that faith is not really about doctrine, it is about growing into a way of life. It is a spiritual journey. It is not simply a matter of subscribing to the right collection of beliefs. Rob Bell: “We’re rediscovering Christianity as an Eastern religion, as a way of life.”
5. An acceptance of the importance of our bodies and a movement toward the Franciscan approach to the beauty and goodness of Creation.
6. Adoption of non-dualism as part of one’s philosophy of life: the “either/or” approach to life is being discarded; the “both/and” approach is being absorbed. The Franciscan Richard Rohr’s daily meditations have been amazingly influential here.
2
Excellent essay and excellent comments. My Christian religion is my own. I was disappointed when the church of my youth started to "change" - to accommodate the parishioners......changing not only the words that were imbeded in my heart, but the music my grandparents never heard.... Then when the church brought in guitars and rock bands to "bring in the youth"...... I lost that feeling of sacredness. Must we drag everything down to our own level....nothing spiritually higher? It was easy for me to shut the door. I realized my religion was in my heart. I wanted to believe.... to have the comfort of someone greater than myself. The church failed me, but my belief found its way.
1
I suspect that the strong binding of Christianity with Trumpism will help to accelerate the secularization of Americans, especially those under 30. It is pretty hard to commit to a religion when it is doing so much damage to the social, environmental and political landscape they have to live in going forward. Organized religion is simply not relevant when you have so many other options available to give meaning to your life. The fact that astrology is somehow equated with religion to boost the authors belief that we are not becoming more secular is probably the most damming confirmation of how secular the US is.
6
Why have a discussion on the popularity and viability of "religion" and center it around "Christianity"?
Could you be any more myopic about the meaning of "religion"?
Religion is a fundamental theme in human beings that describes and embodies having faith in something greater then themselves. No single religion holds a "patent" on this.. and it's absurd to present it as though it does.
Christianity is simply one approach some people choose to pursue in this regard. There are many other valid approaches, and this article performs a biased diservice to the context of "religion".
Which is why so many Americans in modern times have become so cynical toward "christianity" which for the most part is simply a materialistic control mechanism used by different "declared deonominations" in the US to prosecute particular beliefs at the expense of beliefs that differ with it.
The single biggest example of this control mechanism run amuck is the Evangelical Christain movement in the US instructing their members to support Trump no matter what.. in effect idolizing Trump over God. A behavior that was in fact anathema to Christianities name sake and something that he condemned openly and without exception.
Evangelical Christians need to stop giving fealty to Evangelical leaders and return their faith focus upon God.
4
I feel sorry for people who do not believe in a higher power. I am not judging but think there is something missing when you do not believe. I guess it was what I was taught and it has stuck with me many years later. I would be lost without my faith.
I love visiting the beautiful Catholic Churches in Manhattan and enjoy being with like minded people. Whenever I visit St. Patrick's Cathedral there is always a crowd. I am in awe of the magnificent stained glass windows and the lovely chapels especially the Lady Chapel at the back. After every Mass there are always devotional prayers or the rosary recited within the chapel in full attendance. It gives one peace and solace and a new sense of being. It never disappoints but brings hope to a changing and uncertain world. Sometimes all one has is their faith but that is the most important thing for some of us. There is always a brighter tomorrow on the horizon for those who believe.
5
@KMW
and I am a happy atheist because my life experience has taught me to be one. I have nothing against those who worship their idea of god. However, I do take issue with too many " religious" people who are 100% convinced that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and then they try to ram their fake morality down others throats a la Republican party busy destroying women's reproductive rights.
Yes I have an issue with that.
1
Absolute nonsense. What am I missing by passing on a stone age superstition that relies on an invisible man in the sky? Morality without religion is everywhere. Open your eyes.
I don’t need “faith” to lead a decent, caring, moral life. Use your brain.
1
@KMW There is nothing objectionable about maintaining delusions that give you peace, so long as you don't get carried away and try to force others to submit to the doctrinal commands of your particular invisible friend.
Douthat and others are guilty, in my opinion, of equating their religious freedoms with being able to tell others how they should live their lives. If others don't follow their views we are infringing on their religious freedom and rights. It is evident in his op/eds and sometimes in comments on the Argument podcast (thank god for Michelle, no pun intended).
10
Organized Christianity is bound to a self-possessed struggle;
divided, turned away from others, self-indulgent, and knowing only what is acquired. Personal gain, heavenly "futures" and survival has taken over the teachings of Christ. The true teachings of Christ speak to the potential in human form. They are in the sacrifice of self, mind, body and life. It is the sacrifice of all that is oneself, all that one possesses into forms of loving compassion for others.
Those who are devoted to Truth are alive in Christ. A rested openness to hearing and awakening through unconditional love. It is a heartfelt sacrifice rather than the vulgar dramas of political or religious cults with their consoling beliefs.
2
Douthat erroneously distinguishes between atheism which is decidedly secular, on the one hand, and allegedly non-secular paganism and other forms of non-traditional monotheistic religious traditions, on the other hand. That is a distinction without any real difference. People who worship themselves, amorphous spirits or objects are substantively the same as atheists as they deny a relationship with, belief in or obedience to the One True God who visited us as Jesus Christ.
@Neville Reid Thanks for offering a fine example of Poe's Law.
Thank-you Mr. Douthat for uncovering and offering alternative and equally valid interpretations of the group data. Statistics are easily misused and misunderstood. Research demonstrates that attitude and behavior are modestly correlated (.3). The #1 (one) represents perfect correlation. For ex., one may have the attitude that the poor should be provided for via government programs, soup kitchens and the like, but ask that person if they have ever volunteered at a soup kitchen or developed a community outreach program to serve the poor and you will see the disconnect. As Jesus' brother James said, "Faith without Works is dead." So it does not surprise me that the lukewarm, which Jesus also opines on, are falling away, while the committed continue on. Furthermore, immigrants and those less fortunate are also demonstrating active faith and practice, while the well fed and complacent appear to be falling away. I also thought you ended your article well by taking the high road by not explicitly mentioning the Catholic widespread priest scandal but suggested that their future livelihood rests in their hands. Of course, the common retort to the aforementioned is "I don't do organized religion." However, Christianity is not only a deeply personal pilgrimage but a community one too, which we call church. As the bible says we should not neglect to gather together, otherwise our fire will burn out, like logs on a flame do when they are not kindled. Godspeed Mr. Douthat! Eph 6:12
1
I’m a 20 year old college student who goes to attends a UC. I can assure you, there are still plenty of young Christians who attend church every week, although we are all Gen z. There’s over a dozen different Christian clubs on my campus.
As a Christian, it’s encouraging to see real faith that isn’t morphed by political ideologies or unforgiving stereotypes of what Christianity is. Fundamentally, it’s a religion based on loving and serving others, including the most vulnerable populations. That comes from being “saved” or choosing to become a Christian and serve God. Churches are primarily geared at providing religious and practical resources for the congregation and anyone in need. They do wonderful work.
2
The thought that religion is a personal commitment to live a good life through good deeds without the need for the trappings of churches is the heart of a religious belief.
6
"relatively stability"?? The real religious problem that I see is the erosion of separation of church and state that was specified by our founding fathers.
6
I take some issue with "But the post-Christian possibilities aren’t the only reason to qualify a narrative of secularization."
The United States and its government draws its legitimacy based in no small part because it is grounded in Christian values (Note: values, not Christianity itself)
In this regard, there is no "...post-Christian possibilities..." as our Republic would be something entirely other than what it is. The Romans threw Christians to the lions - had they thrown more of them - Christianity would probably not exist today if not for the fact that even Romans saw Christian values as legitimate.
1
The trends of Christian identity and church affiliation are broken into so many segments that split more as issues within each denomination have defined who can be a minister. The Presbyterians had a moment a few years ago where LBGT members can now be ministers, and some of the more conservative Presbyterians left. A while back, the Episcopalians and Anglicans split over ordinating female clergy and bishops. Then television evangelicals have probably had an impact on reducing the number of physical church goers. So we see major trends from Vatican 2 to the sexual abuse scandal affecting the Catholic Church church going numbers, and the number of Catholic schools decreased as the number of nuns have decreased. Many reasons and many different results in decreasing number of people identifying as church going Christians. Does that indicate that morality has decreased in general without active membership in a church or house of worship? Or does that indicate a demoralization in previous identified Christians who have dropped out of active membership? Many issues here, but is this a post-Christian society, but still with ethical standards? The Roman Empire took centuries after the founding of Christianity to finally give up paganism and move into the Byzantine and Holy Roman Empires. Old churches are converted to new structures, burned due to fewer modern safety features such as sprinkler, or do not meet codes of accessibility - too expensive for smaller, elderly congregations.
1
I think that this article presents some information insights into the state of Christianity in America today. I am also pleased to see that it does differentiate between Protestants and piety. All I will add is that I am so TIRED of hearing about the religious right; what about the religious left?
2
I am 32 year old millennial and none of my 6-7 close white (born Christian) friends go to Church or even identify themselves as religious in any way. And this is Atlanta, not New York.
Admittedly a small sample and not representative - but all of them have the same thing to say - how Christianity has become so hypocritical (see evangelical support for Trump) persecutes the poor, allies with the rich. They don’t care for it.
993
@Justin. Your friends would do well to consider the advice of Blaise Pascal that we invest far more thought into choosing a faith or philosophy than most ever do. Even a bit of thought would show several flaws in your friends’ reasoning. The most serious is rejecting Christianity and it’s founder because of the hypocrisy of some of its followers. And most of the 2 billion Christians around the world are either poor themselves or engaged in helping the poor.
29
@Justin Got it, but Christianity doesn't equal supporting Trump or his tenets. Never did. Never will.
26
@Justin Your friends could be my kids, except that they say that they still believe in Jesus. Praise God for that!
But they don't go to church anymore, and I am not sure that they ever will again. They don't see Jesus there. I sure don't see very much of him in the "Evangelical Church" which dominates the news.
55
The "church" as I knew it growing up, was a place for community to feel it's "belonging" together, a temporary shelter as it were from the great void of aloneness we all feel... and yes, an opium of sorts...
Beyond that, I have had more of a personal experience of the living "Holy Spirit" with say psilocybin and wilderness, than in any church.
As the church has become increasingly politicized in the USA, it has become for me the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus.
At least to that point I might agree with Ross.
1
Christianity in America is a strong as ever. I happened to live in Las Vegas in a predominately Mormon neighborhood. The LDS church produces wonderful children and families. Our kids play at with the neighbors who have stay at home super Mormon moms. These moms, keep the house, kids, and my kids in great care. They feed, nurture, and bring happiness to our neighborhood. You would all be fortunate to have such super Christian neighbors as I.
56
@Chris I would argue that Mormons don’t fit into the Douthat’s argument, and many Christians (myself included) would feel uncomfortable with the assessment you are making regarding “super Christians”.
86
@Chris Sounds great! Do they pray for the "lost gay" children in the neighborhood? Have you met the kids they banish from their families if they don't confirm to their religion? Or how about the amount of children abused by priests that have been swept under the rug? I wouldn't call my neighbors "nice people" if they were raising their children with values that exclude others.
Religion had their time in the world and we all saw what happened when religion is in charge. Less science, less progress, more hatred and division.
My generation is the most atheist and has the least amount of divorce, less likely to be violent, use drugs or have premarital sex. It is not a coincidence that removing a fake moral code for one that is more in alignment with the golden rule is a safe bet for a more just society.
236
@Chris I thinnk it unlikely that the "church produces wonderful children and families" even though it may be wish to be true.
67
I am a non-believer. This article might as well say,
"Are older children losing faith in Santa Claus?". I want to say, "Grow up, there is no Sky Fairy!".....but that's kind of mean.
3
Whether or not "god" exists, I find it unfathomable that it would be the anthropomorphized cartoon which is at the core of Christian belief. That such a god isn't laughed not just off center stage but completely out of the theater is a sad reflection of just how desperate, ignorant and fearful we humans remain.
2
"anti-Christian policies"...please elaborate. I'd wager heavily that what you consider "anti-Christian" is simply any attempt to prevent Christian beliefs from being forced on the public.
If Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism was forced down people throats 1/10th as much as Christianity is, you'd be screaming 'bloody murder'.
Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.
3
I knew Fundamentalist Christianity was on its way out when they were singing adoring praise for Trump despite all his well-known, VERY well-documented dalliances while being a married man. He disgustingly boasted of his sexual conquests and ignored what true Christians should have rejected. But no - they swallowed Trump's spiel hook, line, and sinker, and came back wanting more.
2
You want to know why Christianity is collapsing? One need look no further than support for Trump from evangelicals. It's the latest example of the hypocrisy of those within the various churches tempting people with hollow promises of morality and hope when what they want is power and wealth for themselves
3
One would think that the Evangelical Christians´support of Donal Trump is conclusive evidence that American Christianity is an empty shell devoid of any genuine Christianity.
3
Our fear of death powers religion. The rest is commentary—either disguise or other avoidance.
I would be interested in Mr. Douthat’s applying his fine mind to this observation.
2
Ross says pantheist, gnostic, syncretist and pagan may be gaining over atheism. Like there's a difference between these religions and Chrisitianity? There are all the same nonsense.
I'm Catholic 'in spite of' the Catholic church.
I'm not giving up on Christianity.
At the physical level, all humans' lives end tragically.
One way or another, you'll exhale your final breath and not be able to inhale the next one.
There must be a Supernatural Being in the Universe who cares for us, or there is no hope.
To reference a different part of the article.....G.K. Chesterton.....a Catholic convert, said in the 1930s. "When people cease to believe in God, they will believe in anything".
Or am I missing something here?
1
@Kenneth Johnson Better restated as "When people believe in God(s) , they will believe in anything".
Just to add to the conversation, here's a quote from Bono of U2 that resonates with me.
“… I often wonder if religion is the enemy of God. It’s almost like religion is what happens when the Spirit has left the building. God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that. You know, it says somewhere in the scriptures that the Spirit moves like a wind--no one knows where it's come from or where it's going. The Spirit is described in the Holy Scriptures as much more anarchic than any established religion credits,”
Carlos Santana has similar thoughts. Many find their spirituality in music.
4
Today it's far easier to find information on religion history that does not come from the church. There are, for example, no Roman records of Jesus. No records that show Pontius Pilate condemning him. And the Romans kept pretty good records.
1
Interesting that there's no mention of the 'marriage' of Fundamental Protestantism with the GOP under Reagan in 1980, and the 40 years that followed where this group repeatedly, and sometimes successfully, legislated their beliefs. From anti-abortion stances, to anti-LGBTQ stances to media censorship, or moralizing to the nation, Fundamentalists have made every effort to force their beliefs on the rest of us. And that has turned many Americans off to this brand of 'religion' and the GOP.
With the advent of Trump, this perversion of "church and state" has gone into overdrive, where these Fundies have made Trump into some sort of 'messenger from their god', and used him to take over all 3 branches of government.
My biggest hope is that "after Trump", he won't have just tainted the GOP but will have forever contaminated the 'religious-right' and through their 'worship of him', will have revealed them all to be the charlatans that they've always been.
3
After awhile, civilized people become tired of ancient ignorance and superstition and start looking for something to believe in that seems more sensible and probable. In fact, that's how Christianity got a hold in the Western world; the Greeks and Romans could no longer take seriously the Olympian pantheon of ridiculous deities. Today, many citizens in the U.S. and elsewhere in developed countries are unimpressed by the loony beliefs of today's religions, not to mention the hypocrisy of Fake Christianity that seems to be almost universal--the unwillingness of Christians to live the kind of life Jesus wanted from his followers, i.e. poor, humble, unbigoted, non-violent. This next time around, I predict, it won't be another faith, but science that people choose as their guiding light.
3
To the commenters who assume the truth of their holy books , the existence of Jesus and a god or gods, etc., where is your evidence? There's only a reliance on faith. Faith translates into 'no evidence' or 'it's what I want to believe'. Religion is mostly about death, the fear of not existing in a life form after death. That is why many who still are religiously inclined cannot accept evidenced-based evolution. Evolution makes nonsense of 'ever-lasting' life. When does 'man' become 'man' in the evolutionary process. Oh yeah... God pick out that moment when this happens. Yeah... right! Religion is nothing but the superstitious notions of ancient cultures, their way of coming to terms with the unknown. Over the centuries, religion has survived because the elders brainwash their progeny.
1
Religiosity has several connotations, among them is the affectation of religious belief. I argue that there exists a large body of church goers and religious leaders who merely wrap themselves in a cloak of piety for personal gain. Witness televangelists in their fine clothes and fingers of gold & platinum. The one consistent thing is that a church will always ask for your money, yet be inconsistent in its teachings, either overtly or tacitly. Personally, I find these constant pleas for cash to be antithetical to the mission of a church and a source of revulsion. I celebrate the decline of organized religion because of its hypocrisy and money-grubbing.
When we see American Christianity aligning itself with Trump, when we see hundreds of priests guilty of child molestation, when we see the tax-exempt status of churches, and when chrisitianity takes the side of rich and powerful - secularization is rational.
Just as millenials believe in more equality across the board, they are repelled by churches trying to control women and their bodies and churches giving to the poor, but not supporting democratic systems to put in place safety nets for everyone.
2
I still don't know the Douthat's "anti-Christian policies" are. I am beginning to think they are a figment of Douthat's fertile imagination.
Regarding the phenomena of white, conservative evangelical fervor, its more political than spiritual. Their preachers don't preach Christianity. They are wholly committed to rationalizing greed and that is their Golden Calf. They are not believers in the message of Jesus by a long shot so an honest appraisal would not count them as part of the Christian religion.
1
If you live in a small town, far away from big cities, what are your chances of "fitting in" ("being accepted" if you just moved in) unless you go to some sort of church. If that is so, does your going to church have anything to do with religion?
3
Of course it is overstated. Consistently underestimating people's willingness to suppress their natural intelligence out of fear, ignorance, or just plain laziness is pretty much a given for anyone in the scientific/secular community. Pretty certain that American Christianity will continue to thrive.
The one nice aspect of the Trump Presidency,
is that more Americans are going to church to pray,
that our American Democracy is not destroyed,
by Mr. Trump, and Attorney General Barr, and Mike Pompeo.
1
The pagan religions are more traditional than Christianity, as western culture with its Olympians and Thors and Native American spirituality predate Christianity.
So as we witness the increased conversion of the weakly affiliated religious to secularism and the buttressing of evangelical Protestant beliefs among the strongly affiliated religious, should we be alarmed? The answer is a resounding yes. A major factor is the political association of those evangelical religious fundamentalists with a major political party whose only option is minority rule. We have already seen the Republican Party strategy of voter suppression. The same party making clear their intentions to legislate into law and enforce fundamental conservative religious beliefs across the board.
Do you want a Christian ISIS? This is how we get an American Christian ISIS.
2
Interesting article. I’m an agnostic who at times am open to the idea of religion and see the logic in it. Atheism is not the heir to religious hegemony, it is the religion for stupid people. It does not solve the void that religion seeks to fill. Christianity is not dying, I could see myself and a whole generation of open-minded people giving old religions new life; however, even if a new era of Christianity or religiosity is upon us, it will be of a different less punitive nature than previous iterations and I think it will come about in response to people’s being uncomfortable with the ambiguity that agnosticism imposes and it will be a result of a migration away from what they mistakenly view as a nihilist formation. I think- and I have read some of ur critiques of Pope Francis’s religious formation- I do think that his way of practicing religion, as a less punitive and literal scripture and one more about fostering communal relations, helping the poor and spirituality will come to be the common conception.
Thus, if I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who is against this way of transmitting faith, I think the distance from the way he practices religion from how Catholicism used to be practiced- that distance- can only be described as the collapse of the literal power of religion, and while religion itself may not be dying and may in fact be on an upswing, it’s resurgence is conditioned upon the collapse of the old, whether or not the label itself collapses too
1
So, Nick, which god do believe exists and why do you believe that? Perhaps you see atheism as a religion. I surmise that by your capitalization of the word. Please, inform me the tenets of my ‘religion’.
In the meantime, I’ll inform you of the one single position that defines atheism - the rejection of the proposition that a god exists. Period. End of story. Every other characteristic of atheism is attributed to believers defining atheism in opposition to their religion.
President Trump has boosted the rosters of Christian church members beyond any Pope in memory. They pray that this man will go away. Soon.
Ross, you can deny it all you like, but the recent and current crop of "evangelical Xtian leaders" have driven the bus into a ditch, set it on fire, sprinkled it with salt and dropped a huge anvil on it.
My children's generation are completely disenfranchised from religion. They see it for what it is - irrational, manipulative, and the pinnacle of hypocritical. They went to church with their mother, and they saw it all. Starting at age 5, they started asking me real, substantive questions about what they were hearing and seeing, versus what they were being taught. It was so obvious, a kindergartener could see it.
Xtianity will be populated now exclusively by those who currently make up the bulk - old, undereducated people terrified of change and especially death.
3
It's been proved that religion needs royal/government patronizing to spread & to survive. Influence of religion would diminish gradually & die its natural death in a free thinking open society, which is so crucial for democracy to flourish & to survive against the its conflict with autocratic (mostly theological or communist) regimes &/or to keep people with such a mentality (e.g. Trump) under check.
One can check this article, "Why Are There No New Major Religions?" (The Atlantic)- https://is.gd/cmsCpy
We simply can not develop such a secular society where religion influence its education system (besides publci policy), as happening in the US since Reagan. Grooming of "scientists" & STEM professionals would not succeed in a society with religious influence.
"A growing body of psychological research uncovering the mechanisms by which politics and ideology influence people's perceptions of scientists and scientific claims. The key insight is that science isn't understood in isolation, disconnected from other beliefs, values, and emotions. Instead, science is assimilated within a web of existing attitudes and beliefs, a core part of which concerns a person's social identity."- (NPR)- https://is.gd/3E2toy
It boils down to how we are trained to perceive truth, reality, & logic. We now know that (blind) religious allegiance affect the same part of our brain (frontal lobe) as in drug & sex. Early exposure to it seem to make the situation worse- https://is.gd/K90cf0
1
Religion is the root cause, or defense, for most of the evil that we humans perpetrate on one another. Lest we also forget the utter hypocrisy of "evangelicals" and their unrepentant support for trump.
This country and the world could stand to see organized religion diminished from the public square.
4
I have absolutely no problem with people attending religious services. Maybe churchgoers should no problem with those that do not attend services. That would be mighty Christian of them.
1
I'm less worried about the decline of the Christian church, or Christian affliction, in America, than I am about the number of people who call themselves Christian, but fail to follow any of the teaching's of Jesus - the God they claim to be following. I'm speaking to you Trump supporters.
3
Ross, fact is millions of Catholics have left the RCC! Look it up! And “nones” now outnumber those who belong to a established religion.
We are evolving, into beings who know we do not need the hierarchy telling us what to believe, what to think and how to live our lives! I for one, am sick of the HYPOCRISY of my former church, the Roman Catholic Church. Whose abuse of children and women (even men) has been going on for centuries!
Keep religion OUT of politics. Believe what YOU want but DO NOT ram your beliefs down the throats of those who don’t believe what you do! It’s time for those of us, who are sane to be as serious, as dedicated as the Christian-far-right about voting for candidates that reflect our values!
1
I can't read another column on Christianity. I am too exhausted trying to keep Roe v. Wade from going down, keeping the unwashed stranger from getting their children taken away and making sure my LGBT neighbors are not legally discriminated against. Ross, instead of writing another one of these worried, busy body tropes on the dominant political religion faction of our country, perhaps you could just send your thought and prayers.
2
One reason I feel like I’m living in primitive times: so many people still claim to be religious. (“Claim” since it appears to be more a matter of identity than a matter of actual literal belief.)
I despise when authors act as if they are reporting factually on research findings, yet they embed into the reporting interpretive terms which are unjustified by the research findings themselves. Terms such as “Post-Christian.” The author is, to me, obvious in his disdain for Christianity and his belief that it is somehow better to make progress beyond Christianity. Christianity’s influence in the US was there, and remains so now. As demonstrated by the research. Why squander your reputation on reporting facts by framing “progressive” storylines?
I once knew a Catholic priest who was defrocked. His position was that if he asked the important questions he was a heretic, and if he accepted and spread the dogma he was a hypocrite. He continued to shepherd his flock in services on the grounds of a monastery, and amassed the largest congregation in his diocese despite his censure. When he was dying of cancer he was denied last rites.
In Shakespeare's day, attendance was taken at church - you were required to be there, or suffer consequences.
Meanwhile, the Queen was busy be-heading Catholics and displaying their dead bodies on a stake.
Ah, the nostalgia for the glory days of no separation of church and state.
As for Catholicism, with the Inquisition, Crusades, subjugation of native peoples around the world, clergy abuse and its cover-up, it's hard to say if the Church has been on balance a force for good in the world. I don't remember the Pope having much of a problem with the Nazis, either.
The total capitulation of the American "Evangelical" church to the authoritarian Right - and its enthusiastic support of a man who violates every Christian principle every day - is just the latest example of an institution that has thrown away any pretense of spiritual integrity.
Apparently being an American Evangelical today means supporting policies and programs and behavior that violate the letter and spirit of Christianity while bowing down to a vile and depraved ruler reminiscent of Nero or Caligula.
So I'm not clear on what Douthat is de-crying here.
Evil and bad behavior can be found among church-goers - and among the church itself, as an institution - as often as among the secular. The difference is that secular people don't self-righteously proclaim their sole possession of truth, or have powerful institutions behind them funding all manner of pernicious activity.
2
Most Americans believe that they can do whatever they wish because the constitution gives them permission....no matter if what they do is moral or immoral, decent or indecent, or right or wrong. With this kind of total freedom the future will have no need of prisons, law enforcement agencies, nor law books. Why? Because if the law allows you to do what you want, then there is no wrong you can do.
Blessed are those who do not see yet believe. To those who believe in His name: who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Mr. Douthat's colleague Mr. Bruni recently asked: "Is God Skipping the Democratic Primary?"
As a non-religious person, I feel like Mr. Bruni is pushing candidates to pander to the religious voters. Whatever Mr. Buttigieg might think, we don't need religion to know that putting children in cages is wrong.
Here in Texas, the religious folks have gone overboard pushing their dogma into the public arena. Get elected to the State Board of Education, then push creationism (or its code name "intelligent design") into the public school classroom. Insist on Christian prayers at non-religious civic meetings ("If you don't like it, you can leave"). Claim that “radical Islamists” are being trained to “act like Hispanic[s]” to cross the border (Republican Congressman Gohmert). And on and on.
Thank you, Democrats (from an Independent) for keeping the campaigns secular.
2
Clever, brilliantly written and spot-on!
Congratulations Mr. Douthat and NYT.
We don't get this anywhere else!
As a lucrative branch of the entertainment industry religion will always survive and make rich people out of its celebrities.
If Americans can elect Donald Trump President, there is definitely hope for Christianity.
All I need to know about the decline of Christianity in the US is the fact thatTrump has huge support among Evangelicals, both their leadership and the rank and file.
2
Oh Ross. Never mind that women and girls are waking to the realization that the church never cared for them as full human beings. Defenders of the church continue to brand it as a place of love and hope and acceptance, yet in practice it is anything but. It is 2019, and you can't put the cat back into the bag. For newer generations, church means control, and for women (and others) a lifetime of inequality. As long as churches and religious organizations are so obviously patriarchic, you will never gain this next generation. They are on to you.
2
I believe that one of the biggest factors in secularization is the increasing political involvement of so many churches , especially the evangelicals hypocritical support of the truly obscene Trump.
1
Religious beliefs throughout human history have been unquestionably the most divisive and murderous forces ever wrought by humanity. We have no real hope of solving, or even earnestly addressing, this planet’s problems until we stop worshiping mythical deities and living superstitious (and self-serving) lives. As long as you’re better or righter than I am because of your professed beliefs we’re toast.
Eventually people will all stop believing in myths made up by cavemen trying to explain the events of the natural world and forget about the history of schizophrenia through the ages.
Christianity is outdated. It's being upgraded to Diverse Spiritualism. We are still a nations of seekers and believers. When Traditional Christianity become a home to Republican Conservatism Trump supporter it became fraudulent. God, no god would ever be so cruel as to back Trump. Non traditional spiritual places and mindset are on the rise.
Sadly, the so-called Evangelical leaders have placed their politics above their Christian commitment. Many of them , such as Falwell, share the same autocratic, hypocritical character as the malignant narcissist Trump.
What an incredible contrast between the 'humble Galilean" who gave his life to win our freedom and these so-called leaders!
I used to call myself evangelical. No more. I am a follower of Yeshua Ben Yosef Ha Mishakh who is my Savior.
Jesus was anti-clerical. Those who pray in public were suspected virtue signalers, not actually good people.
1
Three reasons, Ross. Blind faith, blind faith and blind faith.
The churches will come and go. The Evangelicals and the RCC have sowed their own seeds on the rocks. They will not stand.
My own mainline church has lost thousands of members. I wonder if we will stand.
I do believe that the message of Jesus will stand with his message of love, truth and justice. God will always prevail despite the corruption and evil of this world.
What we really need to do is create a solid wall between religion and government. It should be there but is not. We now have a 5 ultra-right wing, religious ultra-fundamentalists Supreme Court justices that have us under their thumb for the next several decades. No matter what we do to make the country more progressive and rational these 5 troglodytes will block us at every step. It is national disgrace.
If Douthat is representative of American Christianity, with his constant dissembling and double talk, then its demise is likely to continue, and it's doubtful that Jesus can possibly be distraught by that outcome.
1
The author wrongly assumes most of his readers care about religion. Some of simply regard religion as empty of meaning and as the worship of illusions.
Maybe people are starting to figure out that religion, all of them, is nothing more than a futile search for immortality.
Religion preaches that there is a soul and an afterlife. This gives people hope that death is not final. That there is more to come. That after you die you get reunited with loved ones who have been watching over you.
It's all a bunch of hooey! There is no soul, the afterlife is a fantasy, no one is watching over you.
Live your life to its fullest. Live up to your responsibilities and, if there is some left over time, do some fun stuff. That's all there is. Enjoy!
1
Western Civilization survived the demise of Zeus and it will survive the demise of Jehovah.
1
It will be doing a majority of us a favor if American Christianity did collapse.
3
We can choose or reject a religion, worship the sun, the earth and the sky, or go through life with an inarticulate sense of being spiritual, but one thing remains a constant through all of this: someday our life on this earth will end. There is no empirical evidence to suggest one way or the other what happens after that point is reached. Whatever we believe about this is a matter of faith, and anyone who thinks comes to a belief on this. Thinking about our existence as something other than temporary and material will not go away even if established religions disappear. As religious institutions collapse, established frameworks for grappling with this and other vital subjects will no longer give systematically accepted answers. New, ersatz religion-like thought systems that attempt to fill this void but fail to satisfy will continue to emerge. It's time for Christians to see that we're at that point today, not just getting there in some far-off tomorrow.
Despite the facts, Father Douthat finds reason for optimism.
This is called wishful thinking, aka religion. It is rather tautological, eh?
Secularization is not the threat. Addiction and adulation of a depraved man like Trump by so many self proclaimed true christians, debased christianity in eyes of many Americans.
2
For American Protestants, the willingness of many churches to make common cause with perhaps the most anti-Christian political leader ever is likely to be a watershed moment.
Why? Simple. You can't reconcile a willing embrace of the embodiment of the anti-Christ with the founding ethos "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." The hypocrisy is just too blatant. There is no moral authority that remains intact after you go down that road.
Catholicism survived a colossally bad choice to ignore Hitler because - at least they didn't embrace him.
Evangelicals have fully embraced Trump, a demonstrably evil man.
Good luck finding persuasive moral authority in the wake of that bad choice.
Enforcement is easy. Persuasion is hard.
1
American evangelicalism is not religion. It is a political party, and a horrifyingly ugly one at that.
2
The kindest, most tolerant and charitable people I know are not religious. The idea that if we give up Christianity we'll need "...post-Christian spiritualities — pantheist, gnostic, syncretist, pagan..." to fill the void is ridiculous.
Religion would be even less prevalent in America if the minority Republican party, desperate for red voters, weren't willing to admit any and all nut-job constituencies into its "big tent". Same goes for anti-abortion, pro-gun, evangelicals who believe end times are coming -- doesn't matter how loopy you are if you're going to keep Mitch McConnell in office. So these sub-groups continue to plague us.
I hope these sexist and homophobic institutions keep dying so we can start having social structures with some morality built into them.
1
Christianity isn’t the issue. It’s that the people professing you be christians actually hide behind Christ to demonize non believers, gays, etc. Heck, it’s almost like they will demonize LGBT more than a Christian who murders.
1
And so we are coming to learn that Christianity may well have been the invention of the Romans and Islam the contrivance of the Vatican.. ??? Real hard historical evidence of the of the bases of all religions -- other than that of their own writings - seems to be critically scant for such celestially important personages .. Abraham???
1
Jesus would have followers -gaining today--Catholic Church has no resemblance to Jesus.
How about that maybe people are realizing there isn't some invisible man in the sky ? How about who would want to be associated with these Hypocrite evangelical Christian who's new good is Trump. What has praying ever done for poor people beside give them false hope. I believe in science and facts not fairy tales written by some accent goat herders to keep the flock in line
White evangelicals call themselves Christian even while supporting and following clearly and unequivocally anti-Christian positions -- greed, selfishness, etc. This is not Christianity and they should not be lumped in with people who try to love their fellow man as Christ taught. Christianity is being used to encompass Christianity and its opposite. This is an abomination.
Christians can certainly believe what they want. However, when we know for a fact that the Universe was created over 6000 years ago, Christians cannot be allowed to force the teaching of creationisim science classes. Demanding that a particular faith cancels out facts and getting pushback is not anti-Christian, it is self-defense.
We know that there are 1500 species of animals that exhibit some degree of homosexuality (Google gay animal). Earth's biology can't really be erased by guidance from a religious book written by people over 2000 years ago,
So sure, there is no reason for Christianity to exist. It does need to make significant changes to remain relevant in today's world.
You know, like those Christian climate change deniers that say their god will fix things.
Why defend this imposed belief? Why not let the lies of our forefathers die in the dust that should enclose them?
Religion is tribalism writ large. An unnecessary and cancerous pile of lies that only separates us more. Be bigger and more inclusive.
Morality is religion's stock in trade. But when the Catholic Church allows pedophile priests prey on children (children!) for decades and when Evangelicalism embraces the nasty immigrant-hating poor-crushing reactionary politics of Donald Trump (essentially the opposite of Jesus' love-thy-neighbor), they have no morality in stock. The only thing left is the money, misguided adherents, and political influence, which they wield with abandon even as younger generations see their immorality with fresh eyes and say "no thanks."
The only thing worse than organized religion is unorganized religion. Nobody can stand those people holding crystals wondering what phase the moon is in, so the 'legacy' religions are holding on by default. Congratulations.
Mr. Douthat is whistling past the graveyard of religion in the US.
Religion is man’s search for God and the Bible is God’s search for man. When you let your religion get in the way of your relationship with God you are in the wrong religion.
The Old Testament is the story of a nation and the New Testament is the story of a man, Jesus Christ.
Trump has broken the back of Christianity in this country. Anyone who professes faith in both him and Jesus belongs to a dead religion.
T'would be a pity if Catholicism in America declined more than evangelicalism. All Christianity in my view is fraudulent with respect to the real Jesus and his real intentions -- nothing like what Paul of Tarsus invented -- but at least Catholicism has music, art, beauty and history. Evangelicalism is a sort of Christian gnosticism in which God is just your best best friend; it is ignorant of real Christianity and its real history. It has no art, no music, no beauty; it is religion for those with no vision of what is grand or impressive; it is the religion of rednecks.
What exactly is Christianity in America? A religion that takes children away from their parents, closes to doors to refugees (including fellow Christians), does not want those of modest means to have healthcare if it means taxing the rich, and embraces a twice divorced womanizer who sleeps with porn stars? The number of Christians may not be declining rapidly, the adherence to Christ's teachings certainly is.
Post-Christian? I think some of these religions existed well before the tortured logics and selective inclusions of the Catholic church. Pre-Christian. And that aside, to be like Jesus, be Jewish...
A thoughtful column, Ross, a bit myopic. I was raised Roman Catholic, almost entered a Maryknoll seminary at age 15, was a confirmed atheist by age 18. There were too many contradictions, too much by way of human accretions, in Catholicism for me.
In the past year, after fifty-plus years of atheism but having lived a pretty Christian life looking back, I was called to Greek Orthodoxy, the oldest Christian denomination. Our parish is thriving. We have a lot of old Greeks for sure (I have not a drop of Greek blood), but many non-Greeks, millennials too, and our Sunday School is full, our youth ministries thriving.
Like me, many in our parish are converts. Some former Roman Catholics, many more former Evangelicals, a few atheists. We are diverse as well, with Asian, African-American and Latinx congregants. We are trying to expand our outreach.
Why? Because our church should be very attractive to many disaffected Christians. We focus on Scripture (we regard it as a divinely inspired work of fallible humans, not the literal word of God), the early church Fathers, the first seven ecumenical councils. We have no Pope. Our priests can marry--but they can't vote. We get no politics from our pulpit, and can do as we will politically. We don't classify sin as mortal or venial. We expect to answer for our entire lives on Judgment Day, and focus on prayer, repentance, conserving God's world and aiding the poor. It has given me hope, strength, and most of all, joy.
Don't ignore us.
1
As a child of the 50s, I wanted to be a minister when I grew up. Throughout my teen years and 4 years at university I tested many different religions. Then "Science" kicked in and I asked myself WHY? How can educated humans bind themselves to such silliness? Yes, a day at church can provide a respite from our maddening routines. It's a session of meditation and self-analysis, self-help. But to think that there is some old man sitting in a fluffy cloud, judging everything that we do is ignorance. It's fear promulgated by whatever church to keep the cash flowing into the otherwise unemployed ministers.
It’s impossible to know what a person actually believes. We can only observe what they say and do.
In 1534, King Henry VIII of England separated the Church of England from the Church of Rome, finding (like many since) that the Pope was something of an inconvenience.
The history of the Church of England is instructive. It remains the official church. Twenty-six of its bishops have ex officio seats in the House of Lords, and its decisions are subject to royal approval. But hardly anyone attends. Even the ordination of women has not been enough to reverse the decline.
Conditions within the church are so bad that its priests are now represented by a trade union, the “faith workers” branch of Unite (which takes in rabbis and imams as well, just in case you’re wondering). The church pays many of its workers less than minimum wage, and in 2015, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself admitted to the BBC that this was “embarrassing”.
Needless to say, the Church of England is a big campaigner for the “Living Wage”, but tries to excuse itself on the grounds that it’s a charity.
The difference between the Church of England and the Church of Rome is that England is a small country where the truth cannot be hidden forever. It seems to me that the more people learn about the operation of their churches, the less inclined they are to put time and money into them.
The creation of a Church of America, no doubt dear to many hearts in the Republican Party, will not change this.
so funny how church attendance is some sort of valuable metric of religious affiliation and adherence. when xtians are the first to accuse other xtians of being nominal adherents because they might go to church but don't do much practicing.
let's face the facts that they only people really worried about religious affiliation are the ones making the profit off the pew sitters. priests. preachers and of course politicians. especially today...in this environment. politicians need that base.
real keepers of their faith are unconcerned as they are in it for the right reasons, not the proselytizing and self righteous aggrandizement.
Mr. Douthat:
One does not have to belong to any church to be a Christian.
Given the state of Christianity in this country, affiliation with a church is a declaration that many good Christians might be unwilling to make. You might want to think deeper about the obvious fact that the secularization of the pulpit has turned many away from their respective churches. Christianity is under assault from within not without.
3
I see the growth of evangelical Protestantism mainly in the South and in rural areas of the country. Unfortunately, the concomitant factor, increasing this fact, is poor education. Home -schooling has become more enticing for many Protestants. The Bible is being used as fact, i.e., the world is 6,000 -years old, science is denigrated, and standard texts, discarded or censured. Actually, education and knowledge is denigrated, with the sense that all you need to know is verse x, line y, or many such verses.
And, as these children grow and proliferate, and propagate,
we get a less broad-minded, cultured, tolerant demographic, and a people more able to be led by a dictator. All results rests in some god's hands, and of course, a candidate, backed by the Protestant church is that much more admired. So much for critical thinking, and preserving our democracy when religion enters the public square, which unfortunately, it has. As Europe gets more secular, the US seems to get more religious. It's a rather insidious crusade, wreaking its havoc at the already compromised ballot box.
Let's hope that organized Christianity declines more quickly than Ross Douhat thinks it will. Throughout American history, much of organized Christianity has been on the wrong side of things: on the wrong side of slavery, civil rights, organized labor, imperialist wars, and the rights of women, gays, and indigenous peoples. White evangelical support of Trump is just the latest flowering of Christian immorality. Examples of Christian moral leadership are the exceptions that prove the rule.
1
Just read that a priest confirmed that he denied Joe Biden communion because of his stance on abortion. Then of course, Franklin Graham urges all pastors and priests to deny communion to other politicians with similar stances on abortion.
A little more secularization seems necessary even for Christianity to survive a subset of Christians.
2
Please, let's not equate morality with being religious! People with strong ethics and sense of right and wrong, with active consciences that govern their actions are what we need today. Whether they choose a belief system to identify with is a personal matter and better left to persons. Just because people don't attend some regular meeting of religious nature does not mean the country is going down hill. We have many volunteers caring for the sick, homeless, poor and prisoners that live out their aspirations to do good in the world and be good persons and just don't see how a religious affiliation of any kind contributes to their work. We can't measure doing good and doing right by how religious a person is.
3
News of Christianity’s sudden demise are greatly exaggerated. Ross Douhat’s Pew summary analysis is on point. Trends move up and down for a variety of reasons, but core beliefs remain strong. It's true that attendance is down because the church tends to move very slow and is change averse. It’s taken years for the church to tackle the child abuse crisis, which hurt parochial school registration and attendance, for example. The church still looks down on contraception which could be viewed as a means to offset abortion. The church is not working to protect working families; women’s presence in the hierarchy is still ignored.
However, while Pope Francis has brought new ideas and has been trying to modernize the church, he’s been attacked by “conservative Catholics” and called everything from socialist to communist to destructive.
Right now, the Pope is leading a discussion on the ordination of married men, which is great. Married priests can minister with a real understanding of life’s ups and downs. Contraception will be accepted and abortion controlled. This will help ease the many concerns millennials have. Eventually, and faster than not, the church will catch up. This, by the way, applies to Western Europe as well. The victory dance among those who think the church has been defeated should redirect their energy to fight political crime and corruption instead.
A few thoughts from a mainline pastor and author. It would have been nice to acknowledge former NY Times journalist Chris Hedges, whose 2006 work explained over a decade ago how the religious right defines what we see in our culture today in terms of "Christianity." And let us not forget Robert Bellah's contributions, who once said "America needs just enough religion for its' capitalism." I'm with René Girard's view that true Christianity actually marks the end of religion as a system that condones oppression and violence. This is why the religion that condones inequality, oppression and violence is thriving, as well as it supplanting real Christianity. Correct. The collapse of the empire's religion is much overstated.
1
I'm not sure why any of this makes any difference. Separation of church and state is still the law of the land.
7
@Matthew
Except when "the law of the land" is bent/ignored for political purposes...
@HapinOregon
Example?
Religious faith is, or ought be, a private matter between a believer and his/her God. Except when the believer's faith makes him/her a proselytizer.
Any religion that proselytizes, considers its Way the only Way, its Truth the only Truth and that its duty to God is to impose that Way and Truth on Others can not be considered reasonable, reasoning or reassuring.
Nor can that religion's adherents.
3
I will write this again. Faith is not going to be found in any group of people going to church. Faith is born in the deep subconsciousness of ever individual. Faith doesn't mean a belief system is true nor valid. That is science's job. Having a belief system doesn't mean that person or people are going to be the epitome of goodness and neither do the numbers of people who profess to cleave to the same belief system. Goodness is not a democratic system, but rather the outside observation of a another person who doesn't share the same belief system.
There are no need for churches or organized religion in order to be the epitome of goodness. That is up to each individual. However organized religion, any organized 'gathering' of anything is built upon those who are better than the others. If there is a hierarchy within the built system, whatever it may be, you can rest assured that there are people in there who are gaming the system.
I believed quite publicly that I had faith until I began to notice I didn't. I haven't changed very much since then. I still try to do the right thing at the right time. I still try to improve myself. I don't mind if other people profess belief. Hooray for them, but they are going to evaluated on what they profess to be. If they go in a building to listen to a man, always seems a man, who avows anarchy and chaos, then I am inclined to see all of them as people who are not good people no matter what religious pious faith they declare.
1
I suspect that a lot of people just see religion as another way to waste scarce time that could be spent on other things. As life gets busier and busier, the only kind of religion that matters is that involving 'entertainment'. In a sense, a lot of American religion is really 'social events' (aka 'fellowship') rather than theology. Also, a lot of religion is seen as an adjunct to politics. (One joke: "Do you need to accept Donald Trump as your personal Lord and Savior in order to be saved?") The conflation of 'patriotism', nationalism, Christianity, and generally right-wing politics reminds me a lot of Spain -- which went from generally Catholic to almost totally secular. We shall see if the tying of evangelical Protestantism to the Republican Party is smart or not, but I suspect it may be a very unwise move over the long run.
2
Mr. Douthat strikes me as looking into the largely irrelevant minutiae of broader trends to try and undermine them, or at least their interpretation. The overall trend is clear and incontrovertible.
Regarding protestent trends, one need only take a long drive through rural America and listen to the network of Christian radio stations that blanket it from coast to coast. The primary thrust of programming focuses on apologetics, most of it with an fervid but anxious tone. "Don't stop believing and here's why" is the central message. It's ubiquitous.
In my opinion we are entering an age where secularization is likely to accelerate dramatically. It seems that almost every day there is a new scientific discovery or finding that undermines religious belief systems. The universe is larger, there are more planets, there is a greater likelihood of life elsewhere than earth. Accelerating advancements in artificial intelligence, particle physics, anthropology, and virtually every other area of science and technology make the the inhabitable zone for religious faith smaller and smaller each year. And fortunately our schools teach this science instead of the mumbo jumbo of "intelligent design" and other pseudo science.
Yes there will be hiccups and variations in the trend when you look in detail at small, magnified sections of data, but that is literally looking at the trees and not seeing the forest.
1
Scripture reminds us in Matthew 24:35
"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away".
Denominations and ways of living out one's faith may change in time, but God's truth is eternal.
79
@deltaz
It's been a long time since the God spoke to us.
His use of many tongues and many interpreters tends to confuse his message.
24
@deltaz That's what the followers of Zeus thought.
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@kim mills It was written by Mark, a companion of Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul), somewhere between the 60s and 80s AD. The original language was koine (common) Greek of the first century. The King James English version was translated in the 16th century by a series of translation committees. You can find the names if you look up the King James Bible on Wikipedia. If you prefer to read it in the original Greek, this is also available online. I would also warmly invite you to search for your truth -- perhaps you will find a man from Nazareth awaiting you.
3
I hear this a lot, too. Yet, when I make the time to attend mass the local church in a major city suburb that I live in is always filled to the brim even on non-holidays. In addition, working on a very liberal college campus I was heartened to see an incredibly active Catholic organization on campus and a packed house on Ash Wednesday (including every background, nationality, and ethnicity in attendance). Bottom line -- for those for whom faith is part of what makes them alive, religion will always be important.
1
It is also the creeping forward of Evangelicals and Catholics to violate our Constitution where Separation of Church and State are endangered because of our Leaders in the Republican Party and those who serve on the Supreme Court.
Those who are secularists believe in the Constitutional right to Separation of State and Church. Evangelicals and Catholics have seem to forgotten about that.
5
Once, I called myself an ‘atheist’, until I came to understand that this nomenclature was perceived by some to indicate a tendency towards theism. Later, I tried ‘agnostic’, and quickly became aware that I had apparently been mistaken for a sort of gnostic pagan.
Ultimately, I realized that Christendom in the United States is so highly sectarian that not even most believers seem to agree on what it is that they worship.
Thank God for Judaism?
1
You’d think with all the cellphones around now someone would have captured a modern miracle, a vision of the Virgin Mary, a poltergeist, BigFoot, anything. Now there are fewer miracles, in fact, none. The super natural does not exist, including magical sky beings providing eternal life. The kids understand that we’re all we've got and we’d be better off taking care of each than dividing ourselves up by who is magically saved and who isn’t.
2
@Chip Today the world continued to exist, against all odds. The miracle was mind-boggling and beautiful and I tried to be thankful.
Odd that Douthat fails to address Attorney General Bill Barr who just gave a speech denouncing the"militant secularists." Barr sees a conspiracy afoot to undermine Christianity and plans to use his power accordingly.
“Among the militant secularists are so-called progressives”, Barr said, on the way to asking what, if not Christianity, can “fill the void in the hearts of the individual person”.
Barr then said this:
"This is not decay. This is organized destruction. Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values."
Ross doesn't see the hysterical elephant in the room.
3
@David Henry - Yes, the mythical "War on Christmas" has been expanded into the "War on Christianity" by Trump Nationalists. The root of this victim-hood is the expansion of civil rights for the LGBT community which outrages the Evangelical branch of the party.
4
Millennials are the least bigoted generation in American history. To the extent that religious institutions insist their faiths demand such bigotry they are likely to remain in big trouble.
1
@Daniel A. Greenbaum Then I'll assume none of the commenters here blatantly bigoted against religion and religious people are millennials.
@keith
A millennial wrote one of the Times Picks. Succinct, and true--millennials don't care for the hypocrisy. That's not 'bigoted against religion,' it's just calling it out for what it is.
Bad article, doesn't get to the point. Anybody with any sense knows that God is only a metaphor, not some magical, supreme being. The question is, what do they do with that knowledge? Some go to church to join with others, to make friends, to be a part of a community. Others reject church because they don't want to be with people who are silly enough to actually worship a supreme being. And others because of the meaninglessness of a church service - all those reading from dead men's writings and the tuneless unsinkable songs.
So, what is Christianity? Ross uses the term a lot but never tells us what it is. If it is the belief in a supreme being, then Christianity is dead. If it is to join together with other human beings, to create friendships, to do good, then there is hope for Christianity. And yes, I go to church.
Douthat uses church attendance as a guiding statistic. But that doesn't address how many churchgoers are atheist/agnostic.
Anecdotally we know that even some Pastors are non-believers.
Friends, family, community, and habit are strong forces.
Conservatives love to point the finger for the decline in religious affiliation at liberal politics. Like liberals said "stop going to church!" --and everyone did. Americans just found a new thing to worship. Money. Stuff! Not at church?They're not at the AFl-CIO meeting either. They're at the mall shopping. Post-Vatican II also coincided with a rise in consumerism. Religions can't compete with WalMart when it comes to instant gratification. Why wait until you're dead? Conservative religions haven't done themselves any favor by taking hard lines on social issues and creating an us them divide. I suspect a lot of evangelicals that started out in the 1970's are not going to be easily replaced.
1
The statistics cited are through 2018.. or sometime in 2018. I’d suggest they are dated. The hypocrisy of the evangelical community regarding Trump has been front and center more in the last year. That can’t push the numbers anywhere but down.
I do not understand why the decline in church-going is such a problem for people, other than those deriving their salary from it.
Looking forward to Douthat's next think-piece, in which he explains how many angels fit on the head of a pin.
2
As soon as religion gets swallowed up by politics, it ceases to be attractive to a large segment of the population. That is exactly what has happened in America in the last few decades. Religion corrupts politics and politics corrupts religion. Both systems have tremendous influence and power over the lives of their followers. Combine them, and they become tyrannical. Combine them and they become dictatorial and all-consuming. Power is a dangerous thing. Power corrupts... and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s what we’re seeing in America today. The lies, the greed, the hate, the divisions, the threats, the name calling, the intense distrust.... these are all symptoms of an us-against-them worldview. And nothing in the history of mankind has divided people so intensely and so consistently as religion beliefs. It is a two-edged sword. Religion can unite or it can divide. Mix it up with politics and it will always be divisive. Politics corrupts religion. Always has.
2
A so-called Christian charity donated over $55 million to hate groups which kinda says it all, doesn’t it?
https://www.newsweek.com/biggest-christian-charity-funding-hate-groups-1370055
4
Frankly, the MAJOR reason people are leaving the Churches in droves is because they see the churches as Profiteering, corrupt business organizations that care more about the tithing plate than they do about the adherent's souls.
As an example, I was forbidden to return to the church when, as a child of 5 years old, when they passed the tithing plates at the local Catholic Church, I asked, in that piping 5 year old voice in a near silent church, so that it rang loud, and I asked "But Mommy, why do they need more money when they have ALL THAT GOLD on everything?"
They were not at all pleased to have been called out by an innocent child then.
But if churches are going to interject into politics, if they are going to go into business ventures, then they need to stop being a Church (or set that portion aside for tax exemption only) but they should NEVER get a pass on taxes on their properties, on their businesses etc. The ONLY Tax Free part should be the Church building itself, the rectory where just the priest lives, and the tithes, if only used for upkeep of church, property and pay for the priest.
Anything else is Business and a way around the laws on taxes and regulations for things like pharmacists (who should not be allowed to have the job if their religion gets in the way of ANY Part of it). Religion is Not a get out of jail free card or a 'I wont do that due to my religion' are hypocrites because they just want THEIR religion recognized, disrespecting anyone else's.
2
Another qualifier might be that many of the "nones" are simply people who have always been "nones," but feel confident enough to come out of the closet now that non religious people aren't so stigmatized. I have no data on this, but I know it's true in my case and many people I know. Although I was brought up as a Presbyterian, by my early teens I realized I did not, and never did believe in God, or any god for that matter, but I was always hesitant to admit that, even on anonymous surveys. It took a long time before I came out of the closet.
2
There is no room in any relatively sane and intelligent society for groups that preach, hate, exclusion and intolerance and that includes American Christianity. Younger, "educated" people are walking away from organized religion because when they start to ask questions of religious leaders, they are not getting any meaningful answers, just preaching as to what "truth" they are to believe in, clearly, unacceptable.
2
I was raised Catholic. I didn't go to Catholic schools, but was required to go to weekly Instruction through my senior year of high school.
I stopped going to church in my 20s...like the article states, but still considered my self a Catholic, if lapsed. When I married in my 30s I was surprised I wanted to get married in the Church. When my children were born, I had them baptized in the Church and started going to mass again, and enrolled them in catechism classes as they grew and they did their First Communion.
But I started leaving mass angry at many of the sermons telling me my liberal beliefs were wrong. That voting for certain candidates could be a reason for excommunication even! The constant requests for more money.
I joined a mother's group called MOPS (Morhers of preschoolers) where we did crafts and had speakers, but then broke off into smaller groups to talk about our relationship to God...I was appalled and extremely uncomfortable. Not what I signed up for!
And then the sexual abuse scandal and the out of this world hypocrisy finished it for me. My spirituality does not fit into a hypothetical church.
4
The slow death of religion is referring to less members not political influence or suppression of Christianity (any form). I am an atheist who believes we only exist because two people "hooked up".
But I do not force my convictions through reason on people, the way they try to shove their convictions through faith unto me. My problem with religion isn't the rank and file religious people, it isn't even their hypocrisy of judging others. It is the political involvement of religions. Why should anybody be able to mention any religion when running for office, it should automatically disqualify someone from federal funds. Especially since when politicians use religion to get elected, they selectively choose certain parts of religion doctrine (sometimes made up doctrine) to focus on while ignoring other doctrine. Why do politicians never talk about how Jesus spoke about how hard it is for rich people to get into Heaven? You can't get into heaven and be rich; Christ was clear on that. More then he was on abortion or homosexuality.
3
Religious fanatics who to varying degrees wage war (military or otherwise), who seek to dismiss 'the other', who insist that their religion is the only religion, who establish (or want to) theocratic governments to achieve the above and who venerate ideas contrived (mainly) by men at the expense of everyone else continue to stain the ideas of religiosity for me and for many. That religion is used to gather, amass power and subjugate is not a new phenomenon, it is just a continuation of the human story since someone determined that a god was needed to explain the inexplicable.
1
"Imagine there's no religion. it isn't hard to do."
Progressive thinking among educated, empirical thinkers. A lessening belief in superstitions and mythologies. Religion as the opiate of the masses has failed to provide much in the way of comfort in these chaotic times. And another old world institution bites the dust.
3
The circle representing Christian identity and the circle representing American "conservative populist" identity overlap in a big way in the US. To me, their ideals seem mutually exclusive. "Boundless free market success and materialism make the world a better place, don't trust our neighbors to the south and put up walls to their poverty, slash programs that hurt the poor and working class, if it's good for billionaires it must be good for the nation, military might at all costs, people with non-white skin tones are problematic, guns are great..."
I'm not going to try o figure out what type of mental calisthenics it must take to reconcile the incongruity between such ideas and those of a faith like Christianity which is pretty clear about hate and war and goodness to neighbors and worldliness, but I've learned that there's no use in trying to point it out to them.
2
A rise in evangelicalism is by definition a drop in American Christianity, based on their extreme beliefs and strong support of Trump.
4
American Christianity, Catholic or Protestant, has, with some notable exceptions, fallen into a mix of white nationalism, jingoism, and a legalistic form of religion bent on controlling human behavior. I identify as a born again Christian, but I won't step into another church until the Church finds its way back. I don't expect that to happen in my lifetime.
2
It would help those who don't like what man has turned Christianty into, to emphasize ethics and morality in their stance. Christianity does not have a good record of either at this point.
2
One thinks of lost souls searching for a strident, self-affirming home in the growth of the evangelical churches; what is sadly lacking is a voice against strident self-affirmation feeding -- even if inadvertently -- misplaced self-righteousness morphing into discrimination, bigotry, and hatred. The Roman Catholic Church and the mainstream Protestant denomination have been sorely missing from the condemnation of the misuse of religion, not a recent occurrence of course, looking back a century.
The numbers of Christians are steady, but the population is booming. That is a percentage decline.
1
Organized religion is just another form of power structure in our society. No different than political parties, gangs, occupational groups like the police, labor unions, etc. Basically what the HBO show The Wire illustrated regarding the "game".
I wouldn't have an issue with organized religion if they didn't get "neck deep" in the swamp of politics and try to impose their "sensibilities" onto me, but they do, and so I oppose them.
Religion in theory should be monolithic, that is a religion's theory of the world and people's place in that order are defined by some ethereal (ephemeral?) divine entity. And that should be it. There should be no departure from that core, initial belief. Yet, every organized religion has different sects, schools, leaders with slightly or very different views on that religion. Christians have Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants (and all the sub sects of them), Mormons, Appalachian snake handlers, whatever. Islam has just as many different sects. Judaism and Buddhism too.
Why is that? My jaded answer is that each of these different sects illustrate different little fiefdoms that various "lieutenants" of the religion carved out for themselves in a power grab.
Of course this isn't responsive to Ross's initial question, to which I believe as more and more people are educated, they cannot reconcile religious dictum with their knowledge of the world.
1
Ross is spitting in the wind. If my wife’s experience as director of adult ministries is any indication, trying to get younger adults to return to any kind of religious activity, even book groups who read and discuss popular novels, is a hard pull.
If there is any hope, it is in the younger folks yoking service projects with religion. They seem to want concrete action rather than simply comforting words.
Expect, possibly, for some Evangelicals who buy into the putrid “prosperity gospel,” which is antithetical to the word and actions of Jesus.
1
"Lukewarm Christianity may be declining more dramatically than intense religiosity." I wonder if the surge in the religiously unaffiliated--the "none's"--has been led by the "Nanas". The two youngest generations can stop being kindly, protective--and deceptive--about belief in the family religion because Nana or Granddad have themselves stopped going to church or temple.
Once that happens, everyone else is free to come out in the open.
Which frees even more people to stop hiding behind the dodgy, but socially acceptable, term "Agnostic".
I was brought up in a very religious family, with well know name in the my denomination. Only one of my 6 siblings goes to church or even considered themselves religious in any sense any more. My siblings range from Gen Xers to Millennials. While I am sure some of it is self selection, outside of a work colleague I don't know anyone I am not related to (I have a large extended family) which still goes to church. The church I went to when I was growing up, along with one other one in the neighborhood, was torn down over a decade ago with the land now hosting houses. I imagine my experience would be much different if I lived in the suburbs rather than a mile from the heart of downtown. But here in heart of Salt Lake City, the hometown of the Mormon Church, secularization IS the reality. Their most well known and architecturally significant churches, temple, and other edifies may be in our city. But their spiritual and cultural zeitgeist moved out of the city down to Utah County and the south eastern park of SL county long ago. But I suppose to counter the argument of secularization, those are the fastest growing areas of the greater metro area by percentage. But in overall population we still dwarf them by a considerable amount.
1
I'm a Boomer. None of my friends attend regularly. Few of their GenX children attend. Millenials (the grandkids) are upset about how their Q friends are treated by religious peeps. And it's even more of a problem among the GenZers. Sorry, Ross!
2
It is the "Moral Majority", today's political "Christian Right" that is throwing a bad light on faith, which is personal and private, not political posturing.
1
The fundamentally (pun intended) flawed wishful thinking of those who seek to stamp on Christianity is based on the incorrect perception that Christians consider secular government to be bad.
Wrong.
No religious fervor is necessary to determine the allocation of funds to repair potholes, and the introduction of religious preference into such a process hurts everyone.
American Christians are, to an exceptionally high percentage, in favor of secular government.
But that goes two ways, with government not meddling with religion, either.
The absurdities brought upon us by the anarchistic leftists, such as whimpering about Christmas displays on public property, are an afront to everyone who understands the Constitution, of all religions.
@Objectivist
That might be true if there was now only "Christians" that still inhabited America. Obviously, with the influx of different ethnic groups that might follow a different religion, that has all changed, yet, clearly, you have not recognized this and like many, always start playing the victim when you are not getting your way.
No one is meddling with your religion and no one is meddling with Christmas either, yet, when we look at the over zealous religious group of Republicans who wish to use government to satisfy their religious beliefs and attempt to control other peoples lives, the meddling you claim is actually going in the other direction.
Evangelical "christianity" has become dangerously involved with our government. Pence and Pompeo, both believers in the "end times" and the "rapture" have been attempting to insert these bizarre (it's always "just around the corner", for 2,000 years!) beliefs into their actions, and making all sorts of weird pronouncements at gatherings of evangelical groups.
The first words of the First Amendment guarantee all Americans the freedom FROM religion. That's the CORRECT relationship of church and state: no relationship.
From my observations, Christians live by the New Testament, but these evangelicals dredge up arcane references to all sorts of ancient beliefs from the Old Testament to bolster their arguments, which usually revolve around taking away human rights. Everyone should be FREE to pursue their personal spiritual beliefs (the NEXT passage in the First Amendment).
2
They tell us to go to school and study, learn, explore, become educated and strong minded about what is fact and fiction. Now we are questions when we are asked to believe something on bad evidence.
If one wants a spiritual practice that helps them navigate life, fine, there are many out there that are far better in that aspect than Christianity.
I think more people are waking up to the fact that a iron age belief system does not offer a reasonable and compassionate path forward.
4
Times and circumstances change, but large institutions are slow to. For example, when Islam was established, it afforded women more rights than they previously had.
The Catholic Church’s stance on sex had a different meaning given infant mortality rates of the past.
With the advent of the internet, who knows whether faiths gaining/regaining prevalence will fall prey to the hierarchy and stagnation which is the undoing of their predecessors.
when he bangs on about secular liberals trying to batter down traditional values church congregations, he has it the wrong way around Evangelicals and even some more mainstream churches have adapted their own versions of the Benedict Option, where- as Douthat --notes- they'd rather be purer, more dogmatic, and more strident. They are the ones trying to batter down institutions they regard as impious and impure, as we see from their relentless campaigns for religious freedom laws to let them discriminate because Bible. After decades of being told I cannot be a Christian because I am gay, that I cause hurricanes and other natural disasters, that I corrupt children and wield vast overbearing cultural influence, I still stick to wishing they'll just leave me alon, enjoying the more welcoming embrace of my church family.
2
I'm a 34 year old millenial and do not know a single person who claims the Christian faith or attends church. I never hear anyone talk about church - if all the churches in the world disappeared tomorrow I wouldn't notice. My parents, once very devout, have turned away as well. They complain to me that they cannot find a single church in their new town where people are friendly, much less carrying out the mission of Jesus to make the world a better place.
I grew up in a very conservative part of the deep south. My father was a deacon, I was made to attend church every single Sunday, I attended a Baptist school, and took endless years of Bible classes. It is certainly not for lack of knowledge or experience of the faith that led me away from it.
The Bible is a collection of tall tales passed down by illiterate goat herders thousands of years ago. Anyone with access to Google and some critical thinking skills can poke endless holes in the logic and historicity of it. It's no coincidence that people my age are also the most educated generation. When you combine that with the ugliest forms of reactionary politics and old-school patriarchal hierarchies the only wonder to me is that we're even still having this conversation.
God died long ago, and the people who killed him are the ones who show up to church every Sunday.
10
It would be a shame indeed if Christianity (or other religions) continue to decline in membership, for participation in civic institutions generally goes hand-in-hand with religious participation.
Mr. Douhat pointed out the resilience of intense religiosity. However, when the role models for right-wing Evangelical Christians are Donald Trump, Jerry Falwell Jr., and Roy Moore, they have drastically lost their way. Right-wing Evangelical priorities include cruelty to immigrants, locking up immigrant children and turning a deaf ear to their cries for their parents, naked bigotry, and intolerance towards the LGBTQ community.
I cannot imagine the next generation of Americans following these right-wing Evangelicals. On this basis, I respectfully disagree with Mr. Douhat and predict the long-term decline of right-wing Evangelical Christianity.
4
@asagar00
When one looks at the supporters of people like Roy Moore, Jerry Falwell and others of their ilk, all one has to do is look at their audience, primarily, "older and white".
Sorry Ross, your argument is not born out in the demographics.
In general I am in favor of the waning of American evangelicalism, hyper-conservative orthodoxy among Protestants and Catholics and the rise of alternative religious and spiritual interests among millennials. I think millennials are smarter and better informed than previous generations, and overall they are less prepared to accept the pre-packaged organized religion they are offered and more likely to view it as intellectually untenable, which it mostly is. Hopefully religious institutions will feel the fire of dislocation and irrelevance and rather than just dying (which most probably will) will feel the need to reform in more modern and syncretistic directions.
4
The primary reason to be concerned about churchgoing is that people who go to church tend to make irrational choices - like insisting that society as a whole follow what their religious dogma dictates no matter how misguided it is.
8
"One important qualifier, appropriate to the week of Halloween, is that the decline of Christian institutions and the weakening of Christian affiliation may be clearing space for post-Christian spiritualities — pantheist, gnostic, syncretist, pagan — rather than a New Atheist sort of godlessness." Huh? With the exception of Gnosticism, these were all around before Christianity. Calling them "post-Christian" seems a little arrogant.
It's a very good point that most of the decline is among people who weren't that intense about religion to begin with. There seems to be a fairly steady percentage of people who are driven to involve themselves in religion/spirituality, and a lot more folks who will go along with it if it offers family or social benefits.
"But for now that resilience also puts some limits on how successfully anti-Christian policies can be pursued. . . ." What qualifies as an "anti-Christian" policy? Not changing the job definitions of public offices so Christians don't have to perform their duties with respect to people their religious beliefs disparage? Not exempting Christians from civil rights laws requiring that businesses serving the general public do not exclude such people? Not allowing Christians to impose religion-based moral strictures as laws that non-Christians or the differently-Christian must follow? That's pro-free and open society, not anti-Christian.
5
Mr. Douthat, I fear, has always looked askance at the Episcopal Church: liturgy not unlike the Romans, bishops in the apostolic succession, all the right creeds, but not much dogma, and no hang ups about sex. The Episcopal Church, however, may be leading the way back. I know the Diocese of Arkansas and my home parish have seen increases in attendance and membership of late. Perhaps, rather than abandoning Christianity for an alternate faith or none, people need to find a version traditional, but compatible with modern consciousness. In one sense, Christianity has done its work in America. The moral fabric of the country is firmly Judeo-Christian, and most of us know intuitively--whether we believe in God or attend a church--that cutting taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor is wrong. Now we have to hope that people don't accept the Evangelicals as the face of Christianity.
4
@rawebb1
I would submit if religions want the right to meddle in politics that they should immediately give up their "tax free" status.
What policies are Anti-Christian Please elaborate? What I see is a dangerous extension of a fundamentalist form of the Christian Religion into secular law, not a secular intrusion into religion.
11
@GUANNA this was going to my comment exactly. I think he is dangerously conflating "policy that does not align with Christian beliefs" with "anti-Christian policies."
An worrying development of recent time is- there is not a single Congressman or a Senator to represent that largest American population of "non-religious" people (more than 26% of US population) while Evangelicals with less than 23% of US population traditionally enjoy oversize political influence and also helped electing a person like Trump as our President.
The last openly "non-religious" Congressman/Senator retired few years ago. Then, more worrying, as per few credible surveys (including a PEW one) indicating that "non-religious" people faces a "credibility" or trust issue just ahead of Muslims to become US president. That's a narrative that both political parties and mainstream media promoted. Now many US universities are promoting religion, mainly Christianity as per of its political appeasement agenda for both the prospective students and for politicians.
3
@Concerned Citizen. Bernie Sanders or anyone *suspected* to be atheists are just that- a speculation. None of them are declared even non-religious, forget being an atheists. Yes, they have very neutral view about religious issues and that's the right way, I think, to be a political leader in a productive (secular) democracy or republic as many Americans define the country.
It's not about being an atheists, but being not associated with any religion. And that's more than 26% of US population.
Yes, Congressmen and Senators must represent districts and must not represent religion, as many currently do. Otherwise, gradually, there will not be much difference between Saudi Arabia, Iran, or China, North Korea etc. with US, as personal faith/ideology started polluting US Govt more.
1
There is no one 'Christianity'; it manifests in many forms, some closer to the gospels than others. There is Thomas Merton's contemplative Christianity, Bonhoeffer's sacrificial Christianity, Dorthy Day's social activist Christianity, Joel Osteen's televangelist 'feel good' Christianity, Falwell and Graham's right-leaning Christianity, etc., etc. Some would consider the others heretical or worse. But, the point is: Christianity is many things to many people.
3
You forgot illogical: the concept of the "trinity" is, at best, specious nonsense. It's all illogical to me.
Ross Douthat, you did not mention Orthodox Christianity at all. Our church is strong and growing. We don't have the baggage of the Catholic church scandals but we have the tradition and structure many people crave from religion.
1
@cy You also have an interpretation of the sin of Adam and Eve that is far more compatible with modern life and lived human experience. In the Catholic church people are supposedly born guilty of that ancient sin.In the Orthodox church people are not born guilty of that sin. They are responsible (and guilty) only for the sins they themselves commit. In Orthodoxy everyone bears the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve but not the guilt. This makes Baptism a joyous reception into the community of Christians rather than a washing away of what the Catholics call Original Sin.
1
Last Spring I went to a Mass celebrating my beloved uncle's 60th anniversary as a priest. He has dedicated his life to serving the migrant community in the U.S. and a couple of missions in Juarez. His church was filled to overflow with the loving and grateful faces of Mexican American worshipers of all ages.
And of several faiths, as I haven't considered myself a Catholic for 50 years.
Ross, did you know that in India Jesus is very revered by Hindus and Yogis as a great Avatar and Master?
My old sainted uncle is a bit peeved at his church because it welcomes Anglican married priests to the priesthood but won't allow Catholic priests the same privilege. And until that changes; along with the proscriptions against women in the priesthood; and when the church finally atones for the clergy abuse of children you might see more people in the pews.
When Christians start acting a little more according to the words of Jesus and less according to the words of t rump a religious revival might come about.
5
The spread of secular democracy and the decline of ALL religions are , along with empowering of women (which goes along with the decline of religion in general) probably the only hope humanity has left of saving itself. Religion makes about as much sense in the modern world as Halloween does as political party.
7
I'm a 70 year-old who was raised in the Catholic Church and attended Catholic school through grade 12. I've never been molested by a priest. I don't view the church as inherently hypocritical. I don't harbor any particular antipathy toward the religion of my youth.
I've been an atheist since I was 14. I effectively left the church around that time, despite being in a Jesuit high school in Brooklyn. My reasons for the departure from the fold are similar to those I hear from other ex-churchgoers: the pervasive mythology associated with religion simply wasn't credible.
My background is in STEM. I look for empirical evidence to support my belief system. I can't get my arms around devils, angels, resurrections, ascensions into heaven, virgin births, and all the other canonical baggage to which one must subscribe in order to be part of the tribe. It just doesn't resonate for me, and I'm not alone.
Most of my closest associates and friends hold similar views. We're all well-educated. We're the cohort that is driving down religious participation. We don't hate the religious, although we do wonder how they can subscribe to their beliefs in the absence of any evidence. My daughter, at 32, aligns with my worldview, as do most of her peers.
People aren't as credulous as they used to be. Instant information is at our fingertips. These factors don't bode well for organized religion, and the statistics make that clear. Even if some seek to twist the numbers.
10
@Bill McGrath
I'm about your age, background STEM as well. Of course there is much mythology that isn't credible--my personal favorite is virgin birth. Frankly, I would just roll my eyes about that one except that I'm a woman, and from my early childhood I was taught that sex was sinful outside marriage, and any girl/woman who had sex for any purpose other than to produce babies was just a nasty, dirty girl.
So, when the pedophilia issue came up, I raised my eyebrows. But, even that wasn't necessarily hypocritical....it became hypocritical when we all found out that the Church knew all about it and had been shuffling offending priests around since forever. So, yes, that struck me as rather hypocritical.
Most intelligent people who go to church take the mythology and dogma with a grain of salt. I live in a super-educated town in Massachusetts and our churches and synagogues are full. As the Buddhists say, "one God, many paths." People tend to believe there must be some reason for existence, so they look to a religion. Even smart people.
I don't believe that will ever stop. I believe many people have a genetic predisposition to believe in an almighty god. But, I do wish our major religions would get a grip on reality and ditch some of the more damaging dogma.
1
@Bill McGrath Catholics seldom hear of the things you call not credible myths. Instead they mostly hear about how they have to politically oppose the rights of same sex people and of women who want sovereignty over their own bodies. These are quite concrete things to seize on and many do so with fervor.
The most remarkable company I've ever seen is dedIcated to the care of those Jesus referred to as "the least of mine". Most of their clients are severely disabled with multiple mental and physical deficits.
The management and staff of caregivers are underpaid, totally committed and extremely competent in maintaining the health, happiness and cheerful coherence of their community of very special needs.
After several years of close observation I finally realized what makes it work against highly, improbable odds: For those who work there, it may begin as a job... but it soon becomes an absolute spiritual imperative. (They could not endure it otherwise.)
The company has no church affiliation. But in many ways they maintain and exceed the standards claimed by mainstream religions.
It has been an inspiring experience of pure beauty to see the most fundamental power of compassion bypass the distractions and difficulties that disrupt the congregations of hierarchical churches.
Perhaps churches in decline should reconsider their mission statement and approach to teaching and achieving it.
2
I actually believe that if you drill deep enough into the teachings of Christ as reported years after his death, you will find their roots in Buddhism. Sadly organized Christian religions are more about the organization and less about the teachings. I for one will never be a part of an organized religion again, which i was as a child due to my Catholic parents. These entities has done way too much harm to humankind with their hate and intolerance of difference.
6
My memory fails me, I do not remember the name of a Greek philosopher who not long ago said: "I dream to wake up one day to find a world without religions." My heart does not fails me: I share the same dream.
6
The demise of Christianity can't come too soon. It's time humanity woke up and stopped believing in the tooth fairy.
10
Like so many “believers,” Mr Douthat fears a decline in believership is a threat to his own spiritual comforts. When someone leaves the church it raises uncomfortable questions about one’s own assumptions. Much better to revel in the company of fellow believers than attend to those difficult questions. And yet I believe that true spiritual growth occurs amid discord and question, not in the comfort of mutual agreement.
7
In the evangelical movement (I was formerly an active participant) there was a saying. "evangelisticlaly speaking" that insiders used to note a tendency within the movement to exaggerate. A friend of mine, a young "successful" and upwardly mobile pastor, once told me of a dream that he had in which he saw himself preaching before an audience of a thousand. I asked him what an audience of a thousand people looked like. I knew he had never spoken before a group remotely that large. Well, he just knew it was a thousand. This tendency to exaggerate or to elaborate beyond one's knowledge is not exactly lying, but something akin to self-deception.
Currently among some evangelical leaders there is an apparent trend to suppose American evangelicalism is in decline and to propose brave new solutions. However, given this decades-long tendency towards self-serving deception one wonders where they will get their intellectual tools to build this brave new world. Certainly something more than fussing about statistics is needed. As someone remarked, if you torture "numbers" enough they will confess to anything.
It seems to me that such rationalization is often the enemy of the truth. I have no productive analysis to offer to my Catholic brothers and sisters, except to note Nietzsche's observation that truth was such a foundational element for that fellow from Nazareth that any church that purports to follow him inevitably faces the critique that truth measures what we do.
I believe that local culture defines religious, or lack of religious affiliation as much as anything. I live in one of the least, if not the least, "church going states" in the country; Washington. In such a state, religion does not take on the same cultural imperative that may occur in other states with much higher church attendance. We do not look to candidates being 'Christians' as being somehow uniquely better than someone who has a different belief or no stated belief.
Looking at religion, or lack of religion, in generalities betrays the true nature of what religion is culturally. In some areas of this nation, Christianity will thrive, no matter the concerns, the perversions or the good deeds it displays in that location. In other locations, Christianity will struggle to recruit, or even maintain active participation.
Mr. Douthat fails to acknowledge this critical aspect of religious belief as a part of a local culture, not as national framing.
2
"Exactly how our descendants divide, and exactly how many Americans leave Christianity entirely, will depend above all on what happens in the Church of Rome."
I would look above all to see what happens to that spirit of individualism that you mention.
Mr. Douthat may make a mistake when he considers mainline and fundamentalist Protestants as a single group.
The fundamentalists have hijacked the word Christian and often use it to mean "my kind of Christian, not yours." Because of their behavior in both the marketplace of ideas, where they reject the possibility of diverse readings of scripture, and in the marketplace of politics, where they have sold their souls to the Cyrus myth and have backed the evil Trump, the fundamentalists have soured the very word Christian for millions of Americans, and not just millennials.
While both sides of Protestantism sometimes work together, as they do in our shiretown by operating a shelter for the homeless in the basement of a fundamentalist church, we more often are separate and too often antagonistic.
I am more comfortable attending a Catholic mass -- I was raised anti-Catholic by a Massachusetts mother -- than I am attending a fundamentalist Protestant service.
Mainline Protestantism is sinking faster than fundamentalist Protestantism, and we may continue drifting until we can find an effective way to distinguish ourselves from the fundamentalists.
1
Religion is so much foolishness and superstition. And what horrors humanity has done in the name of religion!
4
@LAM
Religion is the moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. What humanity does with it can be perverted but that does not negate the moral code, it only validates ithe need.
1
@Mozart
Religion is not the "moral code" of anything. The Golden Rule mentions no god, and is a pretty good guidepost.
Not addressed (and maybe later?) here is the selective interpretation of the Bible and maybe false prophecy. First, I think we don't sometimes give enough credit to our younger generations in that they can determine for themselves the direction evangelicism is going with respect to actual honesty and morality. Second, as a woman and one raised as Catholic, the continued exemption from any meaningful contributions (other than cleaning up the altar or feeding the men in the Knights of Columbus) has left me cold. I would be curious to learn what the gender differences are with respect to "fallen away" Catholics. I know several women that believe as I do, that Catholicism misrepresents and keeps women in a second class status.
3
Gratitude, grace, the state of grace...are sadly lacking in our society. If religion can reignite this, I'm all in.
1
Here is how "secularization" looks among my Gen X peer groups...
All of us were raised in one religion or another; Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Jewish, Baptist, etc.
All of us came to the realization that we don't need religion in order to be "good people".
We can donate to worthy causes, get involved in Meals on Wheels, Big Brother/Sister, the SPCA, fostering, soup kitchens, holiday "angel trees", etc without any religion prodding us to do so. So we do.
We keep keep some of the trappings of the religions we grew up with - holiday food and decorations (who doesn't love a good brisket, a colorful tree, a lit menorah?) and traditions - but for us now all of that revolves around celebrations of the love of family and friends, rather than any religious meaning.
None of us have set foot in a house of worship outside of weddings, funerals, and sightseeing tours (ah Sainte Chapelle in Paris! Beautiful early gothic architecture!) in decades.
And that is likely the way it will continue.
Because none of us NEED religion in order to lead full, happy, loving, and productive lives.
If you are already a good person, then you don't need religion to tame and direct you. And if you are not a good person then you will just seize on religion as another tool to help you keep the people around you down.
8
@K.P. One of the Mathers, a Calvinist pastor in early colonial Massachusetts, said that the real enemy of Christianity was not the virtuous person who did not believe in God.
I've always had a problem with the frequent use of "weekly attendance in worship" as a statistical benchmark for measuring commitment. This tends to make the groups that have a tradition of midweek services seem more committed than the others who usually hold only one worship service per week. Churches like Baptist, Catholic or Mormon have multiple services, often midweek or on Sunday night. Churches like my own, have only one. This means that while I am a very dedicated and active member of my church my average attendance is probably only three times a month because of travel, and thus less than the weekly benchmark. Is a person less committed because they attend a midweek Bible study or choir practice, serve in the church's soup kitchen or volunteer at a homeless shelter instead of attending formal worship?
1
Douthat does not address one issue: lying about church attendance. A number of years ago there were a couple of studies that showed that people tend to lie about attending church (I doubt there is a similar motive to lie about not attending church). Thus, the numbers reflected in the article by the two polls are probably overstating church attendance.
2
The people that practice religion, fall into three camps. There are those who need to be assured that everything will be alright, never mind the assurer. They just NEED to feel safe in a world of perceived (frequently heard from the pulpit) threats.
Then there are the folks who just need to feel like they belong to something greater than their own reality, Like Costco members, belonging to something that others also find useful or rewarding, joining with others can mask concerns of the greater good. Knowing you are not alone helps to dissuade feelings of helplessness.
Finally there are the policy driven. I call these folks the single issue voter, easily manipulated by the word from the pulpit. Their world stays neat and tidy only if they understand that their “issue” is being cared for. The “anti” groups are commonly found here.
I left the Catholic Church because of “boxed belief.” I woke up one morning realizing my need to foster the unique individual that I am. I have never felt more fulfilled or been happier.
4
The Catholic church cannot manage its own crisis of child abuse, sexual assault, deceit, resistance to oversight and accountability. The hypocrisy is so stark that one needs sunglasses to gaze upon it.
Then the intolerance of Methodist leadership follows.
Then Evangelicals relent on basic tenets to covet power by affiliation with an immoral, cruel, lying thug in the Oval.
You barely scratch the surface of the intolerant, unaccountable church leadership that is taking the church down of its own accord. Bye, church, bye.
3
Organized religion is the source of most of the evil throughout human history.
10
I to feel that if we did not practice religion there would be less conflict just kindness and understanding to the world might a better place to live
Ok gang let's go over it again, what history has taught us over and over.
1-Marx got it right, it is the opiate of the masses or at least a form of a drug.
2-When not abused it is like drinking a fine glass of wine, very enjoyable.
3-When you go over that you get the Dark Ages, Spanish inquisition, endless wars, child abusing priest and nuns, aiding Hitler etc. etc. in the Catholic region. Similar story with Islam.
4-Christ and Moh. were two of the most successful proponents of their particular drug, that is why they are two of biggest religions.
5-One of the main reasons the Catholic Church is in a free fall is because in the 20 century they became the chief conduit and protecter of child abusers in the world ie priests.
If you outlaw religion you get a closed society like the old USSR. If you don't regulate and supervise religion you get the history of the Catholic Church and Islam.
5
As a wholly irreligious in the conventional sense (explained below *) of this word, I view the US as a predominantly Christian country. At the same time, it should be kept in mind that the mafority's religion and forename is not a choice of free will of a newly born, but both are assigned to it by the parents.
* N.B. -- I am inclined to the medieval Manicheans' and Cathars' dualistic faith in life as Eternal Struggle of Good and Evil.
You worship a vain, ill-tempered god who was and is a brutal butcher, a serial abortionist, a tormenter of all of "his" creatures, who desperately needs to be both loved and feared. When last he was fully present on earth, he impregnated a young woman without so much as a "how-di-do?" and then didn't lift a finger to prevent her only son from being nailed up on a cross in the desert to die, alone and abandoned.
I find it hard to take anything you say seriously.
6
Religion is fine. It’s organized religion that gives religion a bad rep. Take the money grabbing, holier than thou, condescending aspects out of it and it might actually be helpful. Except of course for the evangelicals. Having anointed Trump, they better pray there is no hell. Right now, they are on a fast train to Hadestown.
1
"Measured by religious affiliation, yes, the millennial generation is the most secular in modern American history."
Even the most zealous, hardcore religious family can't insulate their child from the onslaught of the internet and social media. Snapchat, Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter can give tweens and teens a window into the world - the secular world. And they want a part of it, unhindered by the old-school, offensive dogma of their parents. That old school, offensive dogmatic message: Women can't be in power, Gays are excluded, your friends are going to hell, most modern art is influenced by the Devil. And the internet can say, well, all that is wrong -- take a look, read this, watch this. Young people now have access to the truth, if they seek it, and the parents have less control of the message. Hence, more young people have been freed to find themselves without top down instructions from a church.
4
I tried for years to believe in the Catholic religion. I did my first communion and confirmation. When I went to junior college, I would stop several times a week at my Catholic church and pray. When I had a daughter, I wanted her to get something from the church so I took her to church every Sunday and she also had her first communion and confirmation.
Neither of us attends church today. I find that churches rely too much on fear. Fear of hell for an eternity. Fear should not be a motivating factor to attend church.
In my opinion, God and Jesus stand for love. Love yourself as much as possible and then love others a wee bit more. Love means accepting others. There is no room for the hatred that some churches put against gays, trans or lesbians. There is no room for the fear and hatred that Trump spreads daily but is thought of as someone to emulate by proponents of the prosperity gospel.
I understand why Christianity may be collapsing. I haven't been to church for over 20 years and don't miss it at all. I am a spiritualist who has many beliefs but most of them do not coincide with today's churches.
1
Parsing statistics is a sign of denial. The trends are down for the Christians and it's only a matter of time before all Religion is replaced by Reason.
Oh, and "relatively stability?" C'mon, man, this is the NYT. Write better.
2
Church going simply does not fit well with the materialist, what's in it for me, online celebrity culture where everyone is or wants to be a star. Any form of self-sacrifice is out of step with the modern age of self-promotion. Which is strange because so many feel insecure in their jobs and in their family lives. Perhaps online communities have replaced face-to-face community and communion.
2
There may have been a point at which this collapse of religiosity might be seen as an interregnum before a stronger faith. To borrow from Simone Weil, it is eventually revealed as a kind of "purification". It doesn't feel like that though.
The failures of Protestant or Catholic faiths to negotiate the cultural changes of modernity are legion. Either freezing itself in amber; embracing the evangelism of capitalist excess; turning into "woke" hipster kitsch or collapsing into reactionary politics the attempts to remain relevant in a disenchanted world have not gone well. In any event, I'm not sure it could have gone any other way.
Reading Douthat I was reminded of the last stanza of Larkin's "The Church Goer":
"... A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.".
I am a 49 year old ex-Catholic. The reason I left the church is threefold.
1. The alliance between the GOP and organized religion. I could not square the readings in the New Testament with GOP policies that the church was supporting. The support for Mr Trump was just the latest example of this hypocrisy.
2. The priest sex abuse scandal and the multi decade coverup is inexcusable.
3. The teachings never have actionable advice on dealing with my life. How to deal with the inevitable addictions and bad habits are never discussed other than a blanket “Stop doing it.” “Become like Jesus”. But how? It’s No help to exhort the congregation to be better people and give advice that doesn’t work or no advice at all. I found the exercises of meditation in Buddhism actually helped but no help in Catholicism.
I remember thinking, the last time I attended Mass, other than weddings and funerals, “What a waste of time. This isn’t helping. Why continue supporting this farce and give financial support to something that isn’t helping me”
4
@Kevin
I gave up on the Catholic Church for 10 years. I came back as I was welcomed back by loving Catholics who loved Jesus and lived out His love. The Church is not just the hierarchy and it’s tragic mistakes that harmed too many. I love Jesus too and follow Him and I love my Church.
I believe Tocqueville’s thoughts on the proper relationship between religion and state explain religious trends better than his predictions about Catholicism (which is much different now than in his time).
“As long as a religion rests solely on sentiments that console man in his misery, it can win the affection of the human race. But whn it embraces the bitter passions of the world, it may be forced to defend allies acquired through interest rather than love, and they must reject as adversaries me who love it still even as they do battle with its allies. Religion cannot share the material might of those who govern without incurring some of the hatred they inspire”
6
There's one more category of Christian that needs to be recognized: liberal Christians. And using Douthat sociological categories, I suppose I should add the term 'white' and 'well educated' to that. I mention this to counter the 'neat' split between liberal secularists and conservative/immigrant believers that is assumed by many, and somewhat by Douthat. My guess is that most who are in this lberal category are mainline Protestant and perhaps Catholic if the latter hasn't driven them away (and I don't just mean because of the abuse scandals).
But this only adds to Douthat's thesis: Christianity appeals to the broader population more than is currently recognized.
3
I don't tend to judge Christianity by its practitioners, which is probably what gives me hope for it. But the problem that Christianity faces is that its most enthusiastic supporters are the conservatives on the right, who act and think nothing like Christ at all. If anything, these people are opposed to Christ's teachings. On the other hand, the people who are the most ostensibly Christian are the people on the far end of the left. The Christians who exist on this end of the spectrum are often silent about their Christianity. More often that not, though, people on the left are simply openly dismissive of Christianity altogether. The whole situation reminds me of Yeats' "The Second Coming": "The best lack all conviction, while the / Worst are full of passionate intensity."
5
So many comments focusing on people leaving the church for various moral reasons - shouldn't we consider the most obvious reason why people don't believe? Religion isn't morality. Religion is belief in the supernatural, and many of us "nones" simply don't see any evidence upon which to base such belief. We can find morality without faith. We don't need churches anymore, and we don't see any good evidence for why their claims are true.
15
Belief is not a matter of evidence. Science is. To hold faith accountable to the standards of science is to commit a category error, and to critique it for failing to be something it doesn’t claim to be in the first place.
1
@Mark Edington "Belief is not a matter of evidence." Why not? The various scriptures of various faiths are so laden with self-contradiction that the only way one can truly accept them is to reject reality, or put another way, reject science and the scientific method.
I don't think it stretches my point to bring up such contemporary examples as religious-based bureaucrats having at least one plaque installed in the Grand Canyon National Park that advocated the Canyon was created by God within 10,000 years! That plaque was soon removed as it was simply too far off the deep end. The NY Times ran an article, Oct. 6, 2005, that describes this schism over the chasm (couldn't resist). This is where insisting on faith over reality leads (and when one insists for "equal time" for superstition, that is what one is calling for, i.e., "my superstition comes first.")
And yes, if you believe that a burning bush spoke to Moses, and from that the Ten Commandments were created, saying you're superstitious is being polite. But if you adhere to the Ten Commandments, please stand by number 10, in which women are stated as one piece of a man's property, as are slaves, and we are all told not to covet those possessions of our neighbors. And if you cannot covet thy neighbor's slaves, then he cannot covet yours, right? Did I digress? Yup!
Dietrich Bonhoeffer sitting in a Gestapo prison cell in 1944 wrote of the death of the institutions of christianity because of their unwillingness or inability to have an answer for or response to the evils of the modern world. It was christians who voted for Hitler and christians who carried out the final solution. Today "christians" will have to answer for voting for a man who epitomizes every one of the 7 deadly sins. They're deadly because they kill your soul.
16
@Darryl B. Moretecom thanks for reminding me of that. Bonhoeffer is a Saint.
1
Amen. Well stated.
1
I am amazed at another example of how an apologist for organized religion like Mr. Douthat glosses over—or deliberately obfuscates—the question of what can guide our moral lives other than organized religion. Once more, he espouses the rubbish that you are either a church-going member of a Christian denomination, or you are a hopelessly lost soul, enmeshed in immorality and atheism, cut lose from all moral anchors.
I assure you, Mr Douthat, that those people who have opted out of organized religion have not fallen into an immoral hell. They continue to nourish their spiritual lives and moral values. In fact, most continue to try to abide by the teachings of Jesus to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” They just do not feel the need to sit each Sunday among hypocrites who profess those beliefs but do not adhere to them in their daily lives, while listening to the chief hypocrite preach that they are headed for eternal salvation—just because they are there.
And, Mr. Douthat, a piece of friendly advice. I would not talk about religion while totally ignoring the impact Trump-supporting “Christians” have had on Christianity in America. The spectacle of those putative “Christians” fervently supporting a President who lives every day in total contempt of God’s 10 Commandments and Jesus’ Golden Rule—and common human decency—has wreaked more damage on Christianity than secular humanism ever did. Trump is Satan’s ideal of a president.
24
Ross, organized religion has always done best when enforced by a secular government. Only when Constantine hoisted Catholicism to the state religion of the Roman empire, did the persecutions stop. If fact, Christianity was born from the horror felt by the Sanhedrin at the effects of the preaching of Jesus and its subsequent cooperation with Roman officials to end it. Matin Luther may have given rise to the Protestant movement, but Henry XIII gave it power. The ensuing wars and persecutions lasted centuries.
Religion has been, is, and will be coopted by humans with evil intent and used for their own personal ends. Trump is a golden example of this. If you can , in good conscience, defend his highjacking and distortion of Christianity to bolster his own power then you prove my point. If you cannot, then why aren't you calling out those Christians who support him?
The rise of religion in the United States after WWII was a direct response to the enforced atheism of the USSR. That enforced atheism was an attempt to strangle the power the Christianity in Russia, which had been used by tzars to consolidate power for centuries.
And so it goes on. Much of the issue in the Middle East was born of the Sunni/Shia divide.
There are simply too many humans with too many disparate beliefs on the planet. The only safe solution is freedom of religion and that means keeping it out of government.
4
@Maureen Steffek Martin Luther was wholly dependent on the power and protection of the Protestant princes. I imagi they were sincere in some way in teir rejection the beliefs and often bizarre practices of the Catholic church but they also profited greatly from breaking away from Rome and thereby negotiating new powers in their relation to the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor.
I am a practicing Catholic who loves my faith and will never allow anything to come between me and my God. I can thank my Irish Catholic relatives for sharing this wonderful gift with me and who made it part of their every day lives. It has sustained me in good times and bad and I know God will never desert me in my darkest hour.
There is so much I do not know about my Catholic faith and I was thinking before I read this article that I must start reading about this rich religion. I do know one thing and that God is there for me when I need him most. He has become my best friend when things are going well and when they are not. I am not a zealot but one who takes my faith seriously. That will never change and is the one constant in my life.
6
@KMW , I am actually happy for you. If your faith brings you this level of happiness, great. The problem is religions tend to want to hoist their values on the rest of us. Example: a southern former colleague-- divorced, not particularly active in his community or nice to others in any significant way-- questioned how I could raise my child to be a god person without taking him to church. I answered like this: my husband and I are very good moral role models. And left it at that.
4
@KMW Your tetsimony sounds sincere and good. But of all the children and grandchildren of Irish immigrants I am familiar with (many) most have left the Catholic church and are liberolsor moderte and support government's taking a more active role in solving poverty, war and environmental problems. And most who have stayed and go to church regularly are open and frank about their hatred of Afro-Americans, Latin immigrants, LGBT people, feminists, liberals, environmentalist, climate change scientists, Muslims. As they see it God is always there for them and their beliefs too. They find it easy to find Catholic pastors who share their devotion to Trump. And they consider only Trump Catholics as real Catholics.
Why is God available to you and not to the children caged at the border?
1
Religion must not have any place to influence public policy and politics, particularly in a secular democracy. The core value of a nation and public policies in such a democracy must come from truth (as validated by science and not any fairy-tales) and a sense of justice, which is far beyond the scope of religion and surely not a matter of faith.
Religion is a personal matter and must remain personal.
It's more important in today's America where religious landscape is changing with growing number of different religions and also change in Christianity from its traditional Protestant ideology of European immigrants towards more orthodox Catholicism from Latin American country.
Many of the current polarizing issues in today's America actually arises from religious belief which contradicts with truth, aka science. The gap between reality or truth and what general Americans believe on such issues is growing for many years now, as per PEW survey. That's very worrying and must be addressed.
8
What exactly are "anti-Christian policies?" Because you're better than that, Mr. Douthat, at least semantically. Just because a policy is not based on one man's version of Christianity it is not automatically "anti-Christian." It might be "non-Christian," but being non-Christian does not make something "anti-Christian." I am not a Christian, but that doesn't make me anti-Christian, nor does the idea that religion and government need to remain separate. The inability of "Christians" to enact laws based on religious beliefs and impose them on all the rest of us is not an infringement of your religious beliefs, and it's not anti-Christian. It is simply religious freedom. That the number of 'true believers' is dwindling will not be changed by those who deem it necessary to codify those beliefs and force them on the rest of us.
15
If the surviving religion in America is evangelical Christianity of the sort now being practiced, I would not think of this as much of a victory for the religiously minded. These are people who strongly support Trump ( 99% oppose impeachment!) and forgive him for his many sins because he has basically sucked up to them; I don't think there is any evidence that he supports any religion of any kind except that which benefits him today. The amazing thing is that this group has just about zero forgiveness for anyone else. And this is something that we want as part of the future of America?
9
Sir, with every passing day, mankind is learning there is no supreme being or all-powerful entity. We are learning about our Universe. We are learning what we are and our place in this Universe. We are only incredible mammals capable of destroying this small planet and, sadly, appear to be destined to do so.
Religion has had more than two thousand years to prove there is a god, and is less closer to doing so today than ever before. As the vast majority of all previously conceived "gods", the fascination of the current "god" will become extinct. I hope it is replaced with education of fact and knowledge based upon fact. If this simple fact had been proven, would we have the wars, inhumanity, anger, and mistrust that exists today?
"Faith", or perhaps "Wishful Thinking", or "I've got my fingers crossed", or whatever, is just a balm to calm human inability to understand and accept death and in doing so, it created "eternal life", a poor and inefficient manner to determine morals and values.
There is no question that when any organization exists because of its concern for the welfare of humans,positive accomplishment of life's vicissitudes brings peace of mind and personal reward. And we all must appreciate how religion has purposed man's desires to be creative in the various arts: music, poetry, theatre, architecture, sculpture, dance, etc. These areas celebrate what is possible for man. It does not in any way prove the existence of a supreme being.
8
I thought I knew Christianity.. not any more..
and what's up with American Christianity - is there a separate Christianity - specially adjusted to reflect GOP supporters?
We Americans must live by moral values which are the true values connect across any religion and keeps our country best and brightest. If we work with that; we can continue to make 21st century as an American century.
2
Joe Biden was apparently denied communion by a priest in South Carolina on Sunday because of his support of Roe v. Wade. This Catholic refuses to "toe the line" on the "diktats" from above on this and other issues such as contraception.
in January, and I am 69, I left Mass for the last time after my Italian immigrant pastor praised "our wonderful pro-life president". How is separating families, having children and adults die and long incarceration "pro life"? All our Latino brothers and sisters want is the opportunity for a better life through hard work and safety just as out ancestors did.
Mr. Douthat had better take an informal survey of the average age at Mass on Sunday. The pews are emptying, sadly, because of episodes like mine described above. I believe in the absolute separation of church and state plus a secular public life. Joe Biden does as well. He's a better Catholic than far too many one issue ones who condemn others. Oh, by the way, Joe received communion in his home parish. I've seen him and his family there.
11
We have left the church, also. Cannot stomach the hypocrisy!
2
Well, that's putting a brave face on a mass exodus which traces directly to the refusal of organized Christianity to evolve its story from the initial fairy-tale godhood designed to be spoon-fed to its simple, uneducated adherents in the first 1800 years of Christendom as mankind progressed, became literate, educated and hungry for the real meat it had to offer. And it's you, Ross, and your conservative Christian Taliban that are responsible. Instead of the uplifting Book of Proverbs, you focus on Deuteronomy. Instead of the spirituality of love preached by Christ, you focus on the vengeful God of Genesis. Lie and you'll go to hell instead of lie and you'll make your life a living hell. You screwed it up and now you're making up stories to justify the vengeful, nasty God you created in your own image. People are flocking to evangelical Christianity because they want black and white oblivious to the fact that your God made a world that unspools not in black and white, but in all the colors of the rainbow and a hefty dose of gray to keep us humble. In your rush to hell-fire and damnation, you've placed doctrine ahead of humanity and created the modern version of the First Century Temple that Jesus laid bare for its rule and hide bound exclusionary practices. Thanks.
5
What’s your problem with Genesis and Deuteronomy?
In this expanded time of science, religion no longer has a function. We can have a moral society without religion and of course, as many like Sam Harris have said, science will help us define a better, more stable, obvious and workable morality.
3
Science has the same problem as religion. What passes for religion is not religious or holy. What passes for science is statistics and not scientific. People quote what they hear but don’t experience or understand either one.
1
I don’t think people have turned away from Christianity more than in the past. I think people are just more open about admitting that they are not believers. Before they sat in the pews and pretended. I’ll believe that we are no longer a “Christian” nation when we elect an atheist for president.
6
Why is this the second opinion piece along these lines to appear in the past few days? We have separation of church and state for a reason and, as a nation, need to start acting like it. Whether people choose to ascribe to a religious belief and/or go to church (or not) is nobody's business but their own---nor should they push their beliefs on others. People just need to follow the golden rule and treat each other with decency and respect.
7
This article has nothing to do with the relationship between church and state. It’s just about trends in religious belief, which is shrinking. This is a lonely Catholic columnist, led by the largest pedophilia abusing organization in the history of the world, (a fact, not an opinion), trying to theorize (and hope) how church might not actually be dead yet.
Born and raised in a Methodist household. My children were raised in a Methodist household (with a bit of Quaker leavening). We had active ties with the church until in my 40s, the established, organized, corporate church stopped "speaking to my condition."
I am not less Christian, nor less "religious," merely unchurched. I believe my early church experience gave me an ethical or moral grounding, maturity has shown that those beliefs and practices are in the main universal among religious beliefs. "Post-Christian" and "anti-Christian" pertain to the established, corporate church, not to the belief system. The established, corporate church will continue to fail as it shrinks the tent.
6
I enjoy reading Mr. Douthat's column and understand his protective feelings toward Christianity, especially the Catholic variety. But, just last week, I saw a graph of the percentage of people who declare themselves as having no religion, the 'nones', versus time. The graph showed a relentless rise over decades, reaching nearly 30% at present. It was interesting that the graph showed two inflection points: after a leveling off during the 1970s and 80s, it perked up after 1990, slowing down its rise again after 2000, only to perk up once more around 2016. This is not a historically whimsical trend.
4
It seems that those who practice religion feel a sense of superiority above those who do not. Let me remind all those "christians" out there that over the past two thousand years the number of people who have been murdered (religious wars among them right up to the repent day), tortured, imprisoned, abused and discriminated against cannot be counted.
Many people cannot fathom a world without religion but I for one can do without.
7
Many of us miss the traditions & the community. We don't miss the hypocrisy or the various ministries that exist for their coffers, personal agenda and political meddling while bending "Christ Like" beliefs and way of life. Organized Religion in general.... Many of us have been able to live a Spiritual life that includes more inclusivity, protection of the Earth and Humanitarian beliefs and ways of life. Religion is man's creation and in many ways has lost its true meaning and purpose. Not all ministries but the loud outspoken ministers we've seen in the last few years are by far lost sheep not leaders. The ones that aren't stand out as examples for everyone.
Many of us have been over it for years.
3
Choose whatever faith one wants, or none. And don't forget, secular laws independent of any religion are what matter for peace and stability.
7
I guess we can hope Douthat is wrong. Surely the evangelical embrace of Trump strongly suggests that we'd be much better off without its influence in our lives.
5
This can not be “overstated”. Even “Christmas-Easter” types are turning it over to football, etc.
The traditional institutions left the “spiritual” back door open too long, and millions escaped to a variety of paths that were waiting, patiently, to supply their needs. Buddhists, shamans, yoga teachers, and some truly wise, unaffiliated, but public teachers are flourishing, as are many lapsed Christians.
4
New York Times columns that deal with religion in general and Christianity in particular almost always draw comments from atheists. I am a Christian, and let me say that I believe in separation of church and state and the better aspects of our pluralistic culture; I don't want to "force" my beliefs on anyone. One subjective observation, though: Many atheists I've encountered, as formally educated as they might be, come across as both ignorant and arrogant when it comes to their understanding of religion. These atheists have views that seem primitive, simplistic and anti-intellectual. Bishop Robert Barron summed it up well in a recent interview: "I'd say to some of my atheist interlocutors, come up out of that world. Come up out of that simplistic construal of religion into a more serious arena."
5
And what would this 'serious arena' be?
1
@JM
Primitive, simplistic, and anti-intellectual? Well, I guess that's a good way to describe the reaction of people who think 'religion' is a lot of hogwash and aren't afraid to say so.
Of course, I'm pretty sure only people who are really religious would describe it that way--the rest of us would describe it as rational.
I'm one of the Silent generation Ross mislabels. None of my living cohort belong to or attend religious services, except for funerals.
Why is that? Because we have lived long enough to see Christianity become an addendum to one political party, Were Jesus to visit Washington today, his driving the money changers out would begin at the White House then the halls of Congress.
We have also lived long enough to witness the folly of the Prosperty Gospel, the jailing of TV religious stars. The bankrupty of local parishes from the payments to survivors of sexual abuse by the clergy, when an established hierarchy refused to listen or have compassion on the least of these - the children.
We have also been part of the Women's Rights & LGBTQ Rights movements along with the Civil Rights movement. Where was the church during those times?
You're young Ross, keep reading books to your children & fearing what your Pope is doing to your adopted faith, but keep your mind & heart open there is still time for you to learn some of the lessons life & Jesus actually taught.
11
@Joan , I like your comment. but let's be honest, the Civil Rights Movement was led by black Christians, (MLK to name one) and supported by white Christians (RFK to name one).
You should take a look at what the Mormons are doing. 3 hr church is now 2 hours, they’ve broken up with the Boy Scouts, all of the church-oriented support meetings and activities are officially being converted into home-based objectives with leadership support. The clergy itself, always a mostly volunteer force, has been noticeably downsized, requiring fewer and fewer devoted members. All of this is an acknowledgment of the declining interest and ability of people to support such an activity. It returns very little by way of social support anymore. Members are too busy either getting by or climbing the mountain to keep such a high-demand religion going.
3
Ross admits that the millennials are increasingly anticlerical. He postulates that this is a temporary phenomenon and that they will come back to the fold. That's problematical. It didn't happen in Western Europe. It isn't happening even in the Middle East. Education begets agnosticism. There really isn't a God. Once you have an education you figure that out pretty rapidly. Then you decide how one should live. Hopefully, as in Western Europe, people will realize that they can live a satisfying moral life without a belief in some foolish superpower that doesn't exist
5
Exactly! The churches of Europe have been empty for quite some time!
It's not secularization that is destroying Christianity in this country - it's evangelical intolerance and narrow-mindedness that invokes Christianity while practicing its opposite.
15
We have learned that those who scream the loudest about their own virtue are the ones with the most to hide. Truly spiritual people do not try to dictate to others but are humble enough to work on their own shortcomings. This is the exact opposite in what modern day Christianity has become in America.
7
One word for why "Christianity" is losing it's appeal: hypocrisy. Hypocrisy of its leaders and those who profess to follow the teachings of Christ. Christianity has become a giant industrial complex with snake oil salesmen peddling to the gullible masses and abortion has become their cash cow. Men like Ralph Reed, the Falwell family, etc. claim to be doing God's work but really are doing everything they can to protect their position in the plutocracy.
Fundamentally how anyone who touts their "faith" and they follow the teachings of Jesus, such as honesty, integrity and truth, but throw their support behind Trump who the antithesis of all of this, further demonstrates the grotesque, twisted, doomed fate for the future of christianity. "Christians" should stop with the victim attitude that they are being attacked from all sides and step up and really live those values they claim to be all about.
7
@JKennedy , I remember during the Houston area hurricane-- it was a local and secular furniture store owner that turned his building into a shelter for displaced people. Joel Orenstein of the prosperity gospel locked the doors of both his church and personal estate.
1
The greatest indication that God either does not exist or is a powerless entity is that Donald Trump is still amongst the living.
4
We are not born sinners!
Mythology is not realty.
Most of us by nature are decent human beings period.
Money directly given to the poor among us would be more helpful--don't need to launder money thru church plates.
4
Conservative American Christians seem to me to have more in common with the Anti-Christ than with Christ. Just listen to how they scapegoat others for their misery, how they say hateful and inflammatory things about people, justifying their hate in a passage in the Old Testament while ignoring what Christ has taught. They actually invoke the death penalty for LGBT people pretty regularly. They are more in step with the harsh and stingy spirituality of the Old Testament than with anything Christ has said. And what about how they have perverted Christ’s teachings in order to proclaim a new prosperity gospel? Look at the way they treat others outside of their tight circles with suspicion and condemnation. They even condemn other Christians! And isn’t it stunning how many non Christians are more involved in doing the good works that Christ encourages than the pious pinched hearted Christians who even supported separating immigrant children from their parents and putting them in horrible detention facilities. Trump is by far more of their leader than Christ is.
3
@Frank Cambridge dictionary, bigot: "a person who has strong, unreasonable ideas, esp. about race or religion, and who thinks anyone who does not have the same beliefs is wrong". This works both ways. Your description of "conservative American Christians" is ludicrously oversimplified, lumps an overwhelming majority in with the minority you describe, the statistics on helping the poor are the inverse of what you suggest, etc. Were you speaking about almost any other religious group you would rightly be denounced. Research and data would help with some of the prejudice and ignorance.
@Charles
The only thing you say that I agree with is that not every 'conservative' Christian should be painted with that brush--but there are plenty who fit the description perfectly.
Ross, what is meant by your statement that the resilience puts limits on how successfully anti-Christian policies can be pursued? Are you subscribing to the conspiracy theories formulated and promoted by the Christian right that somehow they are persecuted for their religion? Nothing could be further from the truth, and I'm surprised that your statement even made it through editing. Women are consistently persecuted by the (male-dominated) Christian right, who work diligently above all else it seems to cut off our access to health care. The Christian right don't just dislike gay marriage -- they consistently cast shame on gay people. Religion gives a free pass to build superficial fences in the mind of those who practice it against those who don't practice it, while it doesn't seem to care about those who lie, steal and cause harm to others. Case in point: the Christian right welcome Trump and his thoroughly repugnant and dishonest character with open arms, despite his stealing from the poor (tax cuts) and his separating children from parents (border policy), simply because he professes to be one of them and panders to them. Shame on the Christian right!
5
the singular endurance of american churches can be laid in large part to tax exemption. the fact that "churches" can own property and rake in donations without rendering a dime to caesar is the main reason the preaching profession attracts so many hypocrites, pedophiles, con artists and cultists.
there's now also insufficient mystery in religion. holy books are too silly even for the simpleminded. full of contradictory parables, mythical histories and magical fairy tales, they can't compete with the intricate pseudoscience of flat earthers, crystal power, the secret, contrail conspiracies, astrology and neofeminist witching.
and, of course, we have the new age religions of the pyramid schemes and political partisanship. a few decades ago, "science vs. religion" or "creation vs. evolution" or "atheists vs. god" were a thing. my gosh, let's debate! now, religion is too inconsequential even to debate about -- unless you're a catholic columnist.
more and more of us just ignore superstition, and we don't suffer in the least for it. and as our numbers grow, other possibly religiously minded people observe our normalcy, humanity, decency, success and happiness. against our example, they contemplate their goat herder legacy, and ask themselves -- why bother?
2
However hard I try to understand columns like this, I just cannot get my head around the fact that all religions are man-made constructs and as such cleave to their designers' whims and prejudices. The reason that the USA is so overly religious, compared to other advanced countries, is the lack of critical thinking being encouraged in the school system.
I think the sooner religions are consigned to the dustbin of history, the better off the human race will be. However, if it works for you, then that's fine. My problem is and always has been the invasion of religion into the lives of people who don't want it.
Religious patriarchy is just another form of soft (and sometimes not so soft) coercion of the subjugated people. They are allowed no voice in the conduct of their own lives, so many have to flee and sometimes be ostracized too.
I understand that religion is supposedly a code of good conduct to live by: it's just that it's solely your idea of what's good and brooks no dissent. That is the problem, for me.
4
More people have seen the hypocrisy of organized religion and want no part of it. The Evangelical support for Trump is a good example of organized religion gone wrong. The Catholic Church is another example of religion taking no responsibility for sexual abuse of children and others for decades.
6
There is also an apparent erosion of separation of church and state a real safeguard this has been to democracy over the history of the USA
6
Douthat appears to equate "intense religiosity" with "piety and zeal."
I beg to differ.
If the "intensely religious" folks he's referring to are the fundamentalist Religious Right who support the foul-mouthed, foul-tempered, narcissistic, bullying, lying faux Christian in the White House, I'm not seeing the "piety." Zealous, yes. Pious, no.
9
@Marie S The most devoutly religious person in the public sphere today is Jimmy Carter.
A late, close and good friend used to argue that he did not believe in Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity Theory (Einstein was just "fooling around" with equations). My reply was always to smile and point out that he used a cell phone with GPS and these were dependent on QM and GR. He had empirical evidence, which he used daily, held in his own hand. He seemed surprised.
Clearly, Mr. Douthat writes very well and makes complex and subtle arguments about Christianity and its belief systems. Just as clearly, Mr. Douthat feels deeply about his beliefs and the 21st Century manifestation of his Catholicism.
However, to my knowledge, at least up to the present date, there is no empirical evidence to support these beliefs.
5
At my Catholic Church recently, a pro-life group gave out wrist bands that say “Pray to End Abortion.”
I want abortion to end, and pray that it will.
But this is not the same as outlawing it, or prohibiting it, or punishing for it.
Still, some Catholics and many Evagelicals use abortion as a political litmus test —“trumping” everything else: war, rape, philandering, gun violence, structural poverty.
So, parishioners such as myself stay quiet, but pray, but vote differently.
3
Recently I attended a funeral mass this my surprise patriotic songs were sang. The deceased had no duty as a solider, this was very disturbing.
Why does any of this matter? Why are we so "Christianity" centric? What's most important is that all are allowed to worship as they desire and those who prefer to live a secular life are allowed to do so as well.
7
I just have to laugh when I read about the "war on Christianity" and the demise of Christianity. Our society is positively awash in Christianity. It permeates every aspect of our lives, whether we want it to or not. Religion affects the education of our children, medical care, judicial decisions, both federal and state laws and regulations, the use of public space and even who merchants have to do business with. Christian prayer opens sessions of Congress and legislatures and meetings of fraternal organizations and even some sporting events. Christianity is everywhere in our culture. If secularization is pushing against it, then secularization is losing. Victimization is an important component of Christianity, and the bible is full of stories of the ways in which Christians were attacked. Modern Christians still carry that stigma, even though they have succeeded in overtaking so many aspects of modern life. Poor me, they cry, even as they suffocate the rest of us.
4
Christianity seems to be committing suicide. George Will wrote a column some months ago asking if the Catholic pedophilia scandal is the greatest crime in the history of the country. So Christ's church rivals the mafia in criminality. If the church hierarchy does not enough inspiration in their faith to protect children from pedophiles, that faith is dead as dead can be.
The scandal of Evangelicalism merging with Trumpism is not that Evangelicals are supporting a sinner. It is that Trump's philosophy of life is anti-Christian. His idea of the good life is to give free rein to his Greed and Lust, and the more he is able to sate these desires, the bigger winner he is. This literally is the philosophy of barbarism and the fact that Evangelicals have adopted Trump as their champion indicates that faith in these quarters is also dead as dead can be.
6
Jesus was an anti-institutionalist and an iconoclast and if the made-up bits of his story are to be believed, he would rail against organized religion were he ever to return, something which has been promised as being “any day now” for nearly 2,000 years.
4
If all Christians can do is willfully slice and dice attendance statistics, their religion will continue to decline.
Instead of doing math, they should ask what the needs are of people around them, and how Christianity can help.
And there is so much need! Churches could be packed.
If Christianity (or any other religion) can't see and address real needs, they deserve to disappear.
5
The most important reason for the decline of religion among millennials is that it is irrelevant. Once upon a time, theology - both Christian and non-Christian - grappled with deep philosophical questions: freedom of will, theodicy, reconciliation between science and the Scripture. Now Christianity has simply given up. Forget “justifying God’s ways to man” ( Milton). The only thing Christians are interested in is abortion. The Church of the Holy Fetus, however, is attracting a very select clientele: educationally and emotionally challenged. The rest are turning to all kinds of things to answer metaphysical questions: science, spirituality, politics, or video games. Anything is better than the company of evolution deniers, Bible literalists and religious nutcases.
7
The Pope has further clarified "who am I to judge". Although the LGBQT movement grasps at justification for their iniquity, Augustine was clear that un-repentant sinners were an abomination before God and were deserving of His Judgement. The faithful can only pray for their redemption. It does not make LGBQT lifestyle right before God.
I can't help but notice that the secularists in these posts are uniformly bitter. That is the sign of disgrace that would be predicted by gospel.
@Dr Robert Baran
What? Iniquity? Seriously?
Good to know all the places you don't exist. First Frank Bruni wants Democratic candidates to talk about God and then Nichola Kristof prays for this country to be a more enlightened and humane Christian nation and then Ross Douthat reassures us that a repressive sex negative and all around mean spirited Christianity is still resilient and strong.
6
As long as there's a vigorous campaign to get rid of LGBT rights for religious reasons, you don't have to worry about secularism taking over. When that campaign fails, then there will be cause for you to worry,
2
Well, we’ve installed Bill Barr as our new Monsignor. He should be able to take a confession or two.
3
You'd think Christians wouldn't worry about dwindling numbers as long as they were free to worship as they choose. You'd be wrong though. Persecution-narrative-navel-gazing is the real national pastime, and despite their objections to examples on the left, the religious right pioneered the behaviors known now as call-out culture, virtue signalling and political correctness. These hall of fame-worthy whiners aren't going to sit down quietly.
4
The author should try to distinguish between Evangelicals and Christians who practice the teachings of Christ.
3
More of the narrative that young Catholics will just come flocking back if the Church goes back to veils (as in the stock photo), Latin Mass, fish on Fridays, sexual purity obsession, and everything else that was part of 1920’s to 1950’s Catholic culture that had people feeling separate and holier than thou.
The pews would be full if the Church just started forbidding movies again!
Um...no.
4
A few more Donald Trump-like figures, and no decent, thinking person will be drawn to the uber-hypocrisy of American religion—especially of the evangelical “Christians”.
2
There are now two faces of American Christianity and neither is very pretty. One is the disgraceful raping of children by clergy all over the country and the other is the ludicrous support of Trump by people who falsely claim to admire Christ and his values.
Both faces make very easy targets for adherents of other religions all over the world as they critique so called American Christianity.
4
I am a practicing Catholic who embraces Pope Francis’ disdain for careerism and a doctrinal rigidity that equates, say, abortion with murder. Couple that with the generational fallout of the rampant sex abuse of kids at the hands of priests and it’s easy to recognize a Catholic Church in decline. I remain in the church because it still offers me a certain spiritual comfort. For many (even those attending mass) it seems to offer little but fulfillment of ritualistic habit.
2
The only form of Christianity that makes any sense, as far as I'm concerned, is that type that can accept that the Bible was written by much less than perfect men who wanted to exert power over women, and who had very little understanding of science compared to what we do now. IOW - the first order of business is to understand how flawed the document it. I am sad when I see people worshipping the book.
For those who care about the world, their life and each other and look to the Bible and others for inspiration - then great.
Unfortunately, it is very small percentage of Christians who understand Christianity in that way. They type of Christianity which demands outdated ideas is not helpful to society.
4
Mr. Douthat,
Please remember that "paganism" needs to be "Paganism" (in proper case). Paganism in the context of this article very clearly refers to the new religious movement and needs to be capitalized just like any other such movement. Though ironically, the routine failure of outsiders to capitalize Paganism appropriately reinforces the point of your article.
1
I think it was in the late 1980s to early 1990s (time flies by) when the wonderful Catholic Church I was attending in the east eighties (now closed) had a pastor whose excellent homily was on this topic. He was not at all preachy and his Masses were well attended but he said he would like to see more than just CAPE Catholics (those who only attended at Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Easter). I guess the Church was in decline then but to me it always seemed very well attended. Of course, he would know the actual attendance as he was familiar with the number of those appearing at all the Masses on any given Sunday. I also remember something else he said that has stayed with me many years later. "Please God give us health, happiness and holiness. To this day I repeat this daily.
There will always be the devout Catholics who fill the pews every Sunday and even go often during the week. I do not fear for the Church as it has existed for over 2,000 years and has seen tumultuous times before and has always bounced back. I know people who temporarily left the Church but eventually came back. There is an excellent program on EWTN called Catholics Come Home. It features Catholics who came back and those who came into the Church from other faiths. The joy they experience is so rewarding and refreshing to see. It makes me appreciate this excellent gift I have been given called the Catholic faith. There is no greater gift then that.
2
I think Christopher Hoffman, in a previous comments, hits the nail on the head. Evangelicalism, for example, represents reactionary tendencies towards a changing America—echoes of the 1920s and the rise of anti-intellectualism, skepticism of science, reaction against racial and religious diversity, fear of modernity, and the loss of an agrarian identity in a rapidly urbanized and industrialized America.
It reminds me of a country John Keble envisioned in mid-19th century Britain, “It would be a gain to this country were it vastly more superstitious, more bigoted, more gloomy, more fierce in its religion, than at present it shows itself to be.” (Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians).
These sentiments are very much reflective of some Evangelicals and the America they desire to create. And there are politicians that articulate these sentiments in their speech and in their actions.
So, we need to recognize the threat these corrosive ideas have on our democracy and the appeal they have on a large segment of people who seek to recreate an America that no longer exists.
9
Everyone should pay close attention to the theatrics displayed by any leader, secular or religious, who wishes to gain anything from the audience: votes, money or both. What Ross describes as "lukewarm" Christianity might just be practical Christianity rather than charismatic oriented, emotion based fervor. Such fervor can be seen in megachurches, political rallies, athletic events and rock concerts. The soothing singsong voices of speakers which than swell into shouts or calls for action. I was raised Catholic, have attended Pentecostal churches and have found that I get more out of reading books that explain the workings of the natural world in which I live than I ever did sitting or standing and swaying in a church. Practical Christianity or communitarianism addresses the whole person and the whole society. And I heard a wonderful comment from actor Ed Norton on Q yesterday. Ed's grandfather was an urban planner who said cities are gardens for growing human beings. The original roots of Christianity started off in, then, metropolitan port cities and their nearby environs.
2
So-called "christian peoples" have a 2000 year history of brutality and waging war - on each other and on "others" -- genocide and enslavement of peoples around the world, pedophilia, subjugation if not virtual enslavement of women and otherwise behaving contrary to the 'faith' they profess. In The history of the world up to the present time proves beyond question that christianity - in this country and around the world - is and always has been a fraud, a deception that cloaks a depravity rivaled only by ISIS.
7
American "chrisitanity" has supported slavery, genocide, racism, sexism, discrimination, child abuse and may other crimes. It can't decline soon enough for me.
12
While everyone is citing polls about people fleeing religion and holding more palatable views, evangelical Christians are enjoying the haughtiest of days at the zenith of their authoritarian power. They're growing stronger, not weaker.
They've aligned themselves with right-wing dictators around the globe, openly and brazenly colluding with them to subvert our democracy. They've locked in a core base of propagandized supporters who either receive information from controlled sources or simply don't care what is truth.
Their core may appear to be shrinking, but it's becoming increasingly dense and very powerful.
4
One doesn't need lavish buildings, pretty outfits and mask to worship GOD. A well intentioned spirit may suffice exclusive of the synod.
Best to be earnest in all that ye say and do, lest it cometh back unto you.
3
While the child abuse scandals have certainly affected adherence to the Catholic Church, US evangelicals have left a sour taste in Protestant mouths for a vast number of the rest of us.
Hailing a leader who has nothing to ask Gods forgiveness for (Trump’s own statement), supports an administration who cages children and infants without even recording the contact info of their parents, turns Jesus’s exhortation of “what you do for the least in your midst, you do for me” into a xenophobic rejection of all immigrants while plotting the neglect of our needier citizens in direct correlation to the state evangelical inhabitants.........hard to see any attraction to that loud mouthed version of Christianity.
And with Pence and Pompeo as avatars of Christianity who exemplify modern day Sadducees and Pharisees while covering for a likely felonious, certainly corrupt and inept president who is publicly trying to obtain foreign help (again) for his re-election......who wants to worship in a church that elevates such as them?
7
In today's political climate, I no longer call myself a Christian. I just cannot hate enough as required by this community.
9
Christianity is a fake religion. To be Christian means to follow the tenants of Christ. Firstly, most "Christians" (and their leaders) do not adhere to this very basic principle. Secondly, if you carefully read the Bible or read the works of biblical scholars you discover Jesus never stopped being a Jew. He was born, raised, lived and died as a Jew. He certainly railed against the graft and corruption he saw in the religious leaders of his day; but he never divorced himself from his god or religion. Therefore for any individual to truly follow him one would have to become a Jew.
Personally, I put more faith in quantum mechanics than I do in some nomadic tribes' deity...
7
@Rick: Douthat's op-eds are worthless, so I only read the comments instead. Your contention that Jesus was
a Jew is more fiction than fact. Before the common era there were both Jews and non-Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. There is absolutely no proof that Jesus was a Jew. The scriptures, written at least a hundred years after the "fact," are given way too much credibility. For non-believers, what ever their faith at birth, they can safely rely on the assertion that the various religions are most likely myths.
1
Rather than the collapse being "overstated", given its involvement in politics; It is overdue.
9
When I went to church there was a huge discrepancy between what the priest said and what we believed. I'll assume it's the same with Evangelicals. Community plays a big part of religion and most people want to get along so they keep their doubts to themselves.
Religious people could be very demanding but the worst are the Secularist. Have an opinion other than what they have and they will construct a very negative profile of you. They will cast aside out faster than any fundamentalist Christian at the slightest disagreement.
Tell a secularist you're against a Bullet Train between between DC and Boston Unless private money built it and a Secularist will decide not only you're ignorant but also against immigration.
1
Not going to a formal place of worship does not a secularist make. A secularist is not necessarily a non-spiritual person. Douthat is drawing all kinds of conclusions based on nothing more than "if you ain't a church-going Christian you're a secular hedonist."
Religions, Christian and otherwise, have betrayed their flocks big time. The hypocrisy is so blatant spirituality has been destroyed. That's why people, Christian or otherwise, leave organized religions. Many of those who find a home in fundamentalist versions of organized religions are receiving confirmation of all their own biases, bigotries, jealousies--the assurance that blaming others is THE TRUTH, although that truth has no relationship to the teachings of Christ.
And whether or not the numbers of Christians are growing, the fundamentalist branch of the religion has a stranglehold on American politics and policy making. It is just sooooooooo easy to dismiss secularists as being empty vessels. The merging of fundamentalist christianity and fascism is very real.
3
Subsidize something, and you get more of it. Take away the subsidies financed through the tax code, and the direct spending through charity/fronts, and we'll see who is faithful.
4
My favorite Christian was the late William F. Buckley.
Who never missed an opportunity to make it known that religion was, for him and conservatives like him, indispensable for keeping the proles in line.
6
I know that Mr. Douthat's Catholicism is huge in his life. He is obviously an intelligent person. I wish he would write a column explaining how he can square his conservative, devout Catholic beliefs with an honest respect for women. I know he loves his wife and daughters. How does he accept that women are forever excluded from leadership in his own church? How does he accept that his church does not allow women control of their own bodies, when the tools for that control are available? How does he accept the harm that the Church's contraceptive ban perpetrates among the poorest women of the third world? How can he love an institution that subjugates and shows contempt for women? I would honestly like to know.
11
Fundamentalist Christians regularly lecture everyone, in the public square, about the dangers of "relative morality". For example, Attorney General Barr's recent godawful speech at Catholic Notre Dame University.
Yet their support of Donald Trump shows they are the kings of relative morality. They have weighed the costs and benefits of supporting Trump, and made their decision, regardless of any absolutes.
The point being, all subsequent hypocritical lectures by the right-wing devout, criticizing relativism, can be henceforth laughed at with impunity.
4
But most Christians today are only Christians because they consider it either self-help or part of their Western cultural identity (in opposition to the Chinese and the Middle Easterners). Since you can't convert to Judaism, Christianism fills this "cultural identity" vacuum.
This is also true for the vast majority of the people who consider themselvs religious nowadays. Sure, they may go to their temples once a week, but religion for sure doesn't have the political power it had during the Middle Ages and the beginning of th Modern Age, where it owned most of the land and had the power to crown and unseat kings and emperors, as well as tax all the peoples.
1
I recently went to a “Protestant” church service, with rock music, free coffee, a 48 minute sermon by video on a projection screen, and a few bible verses tossed in.
This church packs in crowds by the THOUSANDS every weekend. They have a workout room, play land, and conference rooms free by reservation.
Traditional Protestant Church services and the Catholic Mass are positively medieval rituals by comparison.
By this I mean it’s hard to read the faith-significance or political-cultural significance of “attendance” figures when the very concept of “worship services” encompass these mega-fun churches, and the Joel Osteens of the world packing former sports venues with prosperity gospel.
The stats are not telling the real story, whatever that story is.
2
Ross, I am not questioning the integrity of your faith which I suspect is genuine, nor do I question that you are earning a better than most American's salary by using the topics of faith and religion. It's a little like the young pretty girl who marries a much older rich man. Does he know if she loves him unconditionally or is it the the life he spoils her with. What difference does it make? There is no good reason for you not to pursue your arguments here in this column. Clearly, I cannot resist wondering if you can make a valid case on any given day. Always a hot topic for both the holdouts and those like myself who have left behind their childhood fairy tales. I would love to have you at my Thanksgiving table. Of course, you would be sitting next to Kurt Vonnegut, Werner Herzog, Cole Porter and any number of my Catholic siblings (I have 10) at my fantasy dinner table. You can bring a guest or two of your own choosing.
1
If Christians would focus more on helping the poor and oppressed and were less infatuated with self-serving drives for immortality, power, money, and the abuse of those who don't agree with them, Christianity might stand a chance.
4