religiosity

The stunning rise of “I’m BOTH spiritual AND religious” in America

By Joe Perez

A fascinating recent analysis of data on American religiosity today shows the rise of a new ethos in the United States: a stunning 48 percent of Americans now describe themselves as BOTH spiritual AND religious, with another 30 percent preferring the “spiritual, BUT NOT religious” formula.

Now here’s the stunner: only 13 years ago, a majority of 54% of Americans described themselves as religious BUT NOT spiritual. If these surveys are correct, we are witnessing a hidden sea change whereby Americans have now largely accepted a divide between the religious and the spiritual, and the spiritual is winning in spades.

Author Diana Butler Bass sees the day coming when religion in the U.S. will virtually come to an end. In a recent blog post on the Huffington Post, she writes:

In a 2008 survey, Pew research found that one in 10 Americans now considers themselves an ex-Catholic. The situation is so dire that the church launched a PR campaign inviting Catholics to “come home,” to woo back disgruntled members. There was a slight uptick in Catholic membership last year, mostly due to immigrant Catholics. There is no data indicating that Catholics are returning en masse and much anecdotal evidence suggesting that leaving-taking continues. Catholic leaders worry that once the new immigrants become fully part of American society they might leave, too.

She does not talk about the developing world, however, where there are few signs of secularization. After describing the American decline of Protestant denominations as well as Catholic, she continues:

The religious market collapse has happened with astonishing speed. In 1999, when survey takers asked Americans “Do you consider yourself spiritual or religious,” a solid majority of 54 percent responded that they were “religious but not spiritual.” By 2009, only 9 percent of Americans responded that way. In 10 years, those willing to identify themselves primarily as “religious” plummeted by 45 percentage points.

In the last decade, the word “religion” has become equated with institutional or organized religion. Because of crises such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Roman Catholic abuse scandal, Americans now define “religion” in almost exclusively negative terms. These larger events, especially when combined with increasing irrelevance of too much of organized religion, contributed to an overall decline in church membership, and an overall decline of the numbers of Christians, in the United States.

There may be hope, however, regarding the future of faith. Despite worry about the word, “religion,” Americans are extremely warm toward “spiritual but not religious” (30 percent) and, even more interestingly (and perhaps paradoxically), the term “spiritual and religious” (48 percent). While “religion” means institutional religion, “spirituality” means an experience of faith. Large numbers of Americans are hankering for experiential faith whereby they can connect with God, the divine, or wonder as well as with their neighbors and that lead to a more profound sense of meaning in the world. Maybe Americans once called this “religion,” but no more. Americans call it “spirituality.” (Emphasis mine.)

If all this sounds bleak for religion, she does note a silver lining:

Some Americans want to be spiritually left alone, without complications from organized religion. But nearly half of Americans appear to hope for a spiritual reformation — or even revolution — in their faith traditions and denominations. Congregations that exhibit a vibrant spiritual life embodying a living faith in practical ways succeeding, even in the religion bear market. These sorts of communities are models of what might be possible to renew wearied organizations…

Read the whole thing.

The drama in the future of American consciousness will apparently be played out not in a war between the spiritual and the religious, but between those who are BUT NOTs and the BOTH ANDs. World Spirituality must find a way to include and embrace both groups of people. Nevertheless, it’s the BOTH ANDs whose perspective probably holds the greatest promise for the rise of a more Integral worldview, one which recognizes the falsity of the distinction between spiritual and religious, and which works towards the greater integration of today’s theologies with modern and post-modern wisdom, and the revitalization of spiritual and religious organizations.

Loss of religion linked to worrisome social trends

By Joe Perez

As religion declines in the U.S. and Europe, weighty issues arise about our collective human future. In “Protestant Ethic 2.0,” Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com, describes key aspects of the sociological significance of religiosity.

First, without a healthy religious base to a society, economic growth as we have known it may not be possible. He writes:

[I]n reality, the religious connection with economic growth may be still far more important than is commonly supposed.

Many in the pundit class identify religion as something of a regressive tendency, embraced by the less enlightened, the less skilled, intelligent and educated. Yet some scholars, such as Charles Murray, point out that religious affiliation is weakening most not among the middle and upper classes but among the poorer and less educated who traditionally looked to churches for succor and moral instruction. Secularism may have not hurt the uber-rich or the academic overclass so far, but it appears to have helped expand our lumpenproleteriat.

Some might be surprised to learn that religious affiliation grows with education levels. A new University of Nebraska study finds that with each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services increased by 15%. The educated, the study found, may not be eschewing religion, as social science has long maintained, even if their spiritual views tend to be less narrow, and less overtly tied to politics, than among the less schooled.

The decline of religion may also be associated with losing benefits of cohesive groups, which can encourage communal values, charity, and a strong value on education. Joel writes:

Overall the most cohesive religious groups — such as Mormons and Jews — still outperform their religious counterparts both in educational achievement and income. Both Jews and Mormons focus on helping their co-religionists, providing a leg up on those who depend solely on the charity of others or the state. In countries with a substantial historical Protestant influence such as Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands continue to outperform economic the heavily Catholic nations like Italy, Ireland and Spain, according to a recent European study. The difference, they speculate, may be in Protestant traditions of self-help, frugality and emphasis on education. None of this, of course, would have been surprising to Max Weber.

Religious people also tend to live longer and suffer less disabilities with old age, as author Murray notes. Researchers at Harvard, looking at dozens of countries over the past 40 years, demonstrated that religion reinforces the patterns of personal virtue, social trust and willingness to defer gratification long associated with business success.

Thirdly, Kotkin targets the connection between lower religiosity and the rise of individualistic materialism and the decline of an ethos of personal responsibility.

But perhaps the most important difference over time may be the impact of religion on family formation, with weighty fiscal implications. In virtually every part of the world, religious people tend to have more children than those who are unaffiliated. In Europe, this often means Islamic families as opposed to increasingly post-Christian natives. Decline in religious affiliation — not just Christian but also Buddhist and Confucian — seems to correlate with the perilously low birthrates in both Europe and many East Asian countries.

Singapore-based pastor Andrew Ong sees a direct connection between low birthrates and weakened religious ties in advanced Asian countries. As religious ideas about the primacy of family fade, including those rooted in Confucianism, they are generally supplanted by more materialist, individualistic values. “People don’t value family like they used to,” he suggests. “The values are not there. The old values suggested that you grow up. The media today encourages people not to grow up and take responsibility. They don’t want to stop being cool. When you have kids, you usually are less cool.”

It is going ahead of the evidence to suggest that the decline of religion will result in a destruction of personal ethics, cohesive families, collective cultures which value education, and economic vitality. But it is worth taking note of worrisome trends and asking: what role will the rise of World Spirituality play in ameliorating rather than compounding the potential pitfalls of secularism?

Also, how can leaders today, foreseeing the long-term destructive potential of a fully secular society, advance a World Spirituality that can attract a new generation of young people and families?

Many secular humanists and folks who check “none of the above” on surveys of religiosity are attracted to World Spirituality when they are presented with its affirmative, hopeful, and value-driven message. They see the embrace of the best wisdom of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern systems of knowing as a way of reclaiming what they lose by leaving their religion, and find in new enlightenment teachings a path forward to creating a world with a rejuvenated spirit.

Photo Credit: David Boyle