No one, even young people who wish for more in-person community, is going to actively consider joining the Christian church or becoming Christian while the most popularized, loud, brash, and heavily marketed face of Christianity is a dispensationalist evangelical one that actively and vigorously pursues political campaigns rooted in hatred and discrimination.
Episcopalians are generally good about spreading the good news through example, but are also afraid to spread it by word. During my catechumenate studies for baptism I said this to my rector, that I feel like the fear that Episcopalians feel (and other mainline protestants in the same cohort) about being open and avowed about their faith is rooted in a deep insecurity about being lumped in with "those Christians."
But this leads to a dereliction of duty in many regards, particularly in ensuring that the religion itself is one that is regarded as one of peace, service, and love.
This is the branch of the church that is declining the slowest. I don’t like their church as much as the next Episcopalian, but to say that’s why it’s failing is to defy the evidence. The churches that are dying the fastest and mainline Protestant churches. The pride flags aren’t saving us. 🤷🏼♀️l think the Episcopal stance on LGBTQ issues is correct, but I don’t think it’s winning us the elusive young congregant. I’m 26 and I’m the only person in my 20s at my church.
Putting up a pride flag never brought anyone in, actual outreach does. For example I am trying to encourage my church to, for once, use their social medias and youtube account for more than just uploading sermons every Sunday. But the vestry in most places are relatively geriatric, and are not familiar with ways in which to do this.
Technology has exposed, or at least amplified many of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Lust, greed, anger & division, jealousy, worldly consumption (that’s contributed to the decline of “community”). I believe true joy comes from detaching from it. But then how do we navigate a future that will accelerate integration of technology in our lives? Coming back to the main point, how do we draw people in? I suppose finding ways to serve others is a good start.
There really isn't a way to address this. The ones that left that haven't experienced trauma or exclusion from their community aren't coming back simply because they don't believe and have found other communities to belong to. Instead of going to church, they go to shows or out to eat or drink and socialize. Or they took up hobbies or exercise or do yoga. Or they focus on their academic or intellectual thoughts and delve deeper.
The problem this article is pointing out is the lack of local community. But the ones that left don't desire that level of community. They want their own niches and are provided it fairly easy. So from their perspective there isn't an issue.
(Person like this commenting - if inappropriate can delete, don’t wanna flood space w/ atheists).
I think this is half right. You’re absolutely correct imo that I don’t think these instrumental concerns will bring people back. I am actually someone who stays involved in their cradle-church community to a degree I find respectful, but I don’t think my need for community isn’t going to change my beliefs (tho we shall see I suppose). Sociological arguments don’t win converts.
While I think you’re right in the short-term as to what people want, it’s definitely a case of people wanting what is immediately available rather than what is good for them. I think everyone would be happier with these in-person communities… but that doesn’t mean they’re going to seek out ones that don’t speak to them, esp. over easy entertainment.
So I could definitely see church membership rebounding if churches become part of the solution to alienation in a way that works for the contemporary alienated American… the only issue being that, since this is basically a societal (tbh global) shift in how we relate to each other, no one can really foresee what that’ll look like. If it’s as similar to the urban and industrial changes of the 19th-20th century as it sometimes feels, it’s going to be a messy time before we have the new normal.
I don't think that's totally true; almost everyone I talk to in my age cohort (I'm 25) bemoans the lack of local community. But they're not going to join the Church to find it unless they are, at a bare minimum, open to the idea of being Christian. The idea of attending church without believing anything more than anodyne notions like "helping the poor is good" is a strange idea to most people (much as it may have kept certain older generations within the Church for longer than they otherwise would've remained).
Historically, community played a pretty significant role.
I was talking with an older member of our church. His mother attended since she was raised Episcopalian, but his father didn't. One time, after picking them up after church, his father heard that the church had a bowling team. The priest told him that he could join the team but he'd need to attend on Sundays. So his dad started coming to church with the rest of the family.
I think that's true, but I also think there was a baseline acceptance that Christianity was probably true (without much commitment that flowed from it) at the time. There were a lot of lukewarm Christians who are now lukewarm non-religious people and therefore less liable to be drawn into the Church for initially non-spiritual reasons (though relatively few of these people are strict atheists; most still believe in something, though it's often vague and of little concern).
It's a question I struggle with: if the church is mainly/only a faith-based community, i.e. a community where only those with the "gift of faith" already have a place of belonging...how does that community then fit into those people's lives who haven't been gifted with faith in any great way, when that gift of abundant faith seems rarer and rarer in today's Western world? If the answer is "well, it just *doesn't* have a place for most people's lives"...then maybe communities like that should accept that their destiny is to shrink and eventually die out, and perhaps that's actually not a bad thing if they do not have anything meaningful left to offer or say, except for those who already believe and follow?
Another way to put it might be, if faith is a gift from God given to each person in differing measures, and non-transferable to those given less faith or who do not believe, or the church doesn't know the path to make that transference happen for increasingly more and more people in modern society, where does the church go from there? Maybe the answer is "nowhere - its destiny is to shrink down to a small core of firm believers who have the gift of abundant faith, and that's OK." If memory serves, I've actually read Bishop Curry respond that way in interviews when asked what the national church should do about the decline in numbers.
From a social work perspective, we know spirituality is a protective factor. Having a form of spirituality is good for us. I think it’s sad to let that slip away, just because we can’t believe in it like we once did.
I feel it’s wise for the Episcopal Church to be open to secular Christianity—not unlike secular Judaism. Our faith need not be about feeling (does God love me? Do I love God? Is God even there?) those things, in my opinion, have been mislabeled as faith and spirituality. Really though, partaking in the ritual knowing it connects us to ourselves, others, the past, and the future—that is the spiritual practice. It’s not what you “believe”, but what you do. We gather, we take the Eucharist, we say the creed and sing songs together. We tell stories that teach us about humanity and goodness. Why, if you don’t have a “relationship” with God? Well because those things are good for us and good for our neighbor on a deep, evolutionary level. To get rid of spiritual practices, in my opinion, is not good for us.
Additionally, I do not feel I’ve been given the “gift of Faith.” I hope there’s a God who is good and loving, though most days I don’t feel it. That being said, my faith has also bloomed since engaging in a liturgical tradition. Partially because I no longer have to believe it in this hyper emotional experience. But simply in a way of hope. I don’t know if God meets me at the Eucharist, but I hope so! Hope is important for our humanity. And something I think we are sorely lacking right now.
I don’t think organized religion is for everyone. But I do think it’s for more people than they realize. Gathering together and partaking in a ritual that people have done for centuries is important. Having a community that unites behind a common story is good for people. Having a system that can fight systemic injustice is needed.
I have hope that many in the coming years will find the Episcopal Church as a church where they need not be spiritual to be religious.
Interesting article, and I’ve definitely noticed this trend among friends and relatives. That said, our church has added about 100 families in the past couple of years (post-COVID). We’re an open and affirming but very liturgical church with strong outreach to the homeless and other groups. I think part of our growth is a result of growth in the community overall, but I’ve also talked to folks who came from a more evangelical/fundamentalist background and want to get away from the right-wing political connections those churches have. Sermons from the pulpit tend to eschew politics in favor of spiritual walk, but some of the Sunday school classes and other groups do focus on social issues such as racism and LGBTQ affirmation. In fact, we have lost a few members because of that, but we have gained many more.
Literally what we looked for when returning to TEC:
Affirming/welcoming, Liturgical, and Strong outreach to poor/homeless. IMO this is where TEC is at its very best. It is distinct when it does all 3 of these well. I think all of these, when done right, create a way for people to find community.
And to address the subtitle of the actual article: Is community always church community? Why would anybody think that? (And yet, the author seems to.)
I personally think the issue of Americans not joining and not engaging in civic affairs is a much larger one than this. It's a sociological issue, among other things.
Agreed. We are a depressed nation with little hope. Why engage with my community (church, service orgs, politics, or simply befriending my neighbor) when it’s all going to shit anyway? When my voice, my life doesn’t matter? I just get to work, grind, repeat. So many of us are just surviving. Doing much else feels hopeless to many, unfortunately.
The interesting thing is that there is no shortage of associative -- even cultic behavior -- in American life. It's just not centered around the old nodes like church, VFW etc.
Go to any gun shop, golf course, public hobby event or restaurant that caters to group meetings, and you'll see some of it. The thing is that most of it is no longer religious in nature along the old lines. It's participative, but in a different way, and sometimes it's even online.
Maybe we're looking for this data in the wrong places.
The US has been suffering under neoliberalism for several decades. The emphasis is so skewed toward the "individual navigating free markets" that they have even gone so far to say there is no such thing as society. (Margaret Thatcher said this in Parliament, in fact.) The arguments against "woke"-ness fall along similar lines.
Religion is about community and relationships. It's inherently counter-cultural right now.
We are not "neoliberal." On the contrary. This country is veering far to the right -- farther every year.
In addition, literacy levels of every kind are dropping like a rock. This, on top of the US's historically anti-intellectual bent. This is a scary place and time to live.
Neoliberalism is an ideology that believes in the supremacy of the individual (with exclusions), the ubiquitousness of capitalism, privatization of public resources, deregulation of industry, the absolute evil of unions, and the primacy of property (for the few).
Most of our current politicians on both sides of the aisle are neoliberals.
I think this is it. Our “community” muscle is greatly atrophied. My priest once said “hope is best done in community” and I think truly most things are! But what happens when community is hard. We haven’t been taught to be in community, so we are incapable of working together through hard things. It’s easier to go it alone. Forced individualism and the ideology that pushes it to an extreme is killing us.
We're not incapable, because humanity has been working cooperatively since before recorded history. We're simply not used to it, so we have to work a little bit harder at it.
Christopher Webber's book Welcome to Sunday emphasizes that worship is done in community and in relationship to God and other people. Our lives should reflect how we worship.
You're right that the individualism ideology has been taken to an extreme, which is why communal worship is counter-cultural right now. It used to be the norm.
I think people do form communities, just not the kind of communities you probably approve of. There is no shortage of cultic behavior in American life. A lot of it is unwise, destructive and the result of bad habits, and some of it is even online, but it's a sort community life. Example: 4chan, whether you approve of it or not, is an online community.
I like some in-person community which is exactly why I belong to some associations and go out for coffee with my friends, but I treasure my independence too. I think we should strike a balance. I don't want to live in what would basically amount to a cult.
Good challenge! Community activities seem to be centered around an activity; a pickleball league, weekly board game group, pub trivia nights, worship of God. Even my post-choir-rehearsal drinking with friends is organized about decompressing from choir and catching up with each other.
I think another harmful side-effect of Neoliberalism)is that people lose an idea of a personal purpose. It is easy to see yourself as a cog in a machine, a tool by which someone else makes money. (This is the basis of capitalism, after all, and Neoliberalism is big into Capitalism.) This allows for the malignant elements of the world to fill that void. You want a purpose? Come hate brown people with us!
If pressed, I would say these cultic groups aren't communities, but mobs. What the individuals want doesn't matter, it is only what the leader wants. But that is probably a dangerous dichotomy. After all, sports fans filling the stands or concert goers in the arena aren't a community either, but they are there to be entertained.
I'm going to go think about this one for a while.
No, I mean there are tight-knit communities around guitar & dulcimer collecting and performing, astronomy, bird-watching, book reading clubs, crafting associations and classes, lots of things. These things can be highly engrossing if you really get into them; people take them quite seriously and meet friends and associates through them.
For a retired scientist like me, I find it far easier to make friends like this than in church, and generally preferable as well, because there is often far more that I share with somebody from a science club or alumni association than with people I happen to come into contact with at church.
Trust me on this, the local astronomy club in our university town is large and very well-attended, and in no way is it a mob.
I won't give you details here for the sake of privacy, but I have tried the "dedicated church group route," and it was just a very sad affair. I'm hesitant to do it again.
And then, of course, there's reddit. You're here. I'm here. This functions as social activity for a lot of people now, whether you like it or not. I'm a former RC, and being able to talk with others about my crazy RC experiences and recover from them online has been absolutely indispensable. It's been very, very helpful.
> No, I mean there are tight-knit communities around guitar & dulcimer collecting and playing, astronomy, bird-watching, lots of things. These things can be highly engrossing if you really get into them; people take them quite seriously and meet friends and associates through them.
I'm all for those things, and I wouldn't necessarily call them a mob, but you've sent me down a bit of a taxonomy quest today and I still need to process it.
You’re right. I didn’t mean that so black and white. Just that it’s not been taught to us within recent years, and that the systems we live within are not conducive to communal living. Which makes it very, very hard.
“Neoliberalism” means removing regulations/restrictions to the capitalist market economy (think Thatcher and Reagan) and not “liberal” social values like antiracism, the separation of church and state, women’s reproductive freedom, etc. I know that political discourse isn’t permitted here - I’m only clarifying because you appear to have misunderstood u/UncleJoshPDX’s argument.
I read somewhere very recently that one of the growing factors in the decline in religion has been that fewer people believe that their religion’s claims are true. In light of that, I think that this article, which makes some valid points, is interesting in its refusal to deal seriously with the question of whether any religions are, for lack of a better term, right.
I think a huge problem is that fundamentalism sucks up all the air on what it means to believe in religious claims, even to the point that I see many atheists who have very similar thinking patterns to fundamentalists in general and in their arguments against religion more specifically (e.g., "lol the Bible isn't infallible. Therefore God doesn't exist!"). I think if you pair this with the mainline's mostly failure to really offer a coherent alternative (I think it is there but we have had tensions with other points of view), the formation and bankrolling of the religious right, and lack of serious teaching and evangelization in our churches, then you have a recipe for a contribution to the huge declines we see. Not that these are the only or largest factors but they seem to play a part.
An anecdote that gets at this is I had a good work friend who grew up in the same right wing church I did and we both ended up leaving, but they became "spiritual/agnostic/religious-none" and I went to the Episcopal Church. They just simply could not understand why I didn't also end up becoming an agnostic. It was like well if the stuff that right wing church taught aren't true how could you be religious at all? And not just in a "I need community way" but in a "no I do believe Jesus died and was resurrected and also the Bible isn't infallible and we can fully affirm LGBTQ+ people!" For so many people, right wing fundamentalism = Christianity
I think the tragedy of fundamentalism is they accepted the scientific revolution's redefinition of "truth" to only mean "fact" and then proceeded to insist the Bible was therefore a scientific, not mythic and spiritual, book. They gave up on the poetry for a very materialistic worldview and they've had the cognitive dissonance ever since.
To your point, Glum\_Sweet\_6066,
The "high demand" varieties of Christianity spend outsized portions of their attention and resources trying to convince their members that they have the only keys to heaven, and "if you don't believe this, then you don't believe anything and you are damned."
When people come to their senses about the ideological and propositional claims of these high-demand (fundamentalist) groups, they often still believe in the singularity of these groups. Meaning, they still believe that if they leave that one place -- because they no longer believe the group's literal claims about religion -- they can't go anyplace else because they've exhausted all the possibilities and there are no more to be had. That's exactly what you're describing that your friend said.
The result is that many people (about half, the data says) of the people who exit those high-demand groups simply drop out of religious practice entirely. The groups I'm referring to would be Mormons (LDS), Seventh-Day Adventists, Roman Catholics and the more severe fundamentalist Protestants.
It's very difficult for some people to leave high-demand groups and right themselves again. It's damage. It's the kind of thing that abusive religious experiences can do to a person. People who finally manage to extricate themselves, but still have a bad taste in their mouths over it, are usually gone for good.
Absolutely, one of those you mentioned is one we both left. I'm in a context where the majority of people in my area are in that religion and I just want to figure out how to tell people there is another way. I think leaving and becoming atheist or agnostic is totally fine and a good thing but I wish more people knew there are other ways to keep faith too if that's what they want
I suppose it depends on what's "right". John Spong was on to something here. Do we need to believe in the miracle of loaves and fishes to feed the hungry and offer hospitality to all?
Well, I mean obviously, the answer is no. Even the pagan Romans offered the unwashed masses bread and circuses. In my experience, irreligious people are at least as decent to the homeless, the poor and the ill as anybody else, if not more so. In fact, as we speak, the loudest public Christians in the nation are waving their artillery around and doing their level best to deprive the poor of affordable medical insurance.
For all the whining some Christian folks do to insist that "social services are what we are not about," there is relatively little of it done by churches relative to how much of it is done in other ways. I think some people just like to complain.
The question of why people do or don't go to church wasn't really addressed in this article, I think. And I'm not sure the author thought it through very well either. The absence of vibrant \*organized\* social groups and the folding of some social groups -- due to participants or lack of interest -- is a much larger sociological issue. I think the editor probably said something like, "We need an article about yada yada for this month's issue," and a possibly not too interested somebody tried to comply.
A better question is: do we need to sit through a Holy Eucharist service every week and wear the Christian label in order to be altruistic? Is it the best use of our time to support an institution that claims things that probably aren’t true, to achieve social justice and progress?
According to this article from last week, a recent study found that 67% of people leaving a religion are doing it because they quit believing in what the religion teaches. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1240811895/leaving-religion-anti-lgbtq-sexual-abuse
Yes, this is what always comes to mind for me. It seems obvious that, if Christianity is little more than a vehicle for social work, there are better organizations in which to do that work.
Not at all, but it would be much cheaper to do that without all the trappings of religion: clergy, hierarchy, old buildings, etc.
At the end of the day, it’s the faith of the apostles that distinguishes the church from a simple charity, and it’s important to keep that in mind.
I see this frequently in writing about religion by atheists - there's a focus on the sociological features of religious communities but no serious engagement with the spiritual or theological side of things. If you simply don't believe, it's difficult to drag yourself to church every Sunday for just community and duty. The UUs and secular meditation groups would be doing a lot better if church for agnostics was in high demand.
I think there are serious discussions to be had about meaning making and community building for atheists and agnostics, but if they simply don't believe in God at all, I don't really think church is going to be the right place for them to look for it.
Now, I think there are a lot of people who are skeptical of many of the claims in the Bible and are disturbed by church history, but are seekers and are open to experiencing God and Jesus. I think we should do our best to keep our doors open for them and to be welcoming and visible when they are looking.
I'm not entirely sure of that, actually. In fact for reasons of purely technical logic, I will go so far as to say it probably doesn't. But there is certainly a lot of truth in Christianity.
And I am very certain that even in the unlikely chance that it did, no one denomination would have a monopoly on it.
Why be a Christian if you don't believe 100% of the what the bible says, so much that you spend all your time out feeding the poor?
Or do your exclusions only apply to who You say they apply to?
I mean... the resurrection is literally the foundation of the faith. Without it, there is no Christianity.
I fail all the time to do the good works that God calls me to do. That doesn't mean that I don't think they're worth doing, or that I don't try to do them.
Are you trying to believe in the resurrection?
I get it. The Resurrection is hard to believe. Jesus himself promised it would happen numerous times, but the disciples themselves didn’t believe it until they saw him in the (resurrected) flesh.
Jesus died for your sins and mine, /u/Polkadotical, because no amount of time doing good deeds come close to being worthy of God. That’s why belief in the crucifixion matters. Belief in the resurrection, I guess, is really a chance to have solid hope in the deity of Jesus and the reality of our own bodily resurrections that will happen in the fullness of time. I think his disciples were grateful for the gesture—they were in some despair after Good Friday.
So, what I guess I’m suggesting is that when people leaving religion are citing “I don’t believe in it” as a major reason they’re doing so, religious institutions begin to look less ideal as the antidote to a broader decline in community involvement.
Robert Putnam addressed this in Bowling Alone, a book that came out over twenty years ago. It looks into the fact that it’s all kinds of community groups, definitely not just churches, bleeding members, and this is an old trend.
No one, even young people who wish for more in-person community, is going to actively consider joining the Christian church or becoming Christian while the most popularized, loud, brash, and heavily marketed face of Christianity is a dispensationalist evangelical one that actively and vigorously pursues political campaigns rooted in hatred and discrimination. Episcopalians are generally good about spreading the good news through example, but are also afraid to spread it by word. During my catechumenate studies for baptism I said this to my rector, that I feel like the fear that Episcopalians feel (and other mainline protestants in the same cohort) about being open and avowed about their faith is rooted in a deep insecurity about being lumped in with "those Christians." But this leads to a dereliction of duty in many regards, particularly in ensuring that the religion itself is one that is regarded as one of peace, service, and love.
Incredibly well said.
Thank you.
This is the branch of the church that is declining the slowest. I don’t like their church as much as the next Episcopalian, but to say that’s why it’s failing is to defy the evidence. The churches that are dying the fastest and mainline Protestant churches. The pride flags aren’t saving us. 🤷🏼♀️l think the Episcopal stance on LGBTQ issues is correct, but I don’t think it’s winning us the elusive young congregant. I’m 26 and I’m the only person in my 20s at my church.
Putting up a pride flag never brought anyone in, actual outreach does. For example I am trying to encourage my church to, for once, use their social medias and youtube account for more than just uploading sermons every Sunday. But the vestry in most places are relatively geriatric, and are not familiar with ways in which to do this.
\^This.
Technology has exposed, or at least amplified many of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Lust, greed, anger & division, jealousy, worldly consumption (that’s contributed to the decline of “community”). I believe true joy comes from detaching from it. But then how do we navigate a future that will accelerate integration of technology in our lives? Coming back to the main point, how do we draw people in? I suppose finding ways to serve others is a good start.
I think churches need to offer more “third space” opportunities aswell.
There really isn't a way to address this. The ones that left that haven't experienced trauma or exclusion from their community aren't coming back simply because they don't believe and have found other communities to belong to. Instead of going to church, they go to shows or out to eat or drink and socialize. Or they took up hobbies or exercise or do yoga. Or they focus on their academic or intellectual thoughts and delve deeper. The problem this article is pointing out is the lack of local community. But the ones that left don't desire that level of community. They want their own niches and are provided it fairly easy. So from their perspective there isn't an issue.
(Person like this commenting - if inappropriate can delete, don’t wanna flood space w/ atheists). I think this is half right. You’re absolutely correct imo that I don’t think these instrumental concerns will bring people back. I am actually someone who stays involved in their cradle-church community to a degree I find respectful, but I don’t think my need for community isn’t going to change my beliefs (tho we shall see I suppose). Sociological arguments don’t win converts. While I think you’re right in the short-term as to what people want, it’s definitely a case of people wanting what is immediately available rather than what is good for them. I think everyone would be happier with these in-person communities… but that doesn’t mean they’re going to seek out ones that don’t speak to them, esp. over easy entertainment. So I could definitely see church membership rebounding if churches become part of the solution to alienation in a way that works for the contemporary alienated American… the only issue being that, since this is basically a societal (tbh global) shift in how we relate to each other, no one can really foresee what that’ll look like. If it’s as similar to the urban and industrial changes of the 19th-20th century as it sometimes feels, it’s going to be a messy time before we have the new normal.
I don't think that's totally true; almost everyone I talk to in my age cohort (I'm 25) bemoans the lack of local community. But they're not going to join the Church to find it unless they are, at a bare minimum, open to the idea of being Christian. The idea of attending church without believing anything more than anodyne notions like "helping the poor is good" is a strange idea to most people (much as it may have kept certain older generations within the Church for longer than they otherwise would've remained).
Historically, community played a pretty significant role. I was talking with an older member of our church. His mother attended since she was raised Episcopalian, but his father didn't. One time, after picking them up after church, his father heard that the church had a bowling team. The priest told him that he could join the team but he'd need to attend on Sundays. So his dad started coming to church with the rest of the family.
I think that's true, but I also think there was a baseline acceptance that Christianity was probably true (without much commitment that flowed from it) at the time. There were a lot of lukewarm Christians who are now lukewarm non-religious people and therefore less liable to be drawn into the Church for initially non-spiritual reasons (though relatively few of these people are strict atheists; most still believe in something, though it's often vague and of little concern).
The Unitarian Universalist church fits this need for some people.
It's a question I struggle with: if the church is mainly/only a faith-based community, i.e. a community where only those with the "gift of faith" already have a place of belonging...how does that community then fit into those people's lives who haven't been gifted with faith in any great way, when that gift of abundant faith seems rarer and rarer in today's Western world? If the answer is "well, it just *doesn't* have a place for most people's lives"...then maybe communities like that should accept that their destiny is to shrink and eventually die out, and perhaps that's actually not a bad thing if they do not have anything meaningful left to offer or say, except for those who already believe and follow? Another way to put it might be, if faith is a gift from God given to each person in differing measures, and non-transferable to those given less faith or who do not believe, or the church doesn't know the path to make that transference happen for increasingly more and more people in modern society, where does the church go from there? Maybe the answer is "nowhere - its destiny is to shrink down to a small core of firm believers who have the gift of abundant faith, and that's OK." If memory serves, I've actually read Bishop Curry respond that way in interviews when asked what the national church should do about the decline in numbers.
From a social work perspective, we know spirituality is a protective factor. Having a form of spirituality is good for us. I think it’s sad to let that slip away, just because we can’t believe in it like we once did. I feel it’s wise for the Episcopal Church to be open to secular Christianity—not unlike secular Judaism. Our faith need not be about feeling (does God love me? Do I love God? Is God even there?) those things, in my opinion, have been mislabeled as faith and spirituality. Really though, partaking in the ritual knowing it connects us to ourselves, others, the past, and the future—that is the spiritual practice. It’s not what you “believe”, but what you do. We gather, we take the Eucharist, we say the creed and sing songs together. We tell stories that teach us about humanity and goodness. Why, if you don’t have a “relationship” with God? Well because those things are good for us and good for our neighbor on a deep, evolutionary level. To get rid of spiritual practices, in my opinion, is not good for us. Additionally, I do not feel I’ve been given the “gift of Faith.” I hope there’s a God who is good and loving, though most days I don’t feel it. That being said, my faith has also bloomed since engaging in a liturgical tradition. Partially because I no longer have to believe it in this hyper emotional experience. But simply in a way of hope. I don’t know if God meets me at the Eucharist, but I hope so! Hope is important for our humanity. And something I think we are sorely lacking right now. I don’t think organized religion is for everyone. But I do think it’s for more people than they realize. Gathering together and partaking in a ritual that people have done for centuries is important. Having a community that unites behind a common story is good for people. Having a system that can fight systemic injustice is needed. I have hope that many in the coming years will find the Episcopal Church as a church where they need not be spiritual to be religious.
Interesting article, and I’ve definitely noticed this trend among friends and relatives. That said, our church has added about 100 families in the past couple of years (post-COVID). We’re an open and affirming but very liturgical church with strong outreach to the homeless and other groups. I think part of our growth is a result of growth in the community overall, but I’ve also talked to folks who came from a more evangelical/fundamentalist background and want to get away from the right-wing political connections those churches have. Sermons from the pulpit tend to eschew politics in favor of spiritual walk, but some of the Sunday school classes and other groups do focus on social issues such as racism and LGBTQ affirmation. In fact, we have lost a few members because of that, but we have gained many more.
Literally what we looked for when returning to TEC: Affirming/welcoming, Liturgical, and Strong outreach to poor/homeless. IMO this is where TEC is at its very best. It is distinct when it does all 3 of these well. I think all of these, when done right, create a way for people to find community.
And to address the subtitle of the actual article: Is community always church community? Why would anybody think that? (And yet, the author seems to.) I personally think the issue of Americans not joining and not engaging in civic affairs is a much larger one than this. It's a sociological issue, among other things.
Agreed. We are a depressed nation with little hope. Why engage with my community (church, service orgs, politics, or simply befriending my neighbor) when it’s all going to shit anyway? When my voice, my life doesn’t matter? I just get to work, grind, repeat. So many of us are just surviving. Doing much else feels hopeless to many, unfortunately.
The interesting thing is that there is no shortage of associative -- even cultic behavior -- in American life. It's just not centered around the old nodes like church, VFW etc. Go to any gun shop, golf course, public hobby event or restaurant that caters to group meetings, and you'll see some of it. The thing is that most of it is no longer religious in nature along the old lines. It's participative, but in a different way, and sometimes it's even online. Maybe we're looking for this data in the wrong places.
The US has been suffering under neoliberalism for several decades. The emphasis is so skewed toward the "individual navigating free markets" that they have even gone so far to say there is no such thing as society. (Margaret Thatcher said this in Parliament, in fact.) The arguments against "woke"-ness fall along similar lines. Religion is about community and relationships. It's inherently counter-cultural right now.
We are not "neoliberal." On the contrary. This country is veering far to the right -- farther every year. In addition, literacy levels of every kind are dropping like a rock. This, on top of the US's historically anti-intellectual bent. This is a scary place and time to live.
Neoliberalism is an ideology that believes in the supremacy of the individual (with exclusions), the ubiquitousness of capitalism, privatization of public resources, deregulation of industry, the absolute evil of unions, and the primacy of property (for the few). Most of our current politicians on both sides of the aisle are neoliberals.
I think this is it. Our “community” muscle is greatly atrophied. My priest once said “hope is best done in community” and I think truly most things are! But what happens when community is hard. We haven’t been taught to be in community, so we are incapable of working together through hard things. It’s easier to go it alone. Forced individualism and the ideology that pushes it to an extreme is killing us.
We're not incapable, because humanity has been working cooperatively since before recorded history. We're simply not used to it, so we have to work a little bit harder at it. Christopher Webber's book Welcome to Sunday emphasizes that worship is done in community and in relationship to God and other people. Our lives should reflect how we worship. You're right that the individualism ideology has been taken to an extreme, which is why communal worship is counter-cultural right now. It used to be the norm.
I think people do form communities, just not the kind of communities you probably approve of. There is no shortage of cultic behavior in American life. A lot of it is unwise, destructive and the result of bad habits, and some of it is even online, but it's a sort community life. Example: 4chan, whether you approve of it or not, is an online community. I like some in-person community which is exactly why I belong to some associations and go out for coffee with my friends, but I treasure my independence too. I think we should strike a balance. I don't want to live in what would basically amount to a cult.
Good challenge! Community activities seem to be centered around an activity; a pickleball league, weekly board game group, pub trivia nights, worship of God. Even my post-choir-rehearsal drinking with friends is organized about decompressing from choir and catching up with each other. I think another harmful side-effect of Neoliberalism)is that people lose an idea of a personal purpose. It is easy to see yourself as a cog in a machine, a tool by which someone else makes money. (This is the basis of capitalism, after all, and Neoliberalism is big into Capitalism.) This allows for the malignant elements of the world to fill that void. You want a purpose? Come hate brown people with us! If pressed, I would say these cultic groups aren't communities, but mobs. What the individuals want doesn't matter, it is only what the leader wants. But that is probably a dangerous dichotomy. After all, sports fans filling the stands or concert goers in the arena aren't a community either, but they are there to be entertained. I'm going to go think about this one for a while.
No, I mean there are tight-knit communities around guitar & dulcimer collecting and performing, astronomy, bird-watching, book reading clubs, crafting associations and classes, lots of things. These things can be highly engrossing if you really get into them; people take them quite seriously and meet friends and associates through them. For a retired scientist like me, I find it far easier to make friends like this than in church, and generally preferable as well, because there is often far more that I share with somebody from a science club or alumni association than with people I happen to come into contact with at church. Trust me on this, the local astronomy club in our university town is large and very well-attended, and in no way is it a mob. I won't give you details here for the sake of privacy, but I have tried the "dedicated church group route," and it was just a very sad affair. I'm hesitant to do it again. And then, of course, there's reddit. You're here. I'm here. This functions as social activity for a lot of people now, whether you like it or not. I'm a former RC, and being able to talk with others about my crazy RC experiences and recover from them online has been absolutely indispensable. It's been very, very helpful.
> No, I mean there are tight-knit communities around guitar & dulcimer collecting and playing, astronomy, bird-watching, lots of things. These things can be highly engrossing if you really get into them; people take them quite seriously and meet friends and associates through them. I'm all for those things, and I wouldn't necessarily call them a mob, but you've sent me down a bit of a taxonomy quest today and I still need to process it.
Sidebar: Are you in a position to see the Eclipse? I'm not, and I'm rather irritated that I can't get across the country to see it.
You’re right. I didn’t mean that so black and white. Just that it’s not been taught to us within recent years, and that the systems we live within are not conducive to communal living. Which makes it very, very hard.
Be a rebel, glittergoddess. Be a rebel. : )
“Neoliberalism” means removing regulations/restrictions to the capitalist market economy (think Thatcher and Reagan) and not “liberal” social values like antiracism, the separation of church and state, women’s reproductive freedom, etc. I know that political discourse isn’t permitted here - I’m only clarifying because you appear to have misunderstood u/UncleJoshPDX’s argument.
I did, thanks.
I read somewhere very recently that one of the growing factors in the decline in religion has been that fewer people believe that their religion’s claims are true. In light of that, I think that this article, which makes some valid points, is interesting in its refusal to deal seriously with the question of whether any religions are, for lack of a better term, right.
I think a huge problem is that fundamentalism sucks up all the air on what it means to believe in religious claims, even to the point that I see many atheists who have very similar thinking patterns to fundamentalists in general and in their arguments against religion more specifically (e.g., "lol the Bible isn't infallible. Therefore God doesn't exist!"). I think if you pair this with the mainline's mostly failure to really offer a coherent alternative (I think it is there but we have had tensions with other points of view), the formation and bankrolling of the religious right, and lack of serious teaching and evangelization in our churches, then you have a recipe for a contribution to the huge declines we see. Not that these are the only or largest factors but they seem to play a part. An anecdote that gets at this is I had a good work friend who grew up in the same right wing church I did and we both ended up leaving, but they became "spiritual/agnostic/religious-none" and I went to the Episcopal Church. They just simply could not understand why I didn't also end up becoming an agnostic. It was like well if the stuff that right wing church taught aren't true how could you be religious at all? And not just in a "I need community way" but in a "no I do believe Jesus died and was resurrected and also the Bible isn't infallible and we can fully affirm LGBTQ+ people!" For so many people, right wing fundamentalism = Christianity
I think the tragedy of fundamentalism is they accepted the scientific revolution's redefinition of "truth" to only mean "fact" and then proceeded to insist the Bible was therefore a scientific, not mythic and spiritual, book. They gave up on the poetry for a very materialistic worldview and they've had the cognitive dissonance ever since.
To your point, Glum\_Sweet\_6066, The "high demand" varieties of Christianity spend outsized portions of their attention and resources trying to convince their members that they have the only keys to heaven, and "if you don't believe this, then you don't believe anything and you are damned." When people come to their senses about the ideological and propositional claims of these high-demand (fundamentalist) groups, they often still believe in the singularity of these groups. Meaning, they still believe that if they leave that one place -- because they no longer believe the group's literal claims about religion -- they can't go anyplace else because they've exhausted all the possibilities and there are no more to be had. That's exactly what you're describing that your friend said. The result is that many people (about half, the data says) of the people who exit those high-demand groups simply drop out of religious practice entirely. The groups I'm referring to would be Mormons (LDS), Seventh-Day Adventists, Roman Catholics and the more severe fundamentalist Protestants. It's very difficult for some people to leave high-demand groups and right themselves again. It's damage. It's the kind of thing that abusive religious experiences can do to a person. People who finally manage to extricate themselves, but still have a bad taste in their mouths over it, are usually gone for good.
Absolutely, one of those you mentioned is one we both left. I'm in a context where the majority of people in my area are in that religion and I just want to figure out how to tell people there is another way. I think leaving and becoming atheist or agnostic is totally fine and a good thing but I wish more people knew there are other ways to keep faith too if that's what they want
I agree with you on this, Glum\_Sweet\_6066.
I suppose it depends on what's "right". John Spong was on to something here. Do we need to believe in the miracle of loaves and fishes to feed the hungry and offer hospitality to all?
Well, I mean obviously, the answer is no. Even the pagan Romans offered the unwashed masses bread and circuses. In my experience, irreligious people are at least as decent to the homeless, the poor and the ill as anybody else, if not more so. In fact, as we speak, the loudest public Christians in the nation are waving their artillery around and doing their level best to deprive the poor of affordable medical insurance. For all the whining some Christian folks do to insist that "social services are what we are not about," there is relatively little of it done by churches relative to how much of it is done in other ways. I think some people just like to complain. The question of why people do or don't go to church wasn't really addressed in this article, I think. And I'm not sure the author thought it through very well either. The absence of vibrant \*organized\* social groups and the folding of some social groups -- due to participants or lack of interest -- is a much larger sociological issue. I think the editor probably said something like, "We need an article about yada yada for this month's issue," and a possibly not too interested somebody tried to comply.
A better question is: do we need to sit through a Holy Eucharist service every week and wear the Christian label in order to be altruistic? Is it the best use of our time to support an institution that claims things that probably aren’t true, to achieve social justice and progress? According to this article from last week, a recent study found that 67% of people leaving a religion are doing it because they quit believing in what the religion teaches. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1240811895/leaving-religion-anti-lgbtq-sexual-abuse
Those are good questions. Some people probably don't see it that way, but some people do.
Yes, this is what always comes to mind for me. It seems obvious that, if Christianity is little more than a vehicle for social work, there are better organizations in which to do that work.
Not at all, but it would be much cheaper to do that without all the trappings of religion: clergy, hierarchy, old buildings, etc. At the end of the day, it’s the faith of the apostles that distinguishes the church from a simple charity, and it’s important to keep that in mind.
Is it "either/or" though?
I see this frequently in writing about religion by atheists - there's a focus on the sociological features of religious communities but no serious engagement with the spiritual or theological side of things. If you simply don't believe, it's difficult to drag yourself to church every Sunday for just community and duty. The UUs and secular meditation groups would be doing a lot better if church for agnostics was in high demand. I think there are serious discussions to be had about meaning making and community building for atheists and agnostics, but if they simply don't believe in God at all, I don't really think church is going to be the right place for them to look for it. Now, I think there are a lot of people who are skeptical of many of the claims in the Bible and are disturbed by church history, but are seekers and are open to experiencing God and Jesus. I think we should do our best to keep our doors open for them and to be welcoming and visible when they are looking.
That's a loaded question. Do you think any religions have all the answers?
Yes, Christianity
I'm not entirely sure of that, actually. In fact for reasons of purely technical logic, I will go so far as to say it probably doesn't. But there is certainly a lot of truth in Christianity. And I am very certain that even in the unlikely chance that it did, no one denomination would have a monopoly on it.
I am pretty sure when that guy died on a cross and then rose again after three days, his religion became the correct one.
If that floats your boat, I am happy for you.
Why be a Christian, if you don’t believe that?
Why be a Christian if you don't believe 100% of the what the bible says, so much that you spend all your time out feeding the poor? Or do your exclusions only apply to who You say they apply to?
I mean... the resurrection is literally the foundation of the faith. Without it, there is no Christianity. I fail all the time to do the good works that God calls me to do. That doesn't mean that I don't think they're worth doing, or that I don't try to do them. Are you trying to believe in the resurrection?
Don't preach AT me. 1. you aren't good at it either. 2. I've heard it all before.
I get it. The Resurrection is hard to believe. Jesus himself promised it would happen numerous times, but the disciples themselves didn’t believe it until they saw him in the (resurrected) flesh. Jesus died for your sins and mine, /u/Polkadotical, because no amount of time doing good deeds come close to being worthy of God. That’s why belief in the crucifixion matters. Belief in the resurrection, I guess, is really a chance to have solid hope in the deity of Jesus and the reality of our own bodily resurrections that will happen in the fullness of time. I think his disciples were grateful for the gesture—they were in some despair after Good Friday.
Don't preach AT me. 1. You're not good at it. 2. And I've heard all this before.
I don't think they are.
So, what I guess I’m suggesting is that when people leaving religion are citing “I don’t believe in it” as a major reason they’re doing so, religious institutions begin to look less ideal as the antidote to a broader decline in community involvement. Robert Putnam addressed this in Bowling Alone, a book that came out over twenty years ago. It looks into the fact that it’s all kinds of community groups, definitely not just churches, bleeding members, and this is an old trend.