The Challenge for Organized Disbelief

About the future church, the road is “bumpy” but there’s no prepared path for that future. We return to Bob Smietana’s excellent new book, Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters, a must read for all church leaders. The way forward is “stable but precarious.”

At one point in Bob’s book he turns to the Faith Communities Today survey (FACT), which studied congregational life, not the faith life of individuals. Congregations form the foundation and the future for the church.

The average church is shrinking fast. 20 years ago the median was 137 people; today it is 65. Median-sized churches are going the way of buttoned shoes. Put more starkly, half the congregations in America are in danger. What is needed for this are innovation and adaptation.

The Nones are an important factor: “organized religion without the God bits” as Pippa Evans, one of the founders of the atheist Sunday Assembly movement, which is in decline already. In Bob’s conversation with Ryan Burge, Burge observed that the Nones don’t organize. Is it disorganized religion, or organized disbelief? “As organized religion declines, people are becoming less religious and less connected at the same time.” This trend echoes the social trend of Robert Putnam’s famous “bowling alone” theory: the decline appears in social capital as well.

The Nones are not connected: some are atheists (4% of USA); agnostics (5%); nothing in particular (no number). Using another profile, Smietana turns to compare non-religionists and secularists, the former as civic dropouts with interest in neither religion or politics and the latter as ones with deep interest in civic engagement. They are not organized.

Religion creates social capital and engagement and networking. Social media, which is characteristic of the secularists, is not good at building social capital but it does get people to do something in the short term. Their form of social engagement tends to be engagement in politics. He takes a look at the well-known atheist, Hermant Mehta, who more readily these days identifies as a secularist, which puts him in touch more with the Nones. Mehta is not in favor of imitating churches in secular Sunday events but instead of cooperating with others for the common good.

Interesting study by David Speed showed that Christians have a much more negative perception of atheists than atheists have of Christians. Atheists tend to look at others in radically equal ways. Two recent studies show that atheists and religious people have “similar health outcomes,” and that having life principles and a solid social network contribute to health quotients. The believe-nothings have lower health ratings.

Since social networks shape health the secularists are challenged to find social relations.

Most religious groups not only have a strong, charismatic leader, their religion is anchored in an originating strong leader. That is a Messiah. But secularist organizations thrive on voluntary efforts and cooperative actions instead of imitating churches with their strong charismatic leaders.

Church is a social experience and has always fulfilled the social needs of people. While church can’t be reduced to the social, because after all it’s about God and worship and the transcendent, the social matters. People don’t need a church to satisfy their social needs but what the church does provide at the social level is harder to achieve for the non-churched, Nones and secularists.