{"id":1729,"date":"2015-04-28T16:01:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T22:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1729"},"modified":"2016-10-13T07:50:39","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T13:50:39","slug":"secularism-and-modernity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/04\/secularism-and-modernity.html","title":{"rendered":"Secularism and Modernity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

You\u2019ve heard this (or a variant thereof) before, right?<\/p>\n

With hardly any significant exceptions, religion recedes whenever human security and well-being rises . . .<\/p>\n

Presumably, those who deplore the decline of religion in the world today would not welcome the sort of devastation and despair that could give religion its second wind.<\/p>\n

There is no other plausible scenario that could halt the slide, for a fairly obvious reason: the recent rapid growth of mutual knowledge, thanks to the global spread of electronic and digital communication.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this particular instance, this comes from a piece in the Wall Street Journal, \u201cWhy the Future of Religion Is Bleak<\/a>,\u201d which argues that religion is on its way towards vanishing, except for perhaps as a social club with a few rituals attached to it, a Knights of Columbus without anything but the fundraising and the fancy costumes for Fourth of July parades.<\/p>\n

This is a topic that I\u2019ve been sitting on ever since a CFM* meeting at which the empty-nester parents lamented their kids who had abandoned going to church \u2014 even in the case of the deacon and his wife.<\/p>\n

(*CFM = Christian Family Movement, a \u201csmall groups\u201d-type organization in which, in groups of about 10 \u2013 12 couples, we meet once a month to discuss some passages from a book about Christian life, and then have various gatherings of all groups together throughout the year.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of circular reasoning\/begging the question when it comes to this topic: \u00a0\u201cWhy don\u2019t young adults go to church? \u00a0Because society is becoming more secular.\u201d \u00a0And the answer that\u2019s proffered, beyond this, tends to be that of Marx, that religion was indeed the opiate for the masses,\u00a0 that the purpose of religion was to provide consolation to the poor, knowing that their sufferings in this life would be made good in the next one.<\/p>\n

But the funny thing is, taken on an individual basis, Christianity is not, and has not, necessarily been a religion of the poor. \u00a0The first Christians tended to be not the poor, but the wealthy (or at least middle-class) and educated, looking for something that was more meaningful and made more sense to them than the worship of the gods of their fathers and mothers. \u00a0A favorite sort of conversion story was that of the wealthy man or woman rejecting wealth, and Francis of Assisi was the son of a merchant. \u00a0In fact, the story around St. Francis goes like this: \u00a0the economic growth of the High Middle Ages produced this new breed of voluntarily poor Brothers and Sisters such as the Franciscans and the Poor Clares, as a way of responding to their un-ease about the new money economy. \u00a0At least, that\u2019s what I remember from a book from my Medieval history grad student days.<\/p>\n

And now? \u00a0I\u2019m still reading Robert Putnam\u2019s Our Kids<\/em>, and just saw a chart saying something I\u2019d seen before, that, in the United States, it\u2019s the poor who are \u201closing their religion\u201d and there\u2019s a sharp divergence, as the middle-class and better educated are not only doing a better job keeping their families intact, but are keeping up church attendance in a way that the less-educated and poorer class aren\u2019t. \u00a0I have the impression, too, that in China the rise of Christianity is a middle-class phenomenon, too.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, when you read or hear stories of people who have converted, or have had their faith strengthened and have felt consolidation from their faith, it\u2019s not a matter of poverty or financial distress, but other sorts of needs: \u00a0a medical crisis, ruptured family relationships, depression, etc. \u00a0Or they struggle with an acute awareness of sinfulness, either because of acute actual misdeeds or dismay over more \u201cordinary\u201d sins, which is, upon conversion, remedied by gratefulness for forgiveness.<\/p>\n

None of which points to a direct path from increasing wealth\/financial security to secularism.<\/p>\n

Now, the path towards secularism is the sort of thing where\u00a0there\u2019s a definite\u00a0tipping point: \u00a0once there\u2019s no longer any felt social pressure to go to church, then those families whose attendance was mainly the product of \u201cdoing what you\u2019re supposed to do\u201d will fall away, leaving only those with a clear conviction and\/or sense of commitment. \u00a0Once parents see other parents around them sleeping in on Sunday mornings, they\u2019re more likely to\u00a0abandon the belief that raising the kids \u201cin a religion\u201d is necessary for their moral development, regardless of the parents\u2019 own actual beliefs.<\/p>\n

And I haven\u2019t yet worked out a workable explanation \u2014 besides the self-reinforcing nature of this move towards secularism \u2014 that moves past just \u201cwealth = godlessness.\u201d \u00a0 A part of it is probably modern medicine and science taking away from a feeling of mystery about the world. \u00a0A part of it is perhaps even the increasing prevalence of\u00a0mental health professionals and Oprah-like popularizers of the notion that the path\u00a0to happiness is sound mental health. \u00a0 (And I don\u2019t mean to imply that there\u2019s something wrong with treating mental illness; I\u2019m thinking more of popular writers and speakers who urge everyone to find purpose and emotional healing in mental health-based techniques rather than in God.) \u00a0Is the secularism of Europe perhaps even partly tied to its experiences with the why-would-God-permit-this death and destruction of World War II?<\/p>\n

So, no answers, but I wanted to at least set out my initial thoughts rather than leaving these forever unfinished in a forgotten\u00a0draft.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You\u2019ve heard this (or a variant thereof) before, right? With hardly any significant exceptions, religion recedes whenever human security and well-being rises . . . Presumably, those who deplore the decline of religion in the world today would not welcome the sort of devastation and despair that could give religion its second wind. There is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-secularism"],"yoast_head":"\nSecularism and Modernity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You've heard this (or a variant thereof) before, right? 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