According to Christian Smith, a distinguished professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, traditional “organized religion is now obsolete.” The title of his new book, “Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America,” is enough to raise eyebrows from evangelists, pastors, and laity worldwide.
The book is based on research that includes more than 200 qualitative interviews. It explores “old-time religion” from all angles and perspectives. It plays upon the precipitous decline of church attendance and Christian adherents. Pew Research shared in a 2024 poll that 56% of U.S. adults “seldom or never” go to church, which includes mosques or temples. Almost 6 of 10 adults don’t care to go to church. That would be staggering if it weren’t so common to see people denigrating Jesus in media or in person.
So, for Smith to use the term “obsolete” about organized religion may be appalling, but it shouldn’t be surprising.
“We almost always use the word ‘decline’ when we talk about if things aren’t going well for religion,” Smith said in a Zoom interview with RNS. “And decline is a good word. But what it’s descriptive of is organizational matters and individual religiousness. Organizations can have decline in membership or adherence, attendance, financial giving. That’s decline — it’s measurable.”
In his book, Smith reviews 10 ways the Internet has “corroded” religion. Yes, there are many ways technology has enhanced the churchgoing experience, but it has also blunted expectations.
- How about “AI Jesus“? That’s a thing.
- Maybe pastors are taking shortcuts with Chat GPT to make their sermons. That was a thing in 2023.
- Jesus valued relationships, but now people are second-guessing contact with humanity overall.
- And then there are all those scandals from last year that have Christians everywhere scratching their heads and pushing aside their Bibles.
While the fall of U.S. Christianity may have finally plateaued, the concern for the perception of God and His love for humanity should still be at DEFCON 1. So, what’s really going on? No one is certain, but one thing is clear—Christians must do something about what Dr. Smith shares.
Before we delve into those questions (and this alarming story), you need to stay in touch with faith-based issues that hit “close to home.” Subscribe to our free newsletter and never miss what’s being said about the Church and being done in the Church—and what real Christians can say back.
American Religion: “There’s Something Bigger Going On Here.”
In his insightful book, Christian Smith posits that millennials have cultivated a distinct “new zeitgeist,” characterized by a diminished emphasis on religion in shaping their overall worldview. This generational shift highlights a stark contrast to previous generations, for whom faith and religious institutions played a central role in navigating life’s complexities and moral dilemmas.
That word “zeitgeist” is a fancy German word meaning “spirit of the times.” What’s the most important spirit to today’s generation? It’s not the Holy Spirit; statistics show that. Smith cites the bottom dropped out in 1991 and lasted until 2009 when what we know as “traditional religion” lost its influence and sway in mainstream America. Smith told Publisher’s Weekly that between those years, people had lived through the end of the Cold War, 9/11, the invention of the internet, and the Great Recession—all of which created distance between people and piety.
We may not be aware at the time but these years, in multiple ways, affected the assumptions, beliefs, values, norms, expectations, and aesthetics that shaped young people’s life experiences, interests, identities, and commitments. Those transformations created a new cultural zeitgeist inhospitable to traditional religion.
Also, during that time, faith has lessened than most things in this country, with the exception of trust in the government. That kind of cynicism brooding across generations has an effect on people embrace a God they can’t experience with any of their five natural senses. Yet, the clamoring for wanting more religion and relationship with “a higher power” is important, but that varies on the generation you ask.
Smith writes in the book that “large numbers of post-Boomers no longer believe that anyone needs a social institution to be a spiritual or moral person, and religion is seen not as a force for good in the world but instead as a source of harm, discrimination, manipulation, exclusion, and control.” He also mentions how some sensitive religious folk are defensive about his findings. These, as he shares, are pastors “who just think they’ve failed, like they did a bad job” if their churches aren’t growing, he said.
“I said, ‘It’s not you. There’s something bigger going on here,’” he said. The pastors found it liberating to realize their church’s decline wasn’t only happening to them, or it wasn’t because of something they’d done or failed to do. “If people don’t have an understanding of those social contexts, it’s very easy for them to personalize it and oftentimes blame themselves,” Smith said.
Regardless of who is to blame of the mass exodus out of today’s churches, something is for certain: It’s up to Christians to create to new genesis for the Church. For which book will you write a chapter?
Smith’s book will be released by Oxford University Press on April 8.
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