To Go Forward
Musings on Christian Smith's Why Religion Went Obsolete (Part 1?)
Perhaps it speaks to my relative isolation from religious circles, but I only came across Christian Smith’s Why Religion Went Obsolete from the linked Christianity Today article. I finally picked it up yesterday, and while I’m still getting through it (just got through Chapter 8: so maybe there’ll be a Part 2 when I finish reading it and think about it more), I did want to jot down my motivations for picking it up and immediate reactions.
To summarize, Smith’s book broadly sketches out a sociological argument to investigate why organized religion (Judeo-Christian traditions as understood primarily in the 1950s) has declined so sharply and become obsolete. Smith notes that while cultural trends stretching back to post World War II existed, the actual decline occurred in the era I came of age (1990s-2000s), noting, among other reasons:
General cultural shifts, including neoliberal capitalist values that diminished communal bonds (echoing a Robert Putnam/Bowling Alone argument)
A postmodern/Internet age emphasis that challenged general hierarchical structures, opening up pathways to express spirituality as an individual quest, tied with relaxed sexual mores
Specific events like 9/11 causing a rise in viewing organized religion as harmful: scandals within churches, religiously-motivated terrorism, etc. bring up idea of controlling leaders duping weak individuals
And as my other posts on this blog suggest, I’m pretty sympathetic to this broader argument, not the least because it’s more descriptive than anything else. Even during high school, when I was most outwardly evangelical and primed to adopt conservative positions, I rolled my eyes when pastors would rail about the dangers of “postmodernism,” the horrors of living in a world of subjective truths, and the need to take religion back to the 1950s. To me, this wishcasting rests upon the unspoken claim that cultures should center organized religion first and foremost and that a theocracy really wouldn’t be all that bad, which even my high school self saw as fairly ridiculous.
And if we take this as a descriptive case, the takeaway is simply that America has become less nurturing toward traditional religious structures over the past years. One of the subclaims that struck me was Smith’s distilling of the New Atheist movement (Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Ben Harris, etc.). While it itself generally withered within a decade and did not have intellectual arguments that sustained it among academics, that it did have an outsized impact upon the broader culture as it gave voice to inchoate doubts about organized religion’s supposed benefits.
The specific argument, though, is that churches especially has muffled adjusting to cultural changes, and in so doing, have contributed to their obsolescence in today’s world. Instead of listening to the oppression and restrictiveness of those chafing against a 1950’s-era sexual ethic, the evangelical church doubled down with purity culture teachings. As general distrust of institutions grew, the Catholic Church and multiple denominations were embroiled in sex scandals and failures of leadership to enact specific reforms demonstrating true repentance. As church membership declined, revivalists switched from seeking true conversions to instead seeking political power: whereas Billy Graham (rightly or wrongly) had general nationwide respect, Franklin Graham has become a simple mouthpiece for the GOP.
There’s a certain irony in this: the Great Awakening and historical tent revivals show that in the past, American Christianity adapted with cultural shifts and preserved what was essential. The digital age may seem like nothing ever before, but I’d argue that the Industrial Revolution was probably even more seismic. We may not worship like Jonathan Edwards intended, or hold to the Inner Light like the early Quakers, but past generations of American Christians ended up embracing change and in so doing preserved God’s witness.
So instead of complaining that our job is harder than before, instead of trying to recreate a distant past that was by no means perfect, instead of desiring to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt, let’s go forward. While organized religion is well obsolete, nothing in a postmodern, digital, post-Covid world should make God’s love less relevant. The mission to be God’s ambassadors, to be salt and light preserving what is good, still remains, no matter whether it occurs in flourishing church structures or in Zoom spaces.