The importance of religion is shrinking? Think again

21 May 2023

NPR reported this week on a new survey that suggests that the importance of religion in the lives of normal Americans is shrinking. The survey follows similar surveys that have, altogether, fueled the idea that as the number of “religiously unaffiliated” has risen, so has the secularization of America.

That’s almost certainly wrong.

I’m not going to recount the numbers. You can read the PRRI report here. I’m going to point out what’s obvious, or what I think is obvious, which is this: Just because Americans say that they are not “religiously affiliated” does not necessarily mean that, in their lives, the importance of religion is shrinking.

Maybe it’s that old-time religion that still burns within me, but Americans don’t need a church to have a religion. God is available for worship whether you’re looking up to him through stained glass or not. One’s religion – one’s system of morality – is also demonstrated in ways as varied as the variety of religions. Church attendance isn’t going to reflect. It can only reflect what it can.

I haven’t gone to the gospel hall in decades. Does that mean I don’t carry with me things I absorbed as a child? I admit I have tried to forget, but I haven’t. Sure, I do not think of myself as Christian Gathered unto the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ (the full name of the Protestant sect that I was born into). But I do think of myself as a follower of Jesus and his teaching of God’s universal love.

I am “religiously unaffiliated.”

I am, however, religious.

So let’s stop pretending that church attendance is some kind of stand-in for religion. Americans express their religion in all kinds of ways that may or may not be related to church attendance. Let’s start conceding that we’re talking about church attendance, because that’s something that can be measured.

Most of all, let’s admit to what we can and can’t know with the things that we can measure. The importance of religion might be shrinking, but if we’re going to use church attendance as our main metric, we can only know half the truth.

Moreover, the relative strength and weakness of American institutions should not be mistaken for the relative strength and weakness of the ideas and beliefs that those institutions were built on. But that’s what we do with these surveys.

More people are skipping church on Sundays. Therefore, we tell ourselves, the importance of religion must be shrinking. The reality is probably that something about those institutions has gone wrong, and church-goers are expressing themselves without the trouble of actually expressing themselves.

The PRRI survey found that of all the people who said they left religion, more than a third of them are Catholic. Has something gone wrong with the Catholic Church? We know the answer, but in addition to sex-abuse scandals, one after the other, there’s this: the Roman Catholic Church has been increasingly shrill about abortion, especially now that abortion is no longer a national right.

But instead of arguing with priests who can’t be argued with, Catholics are staying home. Does that mean, in their minds, they’re less Catholic? I doubt it.

Finally, there’s the mistake of confusing religious unaffiliation with secularization, which is part of the confusion about what “secular” means.

It does not mean the absence of religion. It means religion is one of many factors that make up an individual, who, with others, makes up a society. A secular society, in other words, is not a religion-less society. It’s just a society that does not privilege religion above all other considerations of social life.

Yet surveys like PRRI’s are typically taken to mean that Americans are becoming less religious and that America is becoming more secular. But Americans are probably as religious as they ever were, despite quantifiable drops in church attendance. They’ve just found different ways of expressing it.

America is probably as secular as it’s ever been. There are still people around who think religion – especially theirs – should be the top consideration in social life. There are still others around who say religion – even theirs – is one of many. (There are others who don’t care about religion one way or the other.) Secularization is therefore not the absence of religion so much as the product of the political conflict about the proper role of religion in American social life.

Church attendance isn’t going to tell us that.

It tells us only half the truth.

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