Defecting to Faith

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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May 2, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
By CHARLES M. BLOW
“Most people are religious because they’re raised to be. They’re indoctrinated by their parents.”

So goes the rationale of my nonreligious friends.

Maybe, but a study entitled “Faith in Flux” issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 4 percent of those raised Catholic and 7 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated.

(It should be noted that about a quarter of the unaffiliated identified as atheist or agnostic, and the rest said that they had no particular religion.)

So what was the reason for this flight of the unchurched to churches?

Did God appear in a bush? Did the grass look greener on the other side of the cross? Or was it a response to the social pressure of being nonreligious in a very Christian country?

None of those reasons topped the list. Most said that they first joined a religion because their spiritual needs were not being met. And the most-cited reason for settling on their current religion was that they simply enjoyed the services and style of worship.

For these newly converted, the nonreligious shtick didn’t stick. There was still a void, and communities of the faithful helped fill it.

While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?

As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.

We are more than cells, synapses and sex drives. We are amazing, mysterious creatures forever in search of something greater than ourselves.

Dale McGowan, the co-author and editor of the book “Parenting Beyond Belief” told me that he believes that most of these people “are not looking for a dogma or a doctrine, but for transcendence from the everyday.”

Churches, mosques and synagogues nurture and celebrate this. Being regularly surrounded by a community that shares your convictions and reinforces them through literature, art and ritual is incredibly powerful, and yes, spiritual.

The nonreligious could learn a few things from religion.

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I think this is bang on, felix. I also note that it has virtually nothing to do with belief in God (etc.), but rather with the “spirit” of social experience. The buddhists insist that it’s really really really adviseable that you seek out and hold on to your Sangha, whatever collective of souls that might mean for you. I confess that I haven’t been able to find one, to my despair, at least not one along the traditional lines of a church-like grouping… unless, of course, I can count ILP. :smiley:

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All hail Sartre.

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=D>

First of all, where was this study conducted? The deep south? A college campus?

Secondly, what is most?

Thirdly, what was the size of the non-religious population over the last 500 years? I’d make a significant wager that the non-religious population is accelerating; exponential growth as it were. That would seem to indicate non-religious types have an effect on their future population.

Also, as an ex-catholic, I find it hard to believe only 4% of catholics don’t end up catholic. They’re probably just saying they’re still catholic to avoid the guilt and/or to please their very catholic mothers.

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I like to check and watch religious growth rates in America…I’m a very boring fellow sometimes…anyways; Catholicism does actually stay pretty much even year to year with very little drop rate, so 4% sounds about right.

The catch is that other religious variations within Christianity are booming at very high rates of increase.
The highest rate of increase over the last year was Jehovah’s Witness, though it is still behind the curve collectively over the past 5 years compared against many others.

The large traditional variations, such as Methodist and Baptist’s are taking whopping hits by comparison to Catholicism.
Honestly, I think Catholicism stands a better chance as the new trend seems to be a desire for a sense of belonging to a very organized religion, which Catholicism actually has had for a very long time, meanwhile, traditional Protestant movements such as the previously mentioned sects simply do not have a cohesive sense to them.

Personally, I believe this is largely due to an American increase of migratory living standards.
The chances are higher now that a family will move a few times to different states.
It is comforting to know that your exact same religion is waiting there for you when you move and get to your new location, and not something that’s close but not quite the same.

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felix, i can appreciate this post and the one above. But all that I can get from this is that the hard facts are just too cold and too hard, that people need something more, something else that tells them that “you are special” and that this is something we all need. So? Is our “spirituality” nothing but an illusion? Something we “cling” to? Something we use to fulfill a need in us, a wish perhaps?
Now, perhaps that is what has happened in the West, after the “death of God” reduced the hard to maintain and travel, the Narrow Golden Road, into a paved and widened Highway. We travel on this but who knows to where? That no longer matters. People arte just content that many are travelling along with them and nothing is required of them anymore. There is no life-changing choice. They are looking for the nice fellowship, the nice choior and someone who tells them “You are special”.
I don’t criticise this if for not for one reason. Why call it “spiritual”? This is one of Hitchens’ points. Such needs are human and all too human and they are filled by the same basic systems of fellowship, be it religious or humanistic; but what is left out is that humanistic systems are benign while monotheist religious systems, are damaging and break such fellowship the moment that they are understood. The people that come to mind when I read this post is your urban “christian” folk. “Christian” in the loose sense of the word. Now we want to elevate this quirck of the social evolution of Christianity into it’s eternal spokeperson when in reality he speaks only about a narrow mutation. The Christian today is at home in this world, where once they considered themselves to be mere travellers. The Christian today lives in a tolerant society, a democratic society and thinks that this is the gist of his own faith. Therefore I place the word “Christian” between quotation marks.

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Yes Omar I share your discomfort. But then such is so much of my experience of other people having their religion. It so typically appears as if they aren’t doing it right. It certainly isn’t the way I would do it if I were them.

I generally only approve of someone who practices their religion in a way that is vastly superior than my own. Even they are much easier to appreciate at a safe distance. Usually through the medium of a book.

Better yet are religious practioners who are already dead. The longer the period of time elapsed since they passed on the better. Anything messy about their lives is so much easier to understand in the context of their times that way.

I went to a church service about a month ago. It was the first time I had been to one in many years. The instant criticsm that came to me was that they did everything too well. They had a 10 piece band. The choir sang on key. The music director was very professional. Instead of hymnals the lyrics were projected on large screens. The acting in a mini-pageant they preformed was well rehearsed. The sermon was coherent. This was service honed by the age of Television. Would I really have liked it all better if it were done worse?

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I won’t dare to go as far as to presume the ability to say that spirituality is nothing more than, but I will say that the key part of spirituality is that it is something that many need to fill their selves out as complete humans in their minds.

Myself included.