{"id":6289,"date":"2017-03-16T11:40:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T17:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6289"},"modified":"2017-03-16T11:40:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T17:40:15","slug":"else-lose-losing-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/03\/else-lose-losing-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"What else we lose when we’re “losing my religion”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"DM<\/p>\n

New, must-read article in The Atlantic, by Peter Beinart: \u00a0\u201cBreaking Faith; The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

A few excerpts:<\/p>\n

[Secularism is] making America\u2019s partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of both Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement, whose members see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. As Americans have left organized religion, they haven\u2019t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between \u201cus\u201d and \u201cthem.\u201d Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways. . . .<\/p>\n

A Pew Research Center poll last March found that Trump trailed Ted Cruz by 15 points among Republicans who attended religious services every week. But he led Cruz by a whopping 27 points among those who did not. . . .<\/p>\n

In 2008, the University of Iowa\u2019s Benjamin Knoll noted that among Catholics, mainline Protestants, and born-again Protestants, the less you attended church, the more anti-immigration you were. . . .<\/p>\n

Secularization is transforming the left, too. In 1990, according to PRRI, slightly more than half of white liberals seldom or never attended religious services. Today the proportion is 73 percent. . . . While white Democrats who went to religious services at least once a week backed Clinton by 26 points, according to an April 2016 PRRI survey, white Democrats who rarely attended services backed Sanders by 13 points.<\/p>\n

Sanders, like Trump, appealed to secular voters because he reflected their discontent. . . .<\/p>\n

The decline of traditional religious authority is contributing to a more revolutionary mood within black politics as well. \u00a0Although African Americans remain more likely than whites to attend church, religious disengagement is growing in the black community. African Americans under the age of 30 are three times as likely to eschew a religious affiliation as African Americans over 50. . . . Brittney Cooper, who teaches women\u2019s and gender studies as well as Africana studies at Rutgers, writes that the black Church \u201chas been abandoned as the leadership model for this generation.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n

Black Lives Matter activists may be justified in spurning an insufficiently militant Church. But when you combine their post-Christian perspective with the post-Christian perspective growing inside the GOP, it\u2019s easy to imagine American politics becoming more and more vicious. . . .<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s the values of hierarchy, authority, and tradition that churches instill. Maybe religion builds habits and networks that help people better weather national traumas, and thus retain their faith that the system works. For whatever reason, secularization isn\u2019t easing political conflict. It\u2019s making American politics even more convulsive and zero-sum.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author writes that there\u2019s no clear cause-and-effect; is the increasing conflict a direct result of secularism, or are the forces that are driving secularism, also driving the increasing conflict? \u00a0Is religion a moderating force on natural human tribal tendencies and, with its loss of influence, we\u2019re just seeing the way people \u201cnormally\u201d behave?<\/p>\n

Certainly the triumphalist conviction of atheists, that religion is the cause of evil and, once we abandon it, better days are ahead, and we\u2019ll all live in peace and harmony, gains no support here. \u00a0Of course, they might well say that \u201cpeace and harmony\u201d is really just complacency, and that all those religious people out there are just sheep, whereas they know better and are out their fighting for what\u2019s right, and if that means fighting with their opponents, so be it.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, one of Beinart\u2019s possible explanations is that, however much division there might be, a message of \u201cuniversal love\u201d might make a genuine difference to churchgoers. \u00a0But I would suspect that a shared Christianity (or \u201cJudeo-Christianity\u201d) did bring with it\u00a0a feeling of\u00a0having something in common with other Americans despite differences\u00a0in race, region, economic class, etc., and that, shedding that, the drive towards tribalism had one less check on it.<\/p>\n

So, readers, where are we headed?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0own photograph. \u00a0This is an attempt at an illustration for \u201cempty pews\u201d but it\u2019s something of a cheat \u2013 taken either when people were just starting to arrive or after mass was over, I forget which.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New, must-read article in The Atlantic, by Peter Beinart: \u00a0\u201cBreaking Faith; The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.\u201d A few excerpts: [Secularism is] making America\u2019s partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of both Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement, whose members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":2819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[497,91],"class_list":["post-6289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-multiculturalism","tag-secularism"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat else we lose when we're "losing my religion"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"New, must-read article in The Atlantic, by Peter Beinart: \u00a0"Breaking Faith; The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/03\/else-lose-losing-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What else we lose when we're "losing my religion"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"New, must-read article in The Atlantic, by Peter Beinart: \u00a0"Breaking Faith; 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