All the Lonely People, Where Do They All Come From?

May 3, 2018 By Gene Veith

Most Americans are lonely, according to a new study. And, contrary to what we might expect, the older you are, the less lonely you feel. In fact, loneliness is greatest among young people.

The study, sponsored by Cigna Insurance, surveyed 20,000 Americans, aged 18 and over. It made use of the USC Loneliness Scale, which measures various factors defining loneliness on a scale of 20-80. Someone with a score of 43 can be described as “lonely.” Higher scores show just how lonely the person is. For the full report, go here.

Here is a summary of the findings:

Nearly half of Americans report sometimes or always feeling alone (46 percent) or left out (47 percent).
One in four Americans (27 percent) rarely or never feel as though there are people who really understand them.
Two in five Americans sometimes or always feel that their relationships are not meaningful (43 percent) and that they are isolated from others (43 percent).
One in five people report they rarely or never feel close to people (20 percent) or feel like there are people they can talk to (18 percent).
Americans who live with others are less likely to be lonely (average loneliness score of 43.5) compared to those who live alone (46.4). However, this does not apply to single parents/guardians (average loneliness score of 48.2) – even though they live with children, they are more likely to be lonely.
Only around half of Americans (53 percent) have meaningful in-person social interactions, such as having an extended conversation with a friend or spending quality time with family, on a daily basis.
Generation Z (adults ages 18-22) is the loneliest generation and claims to be in worse health than older generations.
Social media use alone is not a predictor of loneliness; respondents defined as very heavy users of social media have a loneliness score (43.5) that is not markedly different from the score of those who never use social media (41.7).

The average score was 44, which suggests that Americans, on the whole, are indeed lonely to one degree or another. Members of Generation Z (18-20 something) had the highest loneliness score of 48.3. Millennials were at 45.3. Baby Boomers were at a not-so-lonesome 42.4. The Greatest Generation, those 72 and above, were, on the whole, hardly lonely at all, with an average of 38.6.

Why are younger people so lonesome?

One might suspect that social media, where your “friends” are online contacts as opposed to flesh and blood human beings in your life, is to blame. But this research doesn’t bear that out. (Although that last bullet point raises a question for me: the social media users average of 43.5 is over the threshold that defines loneliness, whereas the score of non-social media users of 41.7 rates as non-lonely. The study elsewhere makes a bigger deal of similar 2 point differences.)

One commentator on the study, citing other research, says that the key is how a person uses social media: “If you’re passively using it, if you’re just scrolling feeds, that’s associated with more negative effects,” says Brigham Young psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad, “But if you’re using it to reach out and connect to people to facilitate other kinds of [in-person] interactions, it’s associated with more positive effects.”

See also Rhitu Chatterjee’s article on the study.

I have a theory about why teenagers and young adults are so lonely. This is the age at which human beings are most concerned with reaching out to others. They yearn for understanding, are worried about how they appear to others, and need to connect with other human beings. (In Classical Education terms, this is the “rhetoric” phase.) And yet, in typical school structures, segregated by age, with adults not in the picture, socially-inexperienced young people tend to form cliques, pecking orders, and hierarchies. Sometimes these reach Lord of the Flies levels of viciousness and exclusion. Thus, a teenager yearns to belong, and yet feels excluded from the group, resulting in a feeling of loneliness.

I wonder if Generation Z’s who have been home-schooled or otherwise exist in social circles that contain adults and peers of different ages have the same rates of loneliness.

And, of course, factors are also going to be absent fathers, and, across the board, the general breakdowns of families, communities, churches, etc.

Any other theories?

Illustration, “Loneliness in a Crowd” By U3117126 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

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Adding Heterosexuals to the LGBT Category

February 7, 2018 By Gene Veith

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It’s being reported that some activists want to expand the LGBT category so that it reads LGBTQQICAPF2K+.That needs to be done in order to be inclusive. This broader category is so inclusive that it includes heterosexuals.

Here is what the new proposed acronym stands for:

L – lesbian

G – gay

B – bisexual

T – transgender

Q – queer

Q – questioning

I – intersex

C – curious

A – asexual

A – agender

A – ally

P – pansexual

P – polysexual

F – friends and family

2 – two-spirit

K – kink

+–the possibility of more, to be added later

The idea is to bring in everyone whose sexual preferences go beyond normal procreative sex. This includes “kinks”; that is, people with “kinky” tastes, such as, I suppose, fans of the Shades of Gray series.

But it also includes “friends and family.” Supportive family members of gay people, as well as “kinks,” etc., get to be counted as members of the group. Also their friends, heterosexual though they be. Also an “ally,” someone who supports the LGBT+ agenda, is welcomed into. the group, even if he or she is into normal procreative sex.

Is this expansion of the category an initiative of heterosexuals who yearn to identify with this once-maligned, once-persecuted, but now highly-respected group? A way for heterosexuals to get in on gay people’s new status as sympathetic victims turned politically-correct paragons of virtue?

Or is it another example of “inclusion” as a supreme value? In some circles, such as Generation Z (as we have said), inclusion is the one virtue to rule them all. Boy Scouts must be inclusive and so must admit girls. Women’s groups to be inclusive must include men who identify as women. Campus Christian organizations to be inclusive must permit unbelievers to be officers.

I have had gay friends. If this new broadened category finds acceptance, I can wrap myself in their victim status and claim all of the rights and privileges thereof. But I don’t think I would take advantage of this opportunity. I wouldn’t want people to think I was a kink.

Illustration, Straight and Supportive Flag, by Xxmandyx91xx (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Monday Miscellany, 4/22/24

April 22, 2024 By Gene Veith

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Ronald Reagan–and a Cranach subscriber–saved Israel (over Biden’s objections); connection between the church slump and the surge in mental illness; and the Finnish Supreme Court will try the faithful Lutherans yet again.

Ronald Reagan–and a Cranach Subscriber–Saved Israel (Over Biden’s Objections)

Iran attacked Israel by launching hundreds of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. But 99% of them were shot down before doing any damage. That is a remarkable success rate, saving countless lives.

Many of those were shot down by Israeli, American, British, and Jordanian aircraft–yes, pilots from the Palestinian state of Jordan, part of a coalition of Sunni Muslims opposed to Shi’ite Iran, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that provided help and intelligence in thwarting the Iranian attack. But the biggest factor in protecting Israel from the massive barrage of missiles was the so-called “Iron Dome,” the air defense system that launches missiles to intercept incoming missiles, the equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet.

So the biggest hero of this defensive achievement has to be Ronald Reagan, whose Strategic Defense Initiative led to the development of this technology. So says Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal. Reagan’s 1983 proposal was mocked by Democrats as “Star Wars,” though the space-based elements of the project never materialized. And one of its biggest critics was then Senator Joe Biden, who said,

“Star Wars represents a fundamental assault on the concepts, alliances and arms-control agreements that have buttressed American security for several decades, and the president’s continued adherence to it constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”

Now President Biden is taking credit for the success of Israel’s missile defense.

Much more worthy of credit is one of our own, your fellow Cranach subscriber Bob Foote, engineer extraordinaire and my cousin, who was part of the team that invented and implemented this amazing life-saving military technology!

Connection Between the Church Slump and the Surge in Mental Illness

The United States is seeing a dramatic rise in mental health problems, particularly (as we have blogged about) among teenagers and young adults. The conventional wisdom is blaming cell phones and social media, but a Harvard public health professor is making a connection to the decline in religious involvement.

Ira Stoll at The Editors Substack quotes an article by Dr. Tyler VanderWeele in the journal Harvard Public Health:

Extrapolations from the Nurses’ Health Study data suggest that about 40 percent of the increasing suicide rate in the United States from 1999 to 2014 might be attributed to declines in attendance at religious services during this period. Another study suggested declining attendance from 1991 to 2019 accounted for 28 percent of the increase in depression among adolescents.

Vanderweele says there have been at least 215 reliable studies that suggest that “weekly religious service attendance is longitudinally associated with lower mortality risk, lower depression, less suicide, better cardiovascular disease survival, better health behaviors, and greater marital stability, happiness, and purpose in life.”

The Wall Street Journal has published an article by Clare Ansberry that comes to the same conclusion, citing further research, including international studies.

Finland’s Supreme Court Will Try the Faithful Lutherans Yet Again

We’ve posted many times about the faithful Lutheran Christians Dr. Päivi Räsänen and Bishop Juhana Pohjola who were charged under Finland’s “war crimes and crimes against humanity” statute for citing what the Bible says about homosexuality.

Dr. Räsänen is a physician and member of parliament who in 2019 tweeted a criticism of the state church for being one of the sponsors of the LGBTQ Pride parade in which she quoted Bible verses. Investigators also found a pamphlet on the Biblical teachings about marriage she had written in 2005 that disapproved of homosexuality. The police also charged Bishop Pohjola, the leader of a confessional Lutheran church body with which the LCMS is in fellowship, for publishing the pamphlet.

The two were acquitted in their trial. But in a country without the protection against “double jeopardy” that Americans enjoy as a constitutional right, prosecutors can appeal an acquittal until they get a guilty verdict! The two were acquitted by the appellate court. Prosecutors appealed that ruling to Finland’s Supreme Court.

The hope was that the court would refuse to hear the case. After all, two lower courts refused to convict the two, with the appeal court panel agreeing unanimously that they were innocent of the alleged “hate crime.” Expressing a religious conviction does not constitute “hate,” and Finnish law does protect the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech. And yet the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, which to me is not a good sign.

Dr. Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola have been put through this ordeal for five years and now must go through the pressure of a trial for the third time. This is a clear example of the weaponization of the legal system. Even if they are ultimately acquitted–prosecutors would have one more shot at them at the European Court of Human Rights–the trials themselves are the punishment, with the apparent intention of deterring anyone else from refusing to go along with the LGBTQ party line.

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DISCUSS: The “Pre-War Era”?

April 12, 2024 By Gene Veith

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After a Russian missile entered his country’s airspace, the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, had some sobering words for the rest of Europe:

“War is no longer a concept from the past, it is real.”

“The most worrying thing is that every scenario is possible. I know it sounds devastating, especially for the younger generation, but we have to get used to the fact that a new era has begun: the pre-war era.”

A large-scale conventional war, characterized by both old-style trench warfare and new-style drone attacks, is being waged between Russia and Ukraine. Israel waged a bloody war against Hamas, and though its invasion of Gaza has been halted, Iran along with its surrogates Hezbollah and the Houthis are threatening to ignite a wider war. Nations in South and Central America are torn by narco-wars, with Haiti collapsing into anarchy and some of those nations threatening to go war with each other. There is fighting in North Africa, Nigeria, and Sudan. In Asia, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is torn by bloody ethnic conflict, and the Syrian civil war continues. ISIS is back. Afghanistan has resumed its role as a haven for terrorists, now that the Taliban is flush with its victory over the United States. And China has greatly expanded its military and is rattling its saber. Wikipedia is keeping a list of ongoing armed conflicts.

What does this resurgence of global warfare mean for the United States? We are already deeply involved as arms suppliers to Ukraine and Israel, but our own military is short of supplies, manpower, and morale. Can we stay out of all of these conflicts? Should we intervene in some of them? Is there any way of calming things down?

In short, do you agree with Prime Minister Tusk that we are in “the pre-war era,” his conviction that a large-scale global conflict is coming? If so, what should we do to prepare and/or to fend it off?

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It’s Mostly the Liberal Churches That People Are Leaving

April 10, 2024 By Gene Veith

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The conventional wisdom is that church affiliation is plummeting because Christians support right wing politics, are intolerant of LGBTQs, and hold to other culturally conservative beliefs. Those are surely factors in many cases, but the churches that are showing the biggest exodus are the denominations that promote progressive politics, support the LGBTQ agenda, and are culturally liberal.

The Public Religion Research Institute conducted a study of the retention rate of churches, including both the “churning” of church affiliation–that is, members leaving one denomination for another–as well as “disaffiliation,” in which members leave to become “nones.”

The study report, entitled”Religious Change in America,” found that “White evangelical Protestants have one of the highest retention rates of all religious groups.” In 2023, they retained 76% of their members. This is actually an improvement. In 2016, their retention rate was 66%. “White mainline/non-evangelical Protestants also continue losing more members than they replace and at higher rates than other Protestants.” In 2023, their retention rate was 58%.

Religions with the highest retention rates were Black Protestants (82%) and Jews (77%). White Catholics had a retention rate of 62%, with Hispanic Catholics at 68%.

Of those who left their churches to become unaffiliated with any church, 35% were mainline/non-evangelical Protestants; 35% were Catholics; and 16% were evangelical Protestants. Those leaving non-Christian traditions were only 8%.

Why did they become unaffiliated? The biggest reason given was simply that they no longer believe in the church’s teachings, at 67%. And of those beliefs, 47% cited the church’s “negative teaching about or treatment of gay and lesbian people.” Most of those must have been responding to the official Catholic teachings, since 35% were leaving liberal Protestant denominations that for the most part support the LGBTQ cause.

To be sure, “‘Unaffiliated’ is the only major religious category experiencing growth,” to the point that 26% of the American surveyed are no longer members of any church. A major reason given, though, for giving up church entirely is that their family was not all that religious while they were growing up, cited by 41% of the unaffiliated.

A different study of young adults aged 18-30 found similar results, and it has the virtue of spinning out the confessional Missouri Synod Lutherans from mainline liberal Lutherans. Consulting data from the ongoing General Social Survey, the Catholic periodical The Pillar found that in the 2018-2022 cohort a shocking 42% say that their religion is “none,” with 29% saying they are Protestant, and 19% saying they are Catholic.

In 1978-1982, 19% of young adults were members of the Protestant Mainline. In 1998-2002, that number had declined to 11%. In 2018-2022, that number was only 5%!

The category of “other Protestants” fared much better. In the words of the report:

The group labeled as “Other Protestants” includes more evangelical denominations, including the various denominations of Baptists, the Missouri Synod Lutherans, and the African Methodist Episcopal communities, as well as non-denominational Protestants.

These evangelical and non-denominational Protestants decreased from 38% of young respondents in 1978-1982 to 24% in 2018-2022. This is still a very significant decline, but not as large as among mainline Protestants.

Breaking it down still further,

The number of young adult respondents claiming membership in every single named Protestant denomination had declined by 65% or more over the last 40 years. Baptists had declined the least, at 65%, while Lutherans had seen the largest decline at 75%. But across the board this was a change which can only be described as a collapse.

Meanwhile, non-denominational and other Protestants had actually seen their share increase slightly among young people.

That share increases in the three cohorts from 15.1% to 15.6% to 15.7%. This is more evidence of the greater retention in more conservative traditions. The chart showing this data has a prominent asterix, with a note saying “*Missouri Synod Lutherans are included in Non-Denom/Other.” That’s odd for the LCMS to be included with the non-denoms, which doubtless improves our numbers. But this is still better than other evangelical categories, such as the Baptists, whose numbers have gone down from 23.3% to 17.4% to 8%.

None of this is reason for complacency, much less self-congratulation. All churches need to do a better job of retaining their members and especially their young people. But the answer is not simply capitulating to the non-Christian culture. Churches that go that route are faring even worse than those that resist it.

After all, if there is no difference between what the church teaches and what the culture teaches, why get up on Sunday mornings to go to church? Churches must offer the “unaffiliated” what they do not have, but what they need. When the culture and the church are at odds, it isn’t surprising that church affiliation declines. What else could we expect? But as the culture crashes and burns, churches can tend to the casualties.

Illustration by Carol M Highsmith via Rawpixel, CC0

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Why Protestants Convert to Catholicism

March 1, 2024 By Gene Veith

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Some Protestants have been converting to Catholicism. (Similarly, some Catholics have been converting to Protestantism, but that’s another topic.) Why is that?

The Reformed scholar Brad Littlejohn (whom I know) and the Reformed pastor Chris Castaldo take up that question in their book Why Do Protestants Convert? Basically, they argue that a major factor is the failures of contemporary Protestantism, the sense that the Roman Catholic Church has something that today’s evangelical congregations lack.

Nathanael Blake interacts with their book in The Federalist. Here is how he summarizes the issues:

The basic problem is, as Carl Trueman observed in a brief forward, that “the idiom of the rock concert with added TED talk is scarcely adequate to convey the holiness of God, the beauty of worship and the seriousness of the Christian faith.” Generations of evangelical leaders have embraced the idea that casual, entertaining, “seeker-sensitive” church services are the key to a growing congregation. Some succeed, but they leave a lot behind in the attempt. This is why it often seems that nearly every intellectually or aesthetically sensitive American evangelical will at some point feel the allure of Catholicism — the road to Rome often begins with a sense that one’s Protestant church is missing something important, if not several things.

Blake quotes from the book and summarizes its arguments:

Catholicism offers paternal authority “in an age that has all but blacklisted the very word” and that “precious few of our Protestant churches give their worshippers a sense of being in the presence of the holy.”

Instead, evangelicals in particular are encouraged to “waltz casually” before God “with gym shorts and a latte.” It is no wonder that some are “captivated” when they witness the Catholic Mass, along with the rest of the aesthetic heritage of the Church of Rome — even when wealthy evangelical congregations build large churches, they look like convention centers, not cathedrals.

Catholicism also offers an intellectual and cultural tradition that is appealing to many Protestants, especially those whose churches seem anti-intellectual and sold out to contemporary pop culture.

Theologically, Catholicism offers certainty and historical continuity, in contrast to the plethora of Protestant theologies, some of which were recent innovations, depending on the minister. And this is what most struck me, Lutheran that I am:

Evangelical converts also appreciate Catholicism’s sacramental focus. For example, the Catholic reverence for the Eucharist is a stark contrast to an evangelical culture in which communion, for example, is just a symbol that is poorly explained, infrequently administered, and irreverently received.

The book is addressed not so much to Protestants contemplating swimming the Tiber but to Protestant pastors and church leaders, exhorting them to address these issues. It claims that Protestantism has the resources to address these perceived weaknesses that drive some evangelicals to Rome.

Protestant worship can be beautiful, reverent, liturgical, and sacramental. Protestant preaching and teaching can be authoritative, intellectually formidable, and historically informed. . . .

As Littlejohn and Castaldo bluntly put it, evangelical churches need to follow the Reformers’ example in trying to carefully balance “Word and Sacraments in worship, bringing together mind and heart, soul and body, individual and community” rather than focusing on the “right balance of Coffee Hour and Praise Band Hour.”

“Word and Sacraments”! That’s music to a Lutheran’s ears.

“The Reformed heritage can meet the needs that lead many to look toward Rome.” Maybe it can. But the Lutheran heritage already does!

Let me add a few points. . .

(1) A common line of thought cited by Protestants who’ve gone over to Rome–or to Eastern Orthodoxy–is this: The church selected the books that make up the Bible. Therefore, the church is prior to the Bible. So the authority of the church is more foundational than the authority of the Bible.

But this is a confusion of what the Word of God is. The Bible is the Word of God written. But the Word of God was active before the books of the Bible were written and collected. God created the universe by His Word. Christ is the Word–the very expression of the mind of God–made flesh. The Holy Spirit works through God’s Word whenever the good news of Christ is proclaimed.

As an apologist of the Reformation put it, how would a first century convert to Christianity even know about Christ unless he heard someone’s words explaining who He is and what He has done? Those words that conveyed the Gospel were words uttered by a human being, but they were also the Word of God. Thus, the Word gave birth to the church. As such, it is prior to the church and authoritative over it.

(2) There are tendencies in contemporary Protestantism that are indeed more consistent with Catholicism than classical Protestantism. Evangelicals today are often enthralled by the idea of a megachurch, thinking that big numbers are a sign of “living Christianity” and God’s favor. Some of them may dislike the trappings of megachurches, as has been said, but they like the idea of being part of a church body with 1.378 billion members worldwide. That’s not just a megachurch, it’s a gigachurch.

Also, many Protestants today have left behind justification by grace through faith in the work of Christ in favor of some version of salvation by works, manifested in moralism, perfectionism, and doing things for the Lord. That fits better in a Roman Catholic framework.

(3) Many Protestants who have read writers like G. K Chesterton and Thomas Aquinas are captivated by the the Church of Rome are described in books. They do indeed, as has been said, crave authority, unity, certainty, unchanging truth, the beautiful mysteries of the mass, and so on.

And yet, once they convert to Catholicism, that classic Catholicism is hard to find in contemporary America. The vernacular mass is often a more structured version of the contemporary Christian worship they were trying to escape. The classic Latin Mass can sometimes still be found and will be crowded with Catholic converts. But now the Pope has all but outlawed the Latin Mass! Those who loved the idea of a living authority that keeps the church on the right track now must contend with a liberal Pope! Not to mention feminist nuns, Marxist priests, pro-abortion Catholic politicians, and unbelieving laypeople (nearly half of whom reject the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament, thinking like Zwinglian Protestants that it is only symbolic.)

To be sure, not all converts experience this letdown–some find an orthodox Catholic congregation–but many do. And the divisions in the church make it a challenge, to the point of forcing them to behave like Protestants again by church-shopping and questioning the church hierarchy.

In conclusion, those who are pulled in the direction of sacraments, the liturgy, historical Christianity, and a rich theological tradition, would do well to check out confessional Lutheranism!

Photo by form PxHere, CC0 Public Domain

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