@ISSUE

@ISSUE: What does decline in religion portend?

Asbury Park Press

According to studies conducted over the last decade, fewer and fewer Americans define themselves as religious. In 2012, the Pew Research Center poll revealed that one-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in such polling.

Assuming this trend continues. what does this rising tide of spiritual indifference portend for America?

We asked four people, something of experts in the field to write their responses to this question,” What are the implications for society if current trends showing a gradual decline in religious commitment continue?”

Their responses follow:

The least religious countries are the most moral and peaceful

By Dave Muscato

What would the world look like if more and more people became atheists? Fortunately this is something about which we don’t have to speculate, because there are plenty of examples both abroad and at home. Societies that value and use evidence as their basis for public policy have, unsurprisingly, consistently healthier outcomes.

Empiricism is the only reasonable method for determining whether a given policy is effective. This is hardly limited to public policy: Science is the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works. It seems almost trivial to say so, yet so many people not only refuse to acknowledge this obvious truth but also think it’s noble or virtuous to pretend otherwise.

In the words of author and neuroscientist Sam Harris, “Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.”

More and more people are coming around to the absurdity of this way of thinking, especially in the case of young people. Indoctrination, the lifeblood of religious belief, becomes harder and harder when you have greater access to education and information as we do now in the Internet age. In the past, indoctrination was easy: If you wanted to convince a child that rainbows were a sign from God or that there was a global flood in the past few thousands years, he or she had no easy way to prove you wrong. Now, any 7-year-old with an iPhone can easily find the fact that these narratives are simply Iron Age myths from the Middle East and not substantially different from the myths of ancient Greece or Germany.

What does that mean in the real world? When you take reality into account in your understanding of the world, you get better outcomes. Sociologist Phil Zuckerman, author of “Societies Without: What the Least-Religious Societies Can Tell Us About Contentment,” summed it up nicely when he said, “Don’t get sucked into arguments about ‘Can we be good without God?’ Don’t try to convince theists that secular morality is actually more rational and, well, more moral. Rather, just insist that morality is ultimately revealed and shown through human action and deed. And we can plainly see that the least religious countries and states are generally the most moral, peaceful and humane, while the most religious countries and states are the most crime-ridden, corrupt and socially troubled. End of discussion.”

I intend to take his advice. A non-religious society is a society living in the real world, making better decisions and living longer and healthier lives, and this is painfully obvious whether you’re comparing nonreligious Denmark to religious Liberia, or nonreligious Vermont to religious Mississippi. If you’re looking for higher violent crime rates, higher teen pregnancy rates, lower levels of education, lower incomes and so on, religious societies are where to find them. If you’re looking for the opposite, look to the future, where religion is either watered down or absent entirely. I can hardly wait.

Dave Muscato is public relations director for American Atheists Inc., a Cranford-based organization that fights for the civil liberties of atheists and advocates absolute separation of government and religion.

God’s followers care for neighbors and those in need

By Julia Pizzuto-Pomaco

“God’s not Dead.”

Maybe you received that text this year and wondered what it meant. The text was prompted by a movie set on a college campus where it was postulated that “God is dead.” The movie made a splash with religious believers. The main point, of course, was that God is real and living today.

To the skeptics among us, we may point to the many churchgoers who are fleeing the pews and are being found instead on soccer fields, in coffee shops or other places. What does it all mean that 83 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, according to a poll taken in July by ABCNews/Beliefnet? Along with attending churches, Americans also can be found at mosques, synagogues, temples and other religious centers throughout the week. Yet, there is a phenomena happening in our country. People are claiming to have religion but are not attending church or other religious congregations on a regular basis.

Many Americans might consider themselves spiritual but believe church is boring or irrelevant. Who can blame them, really? In many ways, religion has gotten lost in insular programs and institutional machinery. Truthfully, some who claim to be religious are not truly committed and, clearly, there is a difference between the institution of religion and the beliefs and practices we hold.

People who hold such truths want to care for their neighbors. They have compassion for the least among us. Who built the first hospitals? Education centers? Child welfare agencies? Who is willing to help treat Ebola patients, work among the dying or love the hurting? Who goes into prisons and offers hope and provides afterschool programs in the most depressed neighborhoods of our nation?

People of faith are willing because they are motivated by serving God, who in their eyes is worthy of their allegiance. Do people of faith make major mistakes? Absolutely. People of faith have also been some of the worst sinners among us. Yet, they hold onto a hope that they are forgiven and can keep going because they believe in a force larger than themselves that propels them to do so.

Institutional religion is struggling and weekly attendance is declining but faith and belief in God are alive. Organized religion needs to wake up and see that while people are no longer going to flood through the doors, there are many in their neighborhoods and just outside their buildings who are hungry for God’s love and truth.

One of the main gifts of religion to our nation has been community. We are in need of communities that help each other, care for the outcast, lonely and hurting. Indeed much renewal work is already happening in small groups and missional communities. As we gather together with an intentionality to love and care for those around us, we will build organic churches and religious centers that will not decline but thrive. There is much work to be done but, if you look around you, God’s followers are alive and God surely is not dead.

Julia Pizzuto-Pomaco, an ordained Presbyterian pastor, teaches in the Philosophy and Religion Studies Department at Rowan University.

Misuse of religion has brought it to a crossroads

By Saliba Sarsar

Religion, ideally, is the bridge to somewhere. In recent decades, the journey across it has slowed down and now is at a crossroads. On one side are its transcendent beliefs, high morals and symbols and, on the other, its deformation or misuse by those pursuing their own narrow interests, not the common good. If the wrong path is chosen, society will be the poorer for it and the destination will be hard to reach.

Society and religion, as a fountain of some of our cherished values, have had a symbiotic relationship for millennia. Human beings — believers or nonbelievers — usually seek guidance to give meaning and order to their lives and to prepare them for what is to follow life.

Since the early 1950s, the United States has experienced a significant decline in religiosity, as expressed by a decrease in the importance of religion in people’s lives, lower attendance at religious services and fewer memberships in religious organizations, just to name a few.

While worrisome to some, this decline is a natural outgrowth of the competition between the secular and the religious, the conflict within the same religion and among or between different religions, the commercialization of religion, and the unholy attitudes and behaviors of some religious adherents.

However, even though much in our postmodern world has been desacralized, the sacred remains alive and well and often assumes greater importance in times of crisis or urgent need. Witness the houses of worship filling to capacity in the days following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Moreover, there is a steady rise in spirituality or of those who are “spiritual but not religious.”

Some feel fine living their lives and doing good in the world without belonging to a particular faith tradition or religious denomination.

Obviously, individual freedom and autonomy must be defended, and creativity and growth must be promoted. Religion, as lived and as institutionally organized, more often than not has brought forth good works, especially when put into positive action. It is in community and in social responsibility that followers of faith traditions and others have been instrumental in educating the youth, caring for the sick, feeding the hungry, rehabilitating homes, defending civil rights and advancing social justice. Yes, some abuses exist and have diminished people’s trust but we should not turn a blind eye to the talent, time and treasure of the multitudes in support of alleviating societal and global needs.

In addition, while the religious-secular separation is a key feature of American democracy, that separation is not as wide as we might think. The religious and the secular often nourish each other. God is present in our currency, civic life and public commentary. Politicians are frequently evaluated on their religious views and American officials have occasionally used religion to shape American foreign policy.

Religious people and institutions must become more relevant by emphasizing those aspects of religion that call for compassion, forgiveness, inclusion, moderation and hope for a better future.

Healing the rifts within religions or among and between religions must occur, as must the transformation of relationships in fulfillment of caring service. Otherwise, society will leave religion further behind.

Dr. Saliba Sarsar is professor of political science and associate vice president for global initiatives at Monmouth University.

There are signs of hope amidst less religious participation

By Javier Viera

My daughters celebrate their friends’ bat mitzvahs, I can instantly observe a Hindu ritual performed in Australia through YouTube, and I am a United Methodist clergy who, as dean of Drew Theological School, serves a diverse ecumenical community within a larger interreligious body of students. The ways in which one participates in multiple religious spheres is remarkable, and we cannot help but be transformed by our experiences.

The opportunities to meld into or react against each other abound, and these engagements complicate and interrogate our cherished views. Often emerging from these cross-cultural interactions are unique, hybrid religious identities that struggle to conform to categories recognized by research polls.

Does this feed the trend of declining religious commitment? Although I value my personal, particularly Latino, Westernized Christianity, what might it imply if I longed for others to make commitments as such? Would a rise in religious commitment entail the reinforcing of the barriers that define and isolate the wisdom traditions?

Does such commitment pressure people to draw insincere alliances? Does the decline in religious commitment rather reflect a decline in aligning with the prescribed boundaries entrusted to authoritative religious elite?

Might we ask who is disturbed, concerned and most attentive to the current trajectory of declining religious commitment? And when we talk about implications, are we prioritizing the implications for the religiously committed folk over the implications for those who refrain from committing to institutional paradigms?

Here, I limit my comments to address the implications for those institutions that are declining in formal membership and who are nostalgic for denominational growth, for I suspect that their concern over the loss of clear convictions drives this conversation.

If people continue to splinter away from unified groups, which were never as coherent as we imagine, the lower attendance and participation mean that ecclesiology, the organizational structure of the church, will need to adapt by depending on smaller committee sizes, by more sharing of ministerial roles, and by gathering in fresh, creative, sustainable, relevant and faithful ways.

From a “liberal mainline” Christian perspective, an inevitable decline might also prompt these churchgoers to compensate for the low pew count by re-evaluating their stances on traditional forms of evangelism, which are often perceived as a theological burden and remnant of oppressive colonial operations.

Although the implications for the “nones” will be felt less dramatically, a steady gradual decline will gradually reshape the Western discourse they dwell in. The U.S., for instance, famously insists upon the separation of church and state, yet religious language and values permeate all layers of society. As “nones” increase, the religious tone in the educational system, legal documents and currency will likely diminish. The presence of religious terminology, however, will continue in other sectors.

Despite a decline, advertising agencies will still successfully sell products that promise that this piece of cake is heavenly and that mattress is zen. While certain religious traditions will fade, new traditions will develop with a nuanced sense of religiosity.

In place of religious leadership, other community organizers will better connect the commitments and convictions of the “nones” with the needs of their neighbors. In other words, a decline in religious commitment does not necessitate the decline in religion.

Subsequently, the charge for a religiously affiliated seminary is to ensure that we equip students with the ability to assess community needs, develop innovative strategies, as well as empower our students to thicken their local theologies and feel fluent in articulating a robust vision. My intention, therefore, is neither to retract from our piety nor to rigidify but to help ground our students in their own spiritual commitment while being open and sensitive to the evolving religious landscape.

In the same vein, I propose that courageous churches expand their assumptions and conceptions of religious commitment and I recommend that professional theologians collaborate with lay theologians to explore a bold theology that accounts for the plurality of Biblical witness and the plurality of contemporary experience.

Javier Viera is dean of the Drew Theological School.