Religion Dying in America

A HUGE NEWS STORY, BARELY NOTICED
The Charleston Gazette - Nov. 9, 2010
By James A. Haught

Philosopher-historian Will Durant called it "the basic event of modern
times." He didn't mean the world wars, or the end of colonialism, or the
rise of electronics. He was talking about the decline of religion in
Western democracies.
The great mentor saw subsiding faith as the most profound occurrence of the
past century -- a shift of Western civilization, rather like former
transitions away from the age of kings, the era of slavery and such epochs.

Since World War II, worship has dwindled starkly in Europe, Canada,
Australia, Japan and other advanced democracies. In those busy places, only
5 or 10 percent of adults now attend church. Secular society scurries along
heedlessly.
Pope Benedict XVI protested: "Europe has developed a culture that, in a
manner unknown before now to humanity, excludes God from the public
conscience." Columnist George Will called the Vatican "109 acres of faith in
a European sea of unbelief."

America seems an exception. This country has 350,000 churches whose members
donate $100 billion per year. The United States teems with booming
megachurches, gigantic sales of "Rapture" books, fundamentalist attacks on
evolution, hundred-million-dollar TV ministries, talking-in-tongues
Pentecostals, the white evangelical "religious right" attached to the
Republican Party, and the like.

But quietly, under the radar, much of America slowly is following the path
previously taken by Europe. Little noticed, secularism keeps climbing in the
United States. Here's the evidence:

| Rising "nones." Various polls find a strong increase in the number of
Americans -- especially the young -- who answer "none" when asked their
religion. In 1990, this group had climbed to 8 percent, and by 2008, it had
doubled to 15 percent -- plus another 5 percent who answer "don't know."
This implies that around 45 million U.S. adults today lack church
affiliation. In Hawaii, more than half say they have no church connection.

| Mainline losses. America's traditional Protestant churches -- "tall
steeple" denominations with seminary-trained clergy -- once dominated U.S.
culture. They were the essence of America. But their membership is
collapsing. Over the past half-century, while the U.S. population doubled,
United Methodists fell from 11 million to 7.9 million, Episcopalians dropped
from 3.4 million to 2 million, the Presbyterian Church USA sank from 4.1
million to 2.2 million, etc. The religious journal First Things -- noting
that mainline faiths dwindled from 50 percent of the adult U.S. population
to a mere 8 percent -- lamented that "the Great Church of America has come
to an end." A researcher at the Ashbrook think-tank dubbed it "Flatline
Protestantism."

| Catholic losses. Although Hispanic immigration resupplies U.S. Catholicism
with replacements, many former adherents have drifted from the giant church.
The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey found that 20 million
Americans have quit Catholicism -- thus one-tenth of U.S. adults now are
ex-Catholics.

| Fading taboos. A half-century ago, church-backed laws had power in
America. In the 1950s, it was a crime to look at the equivalent of a Playboy
magazine or R-rated movie -- or for stores to open on the Sabbath -- or to
buy a cocktail or lottery ticket -- or to sell birth-control devices in some
states -- or to be homosexual -- or to terminate a pregnancy -- or to read a
sexy novel -- or for an unwed couple to share a bedroom. Now all those
morality laws have fallen, one after another. Currently, state after state
is legalizing gay marriage, despite church outrage.

Sociologists are fascinated by America's secular shift. Dr. Robert Putnam of
Harvard, author of "Bowling Alone," found as many as 40 percent of young
Americans answering "none" to faith surveys. "It's a huge change, a stunning
development," he said. "That is the future of America." He joined Dr. David
Campbell of Notre Dame in writing a new book, "American Grace," that
outlines the trend. Putnam's Social Capital site sums up: "Young Americans
are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the
historic rate."

Oddly, males outnumber females among the churchless. "The ratio of 60 males
to 40 females is a remarkable result," the 2008 ARIS poll reported. "These
gender patterns correspond with many earlier findings that show women to be
more religious than men."

Growing secularism has political implications. The Republican Party may
suffer as the white evangelical "religious right" shrinks. In contrast,
burgeoning "nones" tend to vote Democratic. Sociologist Ruy Teixeira says
the steady rise of the unaffiliated, plus swelling minorities, means that
"by the 2016 election (or 2020 at the outside) the United States will have
ceased to be a white Christian nation. Looking even farther down the road,
white Christians will be only around 35 percent of the population by 2040,
and conservative white Christians, who have been such a critical part of the
Republican base, will be only about a third of that -- a minority within a
minority."

Gradually, decade by decade, religion is moving from the advanced First
World to the less-developed Third World. Faith retains enormous power in
Muslim lands. Pentecostalism is booming in Africa and South America. Yet the
West steadily turns more secular.

Arguably, it's one of the biggest news stories during our lives -- although
most of us are too busy to notice. Durant may have been correct when he
wrote that it is the basic event of modern times.

Haught, editor of the Charleston Gazette, West Virginia's largest newspaper,
can be reached by phone at 304-348-5199 or e-mail at haught@wvgazette.com.
This essay is adapted from his ninth book, Fading Faith: The Rise of the
Secular Age. To order, click:
http://tinyurl.com/22mj74n