So, the latest Pew survey on religion
came out.
Douthat is pretty excited, in fact he
wrote multiple articles about it.
In the first he takes three categories
he fleshed out in his book Bad Religion--Biblical, Spiritual, and Secular, and looks
how those groups fair in the survey. He argues there are a lot fewer “Biblical”
folk around, instead they’re bleeding into the Spiritual center, even if they
identify as “Biblical.” So, even people who are claiming orthodoxy are doing so
while not connecting to orthodox traditions. Similarly, they are evangelical,
but not members of an evangelical denomination. So, a self-identified
“biblical” population may not change much for reporting purposes, but the
denominations connected to them may decline.
In his second article he takes a
slightly different route to say a similar thing. He points out that the Pew
study is about identification, not practice. So, someone might go to church the
same amount, but no longer identify as Christian. He then goes on to wonder if
the whole thing just reflects the atypical maturation process of Millennials—that
they’re not getting married so they’ve not boomeranged back to church in order
to connect with a community to help them instill values and a sense of the
transcendent in their children.
In some ways, both these articles point
to the polarization and atomization of modern America. On one hand, people
today are strongly encouraged to pick a side, either atheist or fundamentalist—middle
ground is discouraged. On the other hand, it points out non-practicing
affiliation is a value for many Americans.
One might wonder, if a war was
called between the two factions, would anyone show up?
Kevin Vallier of Bleeding HeartLibertarians has a different take away from this poll. He points out to his
Atheist friends, who are gloating at the demise of Christianity, that the kind
of Christianity that is disappearing is the reasonable kind. Their shadow-self,
the Fundamentalists, are going strong. He mourns the disappearance of the
reasonable mainline-middle-man (he describes such a person as a father figure)
who could bridge the gap between a fundamentalist mother and atheist son.
Then there is Clint.
He sees the Pew Report as a product of
masochistic mainliners. We, he claims, have a deep seed of self-loathing within
us, and therefore these reports (or at least how they are read) are shaped to
cater to that impulse. The very categories different denominations are put in
are categories only mainliners would use. In short, there is a much richer
religious story in America than this report would show, so we should pull our
heads out of our belly buttons and take a look around.
My own take is as it has been for a while;
mainline decline has to do with the 3D’s, Demographics, Decentralization, and
Disestablishment. Sometime this summer I'll be preaching on this subject, so wait with bated breath!
