By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
The recently released Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study documenting the decline of Christianity in the United States has been getting considerable attention of late, including an insightful column from Rey Flores in the May 21 edition of this publication. And with good reason. It shows a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who no longer think of themselves as members of a Christian Church. The secular left is cheering.
But not everywhere. Two analyses of the study in establishment liberal publications, The New York Times and The Atlantic magazine, make the case that things may not be as bad for Christianity as one would think on first reading the poll numbers.
In the words of Emma Green, writing in the May edition of The Atlantic, “America continues to be a nation under God — just with more flexibility in how its citizens choose to worship”; and as stated by Ross Douthat in the May 13 edition of the Times, the Pew study may indicate a decline in Christianity in the United States, but that it should not be “overstated.”
Douthat and Green do not take issue with the numbers in the Pew poll: Over the last few decades, the share of Americans who designate themselves as “not part of any religion” has grown from 16 to nearly 23 percent of the population, with atheists and agnostics 3 to 4 percent, respectively, in this group. (I don’t know about you, but the number of agnostics and atheists surprised me. With the deluge of books and television specials promoting atheism in recent years, I would have thought the number of atheists to be much larger. It shows that it can be a mistake to judge what is happening in the country by what you hear on the celebrity talk shows.)
The remainder of those who tell us they are “not part of any religion,” when asked to identify their religious affiliation, responded, “Nothing in particular,” a group often labeled as “nones.” But this is where things get curious. Forty-four percent of the nones said religion is “very” or “somewhat” important to them. Green concludes that this indicates “not a Godless nation,” but a “pattern of people finding God on their own terms.” Green also sees this phenomenon in the increased practice of “religious switching,” as people move from one church affiliation to another in search of an experience they find relevant and amenable to themselves.
How has “switching” affected the Catholic Church? According to the Pew study, only 59 percent of those raised Catholic still identify with Catholicism as adults, leaving the Catholic Church with approximately 23 percent of the population of the country. How bad is that?
Douthat cites the work of Mark Gray of Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research, who argues this number is approximately the same as it was a decade ago; and that, in comparison, the decline among mainline Protestant churches — Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran and Episcopalian — has been significantly greater.
Where is the silver lining? First, Douthat stresses that the tendency of Millennials to put off marriage into their 30s could lead to a growth in church affiliation in the near future. We have seen the pattern in this country for many years: People drift away from organized religion in their 20s, but then, in Douthat’s words, begin “circling back once they get married and (especially) have kids.”
This leads him to think that we can expect the Millennials, as they “eventually enter the unions that they haven’t entered yet” and “have the babies that they’re delaying,” to “reconnect” with the churches that they were raised in. Time will tell.
Douthat also points out that the people who have left the Christian churches may have never been more than “cultural Christians,” individuals who remained affiliated with the church that was part of their family tradition more for “social desirability” than any religious convictions. This leads him to conclude that “what’s happening is that American Christianity is losing more and more its penumbra while retaining more of its core (albeit an aging core in many cases).”
I suggest that Douthat is onto something here. I realize that there is no way that we can read minds or judge the depths of another person’s religious beliefs, but when I think back to my parish as a boy in the 1950s (which I tend to do, for some reason, more often as I get older), I often ponder how many of the men and women active in the parish’s many activities at that time would fit within Douthat’s “penumbra,” as individuals who were “practicing Catholics” because they found the church to be a valuable focal point of community life, with little regard to spiritual matters and the Church’s role in salvation history.
I can say without qualification that spiritual concerns never came up in conversation among my youthful circle of friends who were drawn to the parish’s dances, athletic activities, and Boy Scout troops. Truth be told, they were never even high on the list among the altar boys. When I attended the parish boxing matches with my father and his World War II buddies, there were no pious moments in their small talk that I can remember.
I repeat: I had no way of knowing the inner spiritual dialogues that were taking place among my former parishioners and friends. And the fact that so much of the social life of my old neighborhood — activities that we think of as secular in nature in modern America — revolved around the Church was a good thing. It led me as a boy to see the Church as the center of what was uplifting and wholesome in life. It enhanced my image of the faith to see the faces of the World War II vets working to make the community better by dedicating their time to the parish’s youth activities.
It was a vibrant time for Catholicism in this country. It made being a Catholic seem a manly thing, an experience I am convinced is missing for modern young men in the Church of today. We can start with the altar girl phenomenon.
In any event, Douthat’s point may stand: that when the exodus from the Church of those “raised Catholic” began in the late 1960s, it well may have been composed mainly of individuals whose only motive for being part of parish life was what he calls the “social desirability basis.” Now it is not good, of course, that organized religion has lost these people. Quite the contrary. But it does not — necessarily — indicate a decline in Christian belief.
But let Douthat speak for himself: “I don’t mean any of these points to recast the Pew Report findings as somehow good news for American Christianity. To make that case you have to go a step further, and talk about how a merely ‘cultural’ Christianity is bad for true Christian faith.” Which Douthat does not want to do, except with “heavy qualification.” But he insists it should lead us to “discern shades of gray and hints of silver in and around institutional Christianity’s darkening sky” that many are finding in the Pew study.
I agree. A smaller but more devoted and vigorous Catholic Church in America may be a good thing.
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