It has been well-reported that faith is in decline in the US. In March, Gene Balk reported in The Seattle Instances that Seattle is “the least spiritual giant metro space within the U.S.” His article informed us that “64% of adults within the Seattle space by no means attend spiritual companies or go lower than annually.”
I’ve seen this decline up shut. The yr after I used to be ordained by the Presbyterian Church in 1982, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had
3.1 million members. In 2019, the yr after I retired from parish ministry, membership had declined to 1.3 million. The Presbyterian Church misplaced almost 2 million members through the years I used to be a pastor. An attention-grabbing legacy, to make certain.
Faith is in decline, however what fascinates me is that spirituality just isn’t. The share of those that say they’re religious has grown. A 2023 Pew Analysis Middle poll discovered that 81% of U.S. adults say, “There’s something religious past the pure world even when we can’t see it.” I don’t have a Seattle-based ballot however my expertise makes me imagine that among the many 64% of adults who by no means attend church or spiritual companies in “our least-religious” American metropolis, there are numerous who determine as religious.
My query is: Why don’t those that are religious see religion communities as sources, as locations the place they’ll deepen and improve their religious life? Clearly, some do. However the numbers say increasingly don’t. There are many realities in our fashionable world which have contributed to the decline of faith. I imagine that one purpose people not see religion communities as religious sources is as a result of these communities have gone astray from their core teachings about religion and spirituality. Certainly, some religion communities really feel just like the Democratic or Republican Occasion at prayer with political and social justice points on the middle of group life.
Let me be clear: As a Christian pastor, I imagine we’re to work for social change and justice and to look after the planet. My profession is marked by sturdy advocacy for Earth care, racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion. I used to be one of many authors of the Presbyterian Church’s coverage assertion on public training. I’m not advocating retreat from public witness. I’m saying that social witness and work for change are usually not the middle of religion communities. The middle must be spirituality, remembering, in poet Mary Oliver’s phrases, “our place within the household of issues.”
In at the moment’s religion communities, religious nurture and care is well misplaced in political identification and outrage on the brokenness of our world. All too typically the primary phrases heard in a worship service sound extra like a political platform and fewer like an invite to be current to the love and the thriller of religion.
As faith declines, religion communities nonetheless have to actively love the world, not simply discuss it. Additionally they have the chance to acknowledge religious starvation and be a spot the place folks can middle, be current to the thriller, be reminded of the love round them. Folks lengthy for religious connection and theological reflection on that connection. Probably the most significant and frequent conversations I’ve had about religion with those that are exterior the church are usually not about “social points,” however about spirituality and the thriller we name God.
I don’t sense a reversal of the decline in faith in America. I do sense a religious and theological starvation that in our “least spiritual metropolis” is being fed in some religion communities however extra seemingly nourished by e book golf equipment, in yoga teams, in conversations with associates on a stroll round Inexperienced Lake or sitting at a desk within the native pub.
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