Column Notes on Pew Study of Decline of older churches and rise of the nones

This is a difficult column for me to write, as it is a bit of an elegy to a religious scene passing by.. The Pew 2014 religious landscape  study demonstrates a continued decline in the long-established churches, Protestant and Catholic alike. The newer American faith groups have grown a bit. I  hasten to add that the largest percentage increase in America is among those who are unaffiliated with a religious group at all.

One of the places we decide we may want a patina of religion is when we face death. I get more calls from funeral directors who are told to “find a minister/preacher” to hold a service since the family has no connection to church. the rite of passage of marriage creates a similar impetus. Since our sanctuary is lovely, we get a number of calls to see if a wedding could be held here. it is clear that the desire is for a pretty background for pictures.

Older established, mainline churches are in decline across the board. To think-take doctrine seriously. Zenith with interest in institutions. So many hospitals, colleges, and charitable activities have been sponsored by the older churches, and our society is the better for it.The very word now brings up thoughts of the bureaucratic. we will be a lesser society in matters of careful, thoughtful faith as the great seminaries close their doors.

Part of our demise is that we have been too nice, too easy on each other. We actually accepted people saying that they would let their children decide for themselves about church membership, as if a child has a claim on going to school. So, we have not held on to succeeding generations-in part this is due to increasing intermarriage among church groups, and its result is to open the doors to other faith groups.. In our quest to be tolerant, we lost a sense of where we do stand-at the same time the values espoused by the older churches seem to fit with the move of the culture. Part of our decline is sheer Ignorance-I know someone who is considering moving from the Presbyterians to a more liberal denomination, but he has no idea that the denomination he is entering is far more liberal than the Presbyterians.

The older churches have been too dismissive of worship, Bible study, prayer and other spiritual practices.Many Protestant churches have said things such as going to church does not make you a Christian, but the correlative point not going to church is proof of not being a committed Christian got lost. In seeking to reach out, we seem like another soft-hearted social service organization, but we have often lost the distinctive religious component of that message.

Years ago, the great Richard Niebuhr (who spent some time at Eden Seminary) wrote of churches seeing Christ against the culture  but also for the culture. he obviously approved of a stance of Christ transforming the culture. In our time, the more successful churches seem to take a counter-cultural rhetorical stance, a sin the world is evil and against the church, but take on decidedly pro-cultural stance in terms of their ethical positions and their market orientation to presenting their religious point of view. The long-established churches in America seem to be in the minority on religious doctrine, as we have emphasized the church as an entity, but America is a nation of people seeking individualism and the authority of individual preference.  Robert Bellah and his associate in Habits of the Heart caught the wave of american religion with their interview with “Sheila” and i her pastiche of various spiritual notions that she termed sheilasim. I will miss a religious landscape of carefully composed ritual, not needing to re-invent the wheel. We will be the poorer for their loss.