Good News for Distressed Christians

There is good news for Christians who’ve been distressed over how far church attendance has plunged in recent years. The plunge has leveled off, and there is evidence that an upward turn has begun.

More on that in a minute, but first, those distressed Christians have a right to be distressed. Around 40 million Americans have left the church since 1995, the year researchers say the mass exodus from Christianity began, and today about 30 percent of the population identifies as having no religion. The Brookings Institution decided churches are in “their twilight hour.” The Washington Post speculated about when Protestant churches would be empty.

Statistics from the Pew Research Center illustrate their point:

• All three strands of Protestantism have declined in percentage terms since 2007. Evangelical Protestants now make up 23 percent of U.S. adults, down from 26 percent then. Mainstream Protestants make up 11 percent, down from 18. A nd Black Protestants make up 5 percent, down from 7.
• The “stickiness” of a religious upbringing seems to be declining, but the stickiness of a nonreligious background seems to be rising.
• No recent birth cohort has become more religious as it has aged.
• The share of self-described political liberals who identify as Christians has fallen 25 percentage points since 2007, from 62 percent to 37 percent.

So where did all those people go after they left religion?

Harvard researchers performed a long study to answer that question, and they learned that most of them searched elsewhere for spiritual alternatives. They especially turned to yoga, CrossFit, SoulCycle, supper clubs and meditation. Oprah tried sound baths. Gwyneth Paltrow advertised energy healing. More than a third of American women under 30 downloaded the personal astrology app C-Star, according to the company. But, the study showed, none of it worked. Nothing replaced their church.

The New York Times did its own study of people who left the church and it concluded about the same thing. Times reporters interviewed hundreds of people, including demographers, psychologists, sociologists and statisticians. They visited dozens of houses of worship, spiritual retreats and wellness centers. They surveyed Times readers and drew more than 4,000 responses. And everywhere they went they heard the same story: Most Americans who left religion simply have not found a satisfying alternative.

That is not true for everyone. Ryan Burge, a former pastor and leading researcher on religious trends, says about a third of people who left religion appear to be doing just fine. Many are civically engaged, find joy in nature, and spend time with their friends and families.

But the Pew research shows that most of them are unhappier than they’ve ever been, and they are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. Secularism is not the only cause, but most people who abandoned religious affiliation feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace, and they experience less awe and gratitude.

Conversely, the Harvard research shows that religious people are happier and healthier than those who don’t practice religion. They are significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer or heart problems. A Harvard study found that women who attended religious services once a week were 33 percent less likely to die prematurely than women who never attended. Other research shows that religiously affiliated Americans are 23 percentage points more likely to feel gratitude, and 15 points more likely to regularly feel a deep connection with humanity, that people who are not religiously affiliated.

As Burge put it, “There is overwhelming empirical support for the value of being at a house of worship on a regular basis on all kinds of metrics, mental health, physical health, having more friends, being less lonely.”

So, the plunge in religion’s numbers seems to be over, at least for now.

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“Now,” according to the Pew study, “the country seems to be revisiting the role of religion. This is a major generational shift. People are no longer leaving Christianity; other major religions are growing. Almost all Americans – 92 percent of adults, both inside and outside of religion – say they hold some form of spiritual belief in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife or something ‘beyond the natural world.’”

Even in the institutions where conservatives are sure that elite liberals are indoctrinating youth with godlessness, something is changing. Tammy McLeod, president of the Harvard Chaplains and a chaplain there for 25 years, said that the “interest and openness to religion and spirituality has never been higher on campus.”

Why did the plunge in religious belief begin? And why is it returning?

Two quick thoughts from experts:

• The late Max Weber, the German sociologist who helped lead the development of sociology and the social sciences, focused largely on understanding rationalisation, secularisation and disenchantment, and he formulated a thesis to explain the plunge. He argued that a society’s modernization and economic development, especially that which involves capitalism (which is where we were when the plunge began), invariably lead to a decline of religious thought.
• The political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris studied the questions from the opposite viewpoint, and they concluded that religion flourishes in times of “existential insecurity” (which is where we are now), and, agreeing with Weber, withers in times of peace and bounty (again, where we were then).

But Pew found that people aren’t religious just because of insecurity or instability. “Highly educated people are more likely than people who attended only high school to go to religious services weekly. Additionally, Hinduism, Jews, Mainline Protestants and Muslims are all more likely than religiously unaffiliated people to have at least a college degree. These are people who tend to have good jobs, higher incomes and private health care. They are going to religious services because they are getting something they value out of it.”

And what might that “something they value” be?

Sociologists say religion attracts because it provides what they call “the three Bs”: belief, belonging and behavior. Religion supplies people with answers to the tough questions of life (belief), offers them a community where they know they are accepted (belonging), and tells them what tenets should guide their actions (behavior).

And, they agree, houses of religion do those three things well because they’ve had centuries of experience doing it.

A few interesting statistics:

• 62 percent of U.S. adults describe themselves as Christians: 40 percent are Protestant, 19 percent are Catholic, and 3 percent are other Christian.
• 29 percent are religiously unaffiliated: 5 percent are atheist, 6 percent are agnostic, and 19 percent identify religiously as “nothing in particular.”
• 7 percent belong to religions other than Christianity: 2 percent are Jewish, and 1 percent each are Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu.