Losing Our Religion: The Decline of Church Affiliation and the Rise of the "Nones"

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Is America losing its religion? Statistics indicate yes, with a rapid decrease in church affiliation and a marked increase in people who don't identify with organized religion. This episode of Church Potluck features Curt Hersey (Communication), Michael Bailey (political science), and Michael Papazian (philosophy), who each help us explore the fall of religiosity, the rise of non-affiliation, and the evolution of religious identities.

Some topics we address in this episode:

• What features of contemporary Christianity are turning people away from the Church?
• Even with this recent decline, religious faith remains resilient in the U.S compared to other industrialized countries. Why? How?
• How does faith get transmitted from generation to generation, and why are these traditional modes failing?

Join us for some food for thought and something to chew on!

The views expressed on Church Potluck are solely those of the participants and do not represent any organization.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Alright, before we get started on this week's
episode, we've got someunfinished business from last
week's episode, and so two ofyou were on the episode on
horror.
Yes, I cannot believe that Itotally forgot to put this in my
show notes.
And then, even when MichaelBailey brought up the whole game
show is it horror or is it not?
I did bring it up.
I did a search preparing forlast week's show on horror in

(00:27):
Christianity and I typed thosetwo words into Google.
It came up with a wholefilmography.
The third episode was thePassion of the Christ.
Oh, that's wild, Isn't thatisn't that.
That makes sense, though.
Passion of the Christ, horroror norer.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
The vent itself was horrible.
Yeah, right, you know.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
It has elements of body horror in it.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Absolutely.
I mean, I've heard people referto it as a snuff film,
basically in terms of just howBruce Simit was.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Violence is great, yeah, and very gruesome.
I've never seen it, so I justsaid that I don't know really.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
All right.
Well, even if you'll just lookat the picture on the cover, you
know just how much his face ismutilated.
So, yeah, All right.
Well, with that cheery note,welcome everyone to Church
Potluck, where we are serving upa smorgasbord of Christian
curiosity.
I'm your host, Dale McConkey,sociology professor and United
Methodist pastor, and you knowthere are two keys to a good

(01:28):
Church Potluck Plenty of varietyand engaging conversation.
And this is exactly what we aretrying to do on Church Potluck
sitting down with friends andsharing our ideas on a variety
of topics from a variety ofacademic disciplines and a
variety of Christian traditions.
And so welcome back to seasontwo of Church Potluck and our

(01:48):
third episode of the new season.
Well, let me get right to itand welcome our guests Before we
even talk about the topic today.
First of all, I want to welcomeDr Kurt Hersey.
Hey, hey, oh, yading yourself.
That's good.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
Yeah, you got to hype yourself.
Very well done.
So, Kurt, remind us who you are.
I am a professor ofcommunication specializing in
film and television.
I've been at Berry forever.
I actually do my undergrad atBerry.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
You're a Berry guy, I am You're.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Mr Berry.
In a way, I'm not going to gothat far.
Okay, all right.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
So for those who are not at Berry, mr Berry is a kind
of Is a contest for a dude, isvery wholesome and is ironic,
tongue-in-cheek and adorable.
Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
I accidentally made that unwholesome.
One time I was asked to be thehost and they, very last minute,
asked people to answer somequestions and so I was supposed
to say stuff about them based onthis, and one guy's handwriting
was chicken scratch.
And when they said, what areyour hobbies?
He had written Stargazing onFrost Chapel lawn Uh-huh, and I
wasn't trying to be funny, butas I read it I said staggering

(02:48):
across Frost Chapel lawn, and soa very unbury kind of a comment
but we claim it's an unburycomment.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Okay, that is true.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
I've heard tales, but not when you were here, of
course.
No, certainly not, certainlynot.
All right, thank you very muchfor being here, kurt, and next I
say it every week basically,you know him, you love him.
Dr Michael Bailey, hello.
Good morning and I'm surepeople know who you are by now.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
But go ahead and remind us, I'm a professor of
political science here, eachmostly American politics, but I
teach also, of course, in modernpolitical philosophy and I'm
really very interested in thistopic in particular.
Thank you very much.
Have you announced the topicyet?
I have not.
Don't say it yet.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
That's right, Someone who has been on almost as much
as you have, Dr Bailey, and justout of the woodwork Last second
, one of the benefits of havingan office down here.
I just walked over to Papasian.
He said come join us and he did.
Dr Michael Papasian, he is.
Oh.

Speaker 5 (03:41):
Yeah, it's a good thing I came in early, because
otherwise that's right, youwould only have.
You'd be fine with just twoguests, I guess.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
But we would have managed without you, but it is
nice to have you here.

Speaker 5 (03:51):
I would say even like Trinitarian there you go, there
you go, you need more peoplefor a good potluck?

Speaker 4 (03:56):
Yeah, that's true.
That's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
That's exactly right.
That's one of the first ratio.
I was actually going to make abig deal out of the empty chair
and be representative of ourtopic today.
Oh right, yeah, because ourtopic today.
What is it going to be Losingmy religion, losing my religion.
All right, losing my religion,declining church attendance in

(04:21):
the United States, the growth ofthe young church, the rise of
the nuns and we sociologistsalways think we're so clever
when we say the rise of the nunsand then say that's N-O-N-E-S.
Why are the folks fleeing thechurch?
Is this a generational hiccupor is it a long-term trend?
Is Christianity in crisis?

(04:43):
Let's find out from our experts.
But first I want to do a coupleof announcements, as we are
prone to do.
We actually have anothercountry to welcome us.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Y'all looking very puzzled, very quizzical here.
They can't afford anything morethan half-nose, fairly False
Welcome.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Japan, oh, excellent, japan, yes, so we are now 29
countries strong across theglobe.
So we welcome Japan to churchpotluck.
And I also wanted to just doanother quick story that I want
to say that actually hasconnection to church potluck.
All of us are connected toBerry College in one way or

(05:25):
another, and Berry College losta giant icon yesterday in the
passing of Tom Carver, who isdean of students here for I
think a quarter of a century.
Was he dean of students whenyou were here?
Oh, absolutely, did you haveany run-ins with?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
Dean Carver.
No, the time I had to go, Iwent to see his assistant.
Okay, yeah, although my brotherI know my brother every time
that Dean Carver they would putthings in the campus mailboxes.
He would correct any mistakeson it and then send them back to
Dean Carver.
Okay, that's the kind of guy.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
He was yes, and he was a larger than I figure.
In many ways, absolutely yeah.
And I just want to tell a quickstory.
When I had this calling to bethe chaplain of Berry College
and when it came to pass and itwas announced, dean Carver was
one of the first people thatreached out to me, just with
this boyish enthusiasm I mean oh, this is fantastic, I want to
take you out to lunch.
But I also suspected that theremight be an ulterior motive to

(06:17):
him taking me out to lunch,because he was very opinionated
guy, very strong and devout, andI thought you had strong
convictions, very strongconvictions, and I thought that
he might want to do a littlestrategizing and a little
setting the agenda for mychaplaincy.
Because I entered the chaplaincyduring a very divisive time on
campus.
There was a strong tensionbetween the chaplain's office
and our religion philosophydepartment and students were

(06:37):
feeling like they had to takesides and I thought Tom was
probably going to want to helpme shape the agenda for my
chaplaincy.
And so we're sitting havinglunch.
It's a fantastic conversation.
He was just so supportive of meserving as chaplain, which I
really appreciated, and then atthe very end of lunch, things
got a little more serious and hesays Dale, there's a lot of
tension on campus right now.
And I said, okay, here it comes.
Here comes the little nudge interms of direction.

(06:59):
And he just looked at me andsays people can disagree on
these issues.
I just hope you bring a senseof joy back to the chaplain's
office.
Isn't that?
nice For a man with strongconvictions that he said I just
want you to have and he told mea little bit more about how he
had learned over the years fromLarry Green's chaplaincy just
how chaplain does have to serveeverybody and you really can't
take strong stands on things.
And he just that liberated mein many ways.

(07:21):
Just to focus on that and Ithink it's influenced a lot of
my ministry and one of thethings we try to do here in
church potluck.
Bringing it back to what we'redoing here, yeah, social media.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
I saw just an outpouring from other alumni and
the stories that they had.
I just I was not very connectedwith the administration when I
was a student but lots of peopleworked in KCAB that had
different campus jobs that hadreally been touched by Tom
Carver Yep.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Thank you all very much for letting me tell that
story.
Let's go ahead now and get intothe topic.
Let's talk about the religiousnuns and just the fact that we
are losing our religion in theUnited States and this is a
trend that is relatively recent,do you?

Speaker 3 (08:01):
mind.
If I ask you, though, we'refamiliar with the term religious
nuns.
I know you said it's not goingto be NUN, but what is the NONE
referring to?

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Great time to ask that question, because there has
been a decisive decline ofreligious attendance, religious
membership and Christianattendance and membership in
particular, over the past twodecades.
The United States has hadfairly robust religious
participation for decades upondecades In fact.
Let's do a little game show,since you brought it up All

(08:36):
right now, in honor of BobBarker's passing, we're going to
say guess the number withoutgoing over.
All right.
So 1948, so post-World War II,how many people in the United
States identified themselves aseither Protestant or Catholic?
82%, 82%, I was going to say80%, 80% 83%.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
I know that one.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Oh, he knows how to do the game.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
My actual guess is right around 80,.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Right around 90% 88% 88% of people in the United
States, so nine out of 10,basically people, because that
doesn't include those Orthodoxfolks over there too, michael
Bayes.

Speaker 5 (09:13):
But that would be like.1%.
Yeah, it was very tiny.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
And so two out of three people identified
themselves as Protestant.
In the United States 66%.
What percentage of thepopulation today identifies
themselves as Protestant?

Speaker 3 (09:27):
At first At least, according to the most recent
polls 34% 34% oh really yeah,wow, I would say 60% 60, very
high still.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Yeah, I will say 40%.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Okay, we're going to give that to Kurt, but Bailey
can make his argument on thedata that I have from a Pew.
Research from this would havebeen just a few years ago.
Less than half now identify asProtestant 47% and Catholicism,
interestingly, hasn't changedtoo much and that is in part
because Catholicism has declinedin the Northeast but it has

(09:59):
increased in the Southwest, asimmigrants very often bring
their Catholic faith.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
This was a.
My information was from eithera Gallup 2022, as I had three
kinds of polls One was from thePew Research Center and others
the Public Religion ResearchInstitute in Gallup, so I think
that was the Pew Research Center2022.
It said 34%.
There was a dramatic drop inthe last two years.
Wow, Wow.
That's astonishing, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
That very much is astonishing and just in big
picture, though, to think aboutthat in terms of people who
practice Christianity, hasdeclined by at least 20%.
Maybe the better way to say allthis and I apologize for
providing all these numbers onan audio format, but let's ask
it this way In 1948, how manypeople said they have no
religious affiliation?

(10:44):
That doesn't mean atheists oragnostics.
They have no particularreligious identity or
affiliation.

Speaker 5 (10:49):
5%, or less, I'll say 7%.

Speaker 4 (10:52):
I'll say 18%, 8%.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Okay, you're all a little bit over so I don't have
a wrong buzzer, but Bailey wasthe closest.
4%, only 4%, and now we areheading very close to 30% of the
US population just doesn't haveany particular religious
identity.
Now down here where we are inthe Southeast, that number isn't
that high, but it's much higher.
There are places out west whereit's over 50% of the population

(11:15):
just doesn't identifyreligiously.
So what does that mean for us?
What does that mean for us, orwhy is this happening?

Speaker 5 (11:22):
Yeah, one question I had is if we compare the numbers
with Western Europe, is it likeWestern Europe has been pretty
secular for a long?

Speaker 1 (11:30):
time.
Yeah, you're getting far aheadof me.
Oh, okay, I'm sorry.

Speaker 5 (11:34):
I was going to say we're just locking behind.
The trend was going to happenanyway.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Just hit a little bit later in America than in Europe
, yes, and so I was going tohave these tales of woe that we
talked about, and how bad thingsare.

Speaker 5 (11:45):
Yeah, I want to hear the tales of woe.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
And then at the end it was going to be.
But things aren't quite so bad,because look at Western Europe.
Okay, I don't have to apologize, but we're going to talk more
about Western Europe and we'regoing to talk about why perhaps
the United States looksdifferent religiously than
Europe Going back to whatMichael Bailey talked about, the
kind of defining terms which Ithink is always really essential

(12:06):
in these kinds of conversations.

Speaker 4 (12:08):
What is it that we mean by religiously
non-affiliated?
What is it that we mean by nuns?
I think that's useful for goingahead and defining for the sake
of the audience.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Okay, so you go ahead and define them for us.
What are we talking about?
And I guess maybe one of thethings that you're trying to get
at here is being unaffiliatedwith a church does not mean you
don't believe in God or that youaren't spiritual or you don't
think about religious things.
It just means that you are notconnected to a particular
religious tradition.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
It's a self-designated term by the
pollster.
It's a term that really cameout of pollsters who were asking
people and they've been askingquestions since at least 1972
about people's religiousidentity how they would
self-designate.
And so there's usually,depending upon the polling
agency, the last people are youthe inner private yourself of
the Christian, protestant,catholic, jewish, other or none

(12:57):
of the above?
And that sort of I don'tidentify with any religion goes
up.
That's different than churchmembership.
You can be a member of a churchand still not really consider
yourself affiliated with that,but of course that's not very
likely to be the case.
So they are distinct.
It doesn't mean atheism butit's.
One thing I will get to you alittle bit is that portion of

(13:21):
the unaffiliated has, relativelyspeaking, skyrocketed.
So there's been several phasesof this kind of shift.
There's pretty steady overthese numbers up until really
through the 80s of who wouldcount themselves as unaffiliated
or a non.
They don't really identify withany particular religion and

(13:42):
that picked up gradually in the90s and then it's continued that
spread in the 2000.
Whether it's going to level offit's not clear.
But what's interesting is thatyou can dig deeper and look at
those who do call themselves anon or unaffiliated Early in the
90s.
A very heavy portion of themstill believe in God and many of
them believed in an afterlife,and they believed in to a lesser

(14:04):
degree, but they believe inangels.
They just didn't reallyassociate with any particular
specific religion.
I have some numbers here, butit's something that in fact of
even in 2000, something like 2%of folks called themselves an
atheist and 9% just said theydon't know one another, which

(14:25):
might be the closest thing toagnosticism that's not a term
and in 2022, that number was 12%of the population calls itself.
They claim flat out they do notbelieve in a God, and I think
it was another 7% claim thatthey just don't know.
So it went up from basically 1in 10 would say that to 20%,
including 12% who just more orless by another label, would say

(14:48):
that they're an atheist.
So who is part of thatunaffiliated has, in fact,
changed pretty dramatically, andit's been in the last just few
years.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
This has happened, which is, I think, unsettling in
a way that kind of rapid change, but I do think it's useful to
differentiate between those whoare flat out atheist and then
people who may be grouped intothe nuns, who do believe that
they don't affiliate with aparticular religion or faith
tradition.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
This is one of the really big movements, I would
say, in sociology, religion andother circles.
To just one of the ways to tryto capture what's going on in
the United States is this phrasespiritual but not religious,
that there's many people whostill do think, thinking about
God and maybe even beinginvolved in prayer and some
personal religious activitiesjust don't affiliate with large

(15:36):
religious institutions, and sothey will use this phrase I'm
spiritual but not religious, andthat seems to be a growing
category in the United States,for sure.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
It was 14%, not that it matters.
You said avoid the numbers.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
But the point is that 26% of folks are agnostic or
atheist now, which is justextraordinary given the numbers
you already cited in the past.
Interestingly, of the peoplewho would call themselves
atheists, there is a fairportion of them who also might
believe in life after death aswell and would also call
themselves spiritual.
They wouldn't necessarilybelieve in a God, but they might

(16:09):
think there's something divineinfused in the universe.
It may not be a personal agent,but it's something you could
tap into and grow from andmature and thrive as a human
being because of it.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
We're talking abstract, we're talking numbers
here.
But Kurt, you were one, andMike Bailey as well, suggested
this topic.
But you're actually coming atthis from a relatively personal
angle, correct?

Speaker 4 (16:27):
Yeah, I wouldn't call myself a nun, but I would call
myself unaffiliated with achurch.
I was brought up a charismaticchurch of God in the suburbs of
Atlanta in the 1970s 1980s, wentto what now I don't know if we
would consider Mount Perron amegachurch, but it was certainly
one of the largest churches inthe metro area that time.
And so grew up, went to churchas I came to Berry as an

(16:50):
undergrad, stopped attendingconsistently, went to some
southern Baptist churches aroundRome when I lived in Rome and
after getting married and movingback to Marietta, started going
to Episcopalian church andwhich was a radical change from
the church charismatic church ofGod, you don't know what you're
getting on any given Sunday to….

Speaker 1 (17:11):
You know exactly what you're getting every single
Sunday.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Here's the literature .
I bought the book of commonprayer.
I was all in.
I like this kind of likeconsistency kind of thing and we
went for several years and thenin the early 2000s, my wife and
I we started looking around atdifferent churches and a lot of
the churches that we visited atthat time were unaffiliated
churches.

(17:33):
I'm not great with all of thespecific religious… the
domination names …for a bit andthey're the big churches that
we're not affiliated with anycertain denomination, we just do
our own thing, but we meet ingiant buildings and bring in
lots and lots of money.
And I was listening.
I'm going to tie this inbecause the last month I've been
listening to the rise and fallof Mars Hill on Dale's

(17:54):
recommendation, which is a fan….
I'm a huge fan of podcasts andit was really well put together
podcast, but it also reallyresonated with the experiences
that I had visiting churches inthe 2000s that felt a lot like
what they were talking aboutwith Mars Hill.
I remember going to one and thepreacher was a former football

(18:14):
player and had all of thesesports analogies that he was
using.
And I just turned to my wifeand I just said I could not do
this, I am losing my will tolive as I sit here, right, and
we would struck out He… Wellplayed, and you all decided to
punt yes, yes, but he was in thepodcast they taught.
Yes, I recognize that was asports as well.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
What no one really knows, except for the three of
us here, is that our host isbright red in the face.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
It seems so pathetic that I tried to jump in there
after my very good punt that itdidn't need any extra.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
Oh yeah, so they were really emphasizing this kind of
traditional masculine roles.
This former football player,the whole it's known as
complementarian by some people.
That's not necessarily what Iwould call it, but the idea that
the men are the boss and womenneed to be over there in the
corner and I know I'm doing adisservice to it.
That's because I want….
So yeah, there was that.

(19:15):
And then we would go to otherchurches and they would have
massive power points and lots ofmusic and I would sit there and
I'd be like, at what point arewe going to be taught something?
Because everybody's singing andeverybody's like doing stuff.
But I hadn't heard any actualdiscussion of who's going to
talk about translation ofancient Greek and stuff like
that.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Right, I can do that you can.
You went to the wrong guy.
He's right here.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
I'll just hang out in Papazia's office for now.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
I don't do football at a fours, or analogies either,
but just think about how youcould expand your audience if
you did, though.
Oh, I did yeah, if you couldturn ancient Greek texts into
football analogies, you know.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
I have to think about this now.
All right, but Dr Papazian doesknow his rock music, which I
mad respect for that I gottahave respect for that.

Speaker 4 (19:59):
Are we doing a….
I'd like to go on record asthat being my favorite music
video ever.

Speaker 3 (20:08):
It's great, isn't it?
It is, it's really a classic,and you know that there was like
a 10-second clip that was takenout of that because it was
considered to be too gruesome.
There was a point at which oneof the paintings they represent
is Dowding Thomas the.

Speaker 4 (20:20):
Carriaggia painting.
Yeah, that's right.
And he puts his finger in thehole.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah, and the hole.
We're Dowding Thomas, right,and so, anyways, I went to the
dark web and found it, so it'sstill there, yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
So I was, yeah, no, we lost track there.
And then I was going to say Iwent to another church, oh, and
I found that we were askingquestions afterwards potential
membership kind of thing and Iwas like you have all these
numbers for how you're going tobuild new parking lots and new
buildings, how much of yourmoney goes to food for people

(20:52):
who needed or helping familiesthat need to buy clothing.
And they said, oh, we leavethat to small groups.
That's not what the donationsto the actual church go to.
And I just stopped going.
I felt like I don't.
Oh, and then other ones, theywere bringing in political
candidates to talk in front andI just said, yeah, I got no
interest in this whatsoever.

(21:12):
I don't feel any connection tothese people.
I feel the opposite ofconnection.
Oftentimes I didn't feel anyenrichment and so I just I'm
going to pray on my own and I'mgoing to believe and I'm not
going to go.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Let me ask you this what was the impetus for leaving
the Episcopalian Church?
Because it seemed like therewas something that you were
getting of substance there.

Speaker 4 (21:33):
There was, and I kind of regret doing that and I keep
thinking of going back and butI think as a family we were
trying to make some decisions.
I don't want to.
My wife encouraged us to go andlook.
Obviously I could have stayedif I wanted to, but if you,
listened to the Mars Hillteaching boy, you would have.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
You would still be in the Episcopalian Church.
All right, I'm sorry, that'sprobably ironic.

Speaker 4 (21:52):
I do think about going back.
I think once, once we had achild, everything seemed so busy
, which is, I know.
We're going to talk about thebook that came out recently what
does it call the GreatDe-Churching, and one of the.
I haven't had a chance to readit yet.
I've read a couple of reviewsof it and they talk about how
the pace of life in America hasa lot to do with why people have

(22:14):
stopped going to church, thatwe connect in different ways,
that we no longer necessarilyneed church for those kinds of
social connections.
And that was also what Iexperienced as well, just the
pace of life, that I wasinteracting with people in
different ways.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Not that I was taking notes here and having with a
spreadsheet or anything, but youdid mention three reasons that
really seem to be in the air forscholars or looking at for the
cause of this, and one of it hasto do a kind of reaction to
certain kind of sexual culturalstances.
You said complementarianism andthe churches come out and taken
some strong stands aboutabortion, birth control and

(22:53):
same-sex marriage and the like,and that has been a seemingly a
turnoff for a fair number ofpeople.
Then you also mentioned thepoliticization of the church.
That too seems to be a possiblecause.
People are turned off by that.
And then you suggested youcould probably get as much some
spiritual edification on yourown right, with your own prayer,

(23:14):
your own networks.
And that kind of decline ofsocial capital or a new
expression of the social capitalis also one of those
explanations for why people soyou're like over-determined, why
.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
That's right.
Your story is not union.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Do you?

Speaker 4 (23:26):
get an all to say or shout out.
For that, pardon me.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Over-determined.
Oh, I shouldn't have said that.
Right, we can explain.
You is what I should have said.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
That's right, but I appreciate you sharing that
story and Michael, what Paisen Iknow, and Mike Bailey and I
have lots of things we can saygoing forward.
So you want to get a word inedgewise?

Speaker 5 (23:42):
Actually, no, I actually had one thing when you
were talking about that churchwith the football player, pastor
Kurt, I was thinking in termsof you had a hyper-masculine
worship leader.
I was wondering if especiallynumbers people how does the
gender breakdown work with?
Nuns Are like more male, it'smore male, yeah slightly more
male than female.
Could it be that having thefootball player guy is a way to
try to bring new guys back in?

Speaker 1 (24:04):
This was one of the strategies of Mars Hill, for
sure was to make it masculine,to give a masculine version of
Christianity, to make sure thatthe men were engaged.

Speaker 5 (24:12):
Right that the church has become too feminized, and
that's one of the reasons whymen are.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
I've heard of the strategy of going to football to
try to bring men in.
Yeah, that seems to be a.

Speaker 5 (24:22):
That's a little weird .
Very college, yeah, verycollege.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
Yes, we were all just Take it from their playboy
thinking the same.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, that's right.
This is one of the ironies thatI mentioned to my students just
recently in sociology ofreligion is that women are still
far more likely to attendreligious services and to be
involved in the church and yetmen are far more likely to be
the ones in charge and in fact,that there are traditions where
men have to be the ones incharge, and I find that to be

(24:49):
very interesting that womenstill get something out of
religion despite the patriarchythat runs the church.
That takes us a little bit offin a different direction from
where we're going.
Michael Bailey, what are someof the other factors?
You've mentioned three thatKurt mentioned in his personal
account, but what are some ofthe other reasons why people
don't?

Speaker 3 (25:05):
go to church.
There is a this is a puzzle whythis is happening.
So one way of looking at it isit's no puzzle at all.
Dr Papasian suggested that atthe beginning is that it would
suggest, with the modern eraprobably is not an era very
conducive for religion, forreasons that we could talk about
.
Europe was already with theprogram of the modern era and

(25:25):
they shed their religion sometime ago, and so the real
question one might ask wasn'twhy are we losing it, but why
did we keep it for so long?
And a number of scholars havelooked at that question of why
is it that we were so religious?

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Let me go and jump in here because we haven't said
numbers for at least fourminutes.
Let me go ahead.
And we talked about how in theUnited States we still have
about a third to maybe 33 to 40%of folks who go to church on a
fairly regular basis on anygiven week.
But over in Europe we've gotthe United Kingdom at 8%, norway
at 7% and many countries in theteens, tens and teens in terms

(25:59):
of church attendance.
And so the United States, bycomparison to our Western
European counterparts, justrobust, very robust, but
compared to the United States oftwo, three decades ago.

Speaker 3 (26:10):
Not so much.
So that was one of the funthings to study or to read about
is why the United States wasthis kind of outlier right, and
there's all sorts ofexplanations for that.
Lots of people notice thatthere seems to be a kind of
trade off between how wealthy acountry is and how religious it
is.
So the wealthier it is, theless religious it becomes, and
that played out perfectly inalmost all of Europe, with the

(26:31):
exception being maybe Irelandand Poland, both very devoutly
Catholic countries.
But the United States somehowmanaged to be industrial, very
wealthy and also very devout.
How do you, how do you accountfor that?
The reason I think there's alot at stake in here is arguably
how one responds to.
That reveals the extent towhich we think of religion as a

(26:54):
natural phenomenon.
What is the more natural statefor human beings in the
condition we live in now?
Is it disbelief or is it?
What do you have to reallyexplain?
Or is it belief?
I know in the 19th century and20th century almost all the
great thinkers.
I am terrified to name any ofthem because I don't know if
that would count as a citationor not.
But don't be afraid of thecitation.
So people like it's anaffirmation.

(27:15):
Karl Marx and Max Weber andJohn.
That's giving me a headache.
Oops, sorry, sorry.
Citation and Freud and John.
Stuart Millenot Citation.
Virtually, yeah, virtually.
Every, I think, prominent 19thcentury, early 20th century
thinker just assumed that thefuture, as we become more
knowledgeable, as technologytakes place, as we become more

(27:37):
modern in all those kinds ofrecognizable ways, is that we'll
realize that religion was justa legacy of our infancy.
Another thinker go ahead, pushit right.
French thinker AlexisSotokville thought that the
natural condition.
He was a big fan of Pascal andhe thought the natural condition
of human beings is to needconsolation for the fact that we
live in a crappy world and wedie and we want more of that.

(27:59):
He suggested that thesecularization that you see in
the decline of religion as earlyas the 1830s in Europe was
really because of corruption inthe church and because the
United States was able to severits church institutions from
state.
It allowed us to hate eachother, the political level, but
still go to church and notconsider the corruption and spit

(28:21):
.
His point was it religion willnever go away if you allow it to
grow, because it consoles usand it addresses really directly
, in a way that nothing else can, the human predicament.
So that's the reason actuallyinterested in this topic.
If we are Shifting ourselvesvery dramatically towards the
unaffiliated, with, in the lastdecade or so especially a spike

(28:44):
in total disbelief, does thatsuggest that the modern era
really is deeply, profoundlyinconsistent with religious
belief?
I have the answer no idea.

Speaker 4 (28:55):
You brought up a bra and I was also thinking quite a
bit about the protest and ethnicin the spirit of capitalism
citation and to me it's acompelling thought for, or
thesis for, why religion isperhaps still so central in
America, but then also maybe whywe're falling away a little bit

(29:16):
from religion.
So they were said that theparticular formation of religion
and capitalism in America,where we have this idea that
we're religious and we have areligious calling, and that
religious calling is partiallywork, if we're successful at
work, then it proves that we arechosen, because this was also
when predestination was verymuch part of the culture and so

(29:38):
the only way to know if you'vebeen saved is if you are
successful, because then itshows everyone that you've been
saved.
But now we've work perhaps hasbecome our religion right.
We're so focused on work to theexclusion of everything else
and this is again part of whatthey're talking about in the
great to churching that workstarts to fill the needs of the
church.
Work shows that we are chosen.

(30:01):
It validates the way thatperhaps religion used to.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Meritocracy, in so far we become more of a
meritocracy than our sense ofchosenness.
Our place are also just, justthe companionship that we get.
All that might be replaced, andso man without the heaven,
basically.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Let me share one of the sociological insights that
that I have found to beinteresting, and this is from
Roger Finkie, rodney.
Start citation Don't know ifyou're familiar with these names
at all, but they gave economicmodel of religiosity to explain
the differences that werehappening in Europe, in the
United States, and theirargument was if you look at the
way religion gets expressed inEurope, almost every country has

(30:40):
some type of monopoly.
So you have the church ofEngland in England, you've got
Catholic countries wheresocialism is main, got some
Lutheran countries, but onemajor religion, and whenever you
have a monopoly, there's notinnovation.
Whenever you have a monopoly,there's not any strong Effort to
adapt your religion to meethuman need at the at the moment.
So, but here in the UnitedStates we are firmly

(31:02):
disestablished.
Right that that we won't.
The constitution says we willnot have a state religion and
that you are free to worship ithowever you want.
So we have a free market ofreligion.
So you can take whateverbeliefs you have and attach it
to football.
You can take whatever beliefsyou have and attach it to strong
gender roles or dueling withgender roles, right, and so you
can adapt.
Religion is very malleable, andso you have this great

(31:25):
pluralism of religiousexpression in the United States,
and so people find theirreligious niche that they can be
part of, and so this helps toexplain why religion has been
robust in the United Statescompared to Europe, and I think
that there's something veryinteresting.

Speaker 5 (31:38):
And Plus, you can be a religious entrepreneur and
that's your own religion, andthen you don't need other people
.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
That's what I tell my students, that I can hang out a
shingle and says Dale's church,the church of Dale.
I could even say you don't evenneed any members, that's right
got your own church going foryou and but seriously, I would
have just about the same kind ofrights in the United States as
the Catholic church or thesouthern Baptist or any of these
large denominations.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
That there really is this great flattening of
preference a thousand years ago,when I was at the University of
Texas and graduate school, oneof the older students who has
gone on amazing things anddiscipline that was her area was
to use sort of economic modelsof choice to look at Churches
from an entrepreneurialperspective, in the sense that

(32:21):
they are selling their wares andeffect and they're trying to
tailor them to specificaudiences and they're going to
have more of an incentive,without being supported by the
state, to try to anticipate,create and meet needs.
And she said that freedomprompted more church membership,
so similar type of argument.

Speaker 5 (32:39):
It could also not.
They could also turn people offlike it's.
Like you're profaning the faith, you're turning it into a
business model.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
You read my mind and look at, look what comes out of
that.
Right, and this is why theprosperity gospel is so popular.
Right, you're going to have itall in heaven and here.
That God's going to bless youhere and there's so much about
what I consider to be the coreof historic Christian faith that
gets tangled up in a whole messof other things and you can
almost like test case.

(33:06):
Right, oh, we talk aboutpolitical issues in the pulpit.
Hey, that's popular.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
We'll start bringing in political leaders, like I was
saying, and so we really start,okay, tailoring the message to
meet that, that humanselfishness, rather than those
great human needs and humandesires from a traditional
standpoint and I mentioned tothe and I know this is well
moving away from the Europeandiscussion, but what you were
saying made me think about theuse of Of spectacle, and I was

(33:33):
thinking of Gita board andsociety, the spectacle and how
the spectacle stands in for thereal thing, and how worship
services have just become thisoverwhelming visual presentation
of Hugeness and video screensand production quality, and it's
like you're at Disney Worldwatching us.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Come to my church and you shall get none of that.
We have trouble with our onemicrophone not buzzing on us
during this service.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
No spectacle one argument of something that might
be accelerating this increasein disaffiliation is the
internet and the fact that wefind so much pleasure in our
phones as well, as we think thatwe have community in this kind
of virtual world that we don'tneed it.
So it would seem to me that Ifthat's the world that appeals to
us, what these churches aredoing in a kind of huge,

(34:25):
amplified way phones essentiallyon steroids might be
explainable in that particularmatter, the one.
So yeah, it seems to me thatthere's several of these causes,
that Possible causes why wehave changed our time we've
addressed and a couple that wehaven't.
Probably the most awkward oneto talk about, arguably, is
there's a couple argumentsrelated to parenting, and what

(34:48):
we know is that Overwhelmingly,especially in the past, a very
good predictor for what anadults religious affiliation
will be, what their parents wereright.
So there's this kind oftransmission of culture,
transmission of believe,transmission of practice, and
One one study would suggest thatstarting really in the fifties

(35:09):
is that in the United States orbecame a greater emphasis on the
value in parenting of autonomy,teaching your kid to think for
themselves rather than torespect for authority.
So as that increased, heanticipated we shouldn't be
surprised that there would be alag.
But in later generations,especially as they teach their
own kids, the grandkids of thoseoriginals, is that they would

(35:31):
leave the church.
And what we found is that is it?
Once upon a time was faith waspretty sticky and it's becoming
less sticky over time.
So if you're a young Christian,most likely when you're older
you'll be a Christian.
Now the unaffiliated is farmore sticky in a sense.
So another set of authors lookedat just more generally how do

(35:52):
children end up with the samebeliefs, basic worldview and so
on of their parents and came upwith a set of really specific
conditions for that.
And it said essentially thattransmission, especially
religious beliefs, works mostpowerfully in raising kids if
that person lives at home withtwo parents and both those
parents practice the samereligion.

(36:12):
Suggested there was acorrelation with the
self-reported happiness of theparents.
So if your parents aremiserable and they're going to a
particular denomination, youmay want to back out.
And then I think morecontroversially for our
discussion about implications,he said the more traditional
family structure also isassociated with the transmission
.
So if you came from a familywhere dad worked and mom stayed

(36:32):
at home two parents you're goingto have a very high rate of
replication of that religionlater on in life.
Now we have a lot of people whoare unmarried, cohabitating,
raising kids, and you have a lotof single mothers and single
fathers, lots of divorce.
Interesting if you chart,basically if you look at the
rise of divorce starting around1968, 69, 70, and if you track

(36:56):
that trajectory, one generationexactly after 18 years is when
you see the rise of theunaffiliated.
That it is coincidental, butgiven the causal logic, I think
that that could be a place toexplore.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
So do you think that type of family structure as an
explanation is more powerfulthan the internet explanation?
Use the internet explanation interms of the pomp and
circumstance and the production.
Yeah, but I'm also thinkingjust in terms of one of the
things that Peter Berger saidcitation is a threat to
religious belief is justpluralism, because you see so

(37:34):
many different ideas.
If you are a church right nextto a mosque and you have people
over in this mosque being happyand loving their kids and it's
hard to think of your faith asunique and distinctive and the
best right.
And so now with the internetyou get this explosion of
introduction to all kinds ofreligious ideas and beliefs and
it's hard to think of yours asdistinctly and uniquely true.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
I think that would be the case, assuming that you
have a kind of openness of mindand if you value autonomy.
But let's say you drill yourchildren into an authoritative
position and that's beenpresented to them.
It turns out it just would seem, based on the numbers, that
children who come out of thatproduct really do adopt the
religion and the politics oftheir parents.
So you might have to have aprior condition of parents who

(38:17):
are already inclined toencourage your children to think
for themselves.
But that works in any eventmore powerfully when you have
two at home parents doing that.

Speaker 5 (38:28):
So, to preserve the church, we need to establish
authoritarian, narrow-minded,iron parenting strategies,
something to that's what'scontributing to the church
becoming more conservative right, and that, of course, is going
to polarize people, because themore church people who are
coming out of traditionalfamilies, the more people more
on the left are going to find itmore unattractive to be

(38:50):
religious right.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Our selection of this conversation is until it
directly addresses this rightand Mark Driscoll.
He maybe doesn't have thestudies, but he has this kind of
intuition that if you want to,if you want to continue to
proselytize by procreation whichis what he wants to do in part
you have to have a lot of kidsand you have to have a family
structure that is really devotedto that propagation of the

(39:11):
religion and that's going towork best if you have a
stay-at-home mom who's nurturingtheir children in that
particular faith, the dadearning, so on and so forth.
I'm not endorsing any of this,just for the record.
It wouldn't necessarily explainthe decline of religion in
Europe, although it would alsobe.
I think that if you look at theScandinavian countries in
particular, they have a lot ofthey actually have a lot of

(39:32):
two-parent families that tendnot to be married, but it might
help explain why this ishappening.
In the United States, dramaticincrease of single parents.
I mentioned this once at aconference paper and I was
excoriated.
It wasn't my research, I wasjust passing on.
But someone excoriated me saidokay, so now we blame women for
the death of God or somethinglike that.
No, I don't think that's whatI'm saying.
So you're giving another shothere on the podcast.

(39:53):
We'll see what the reactionsare.
I just want this is a goodopportunity for point out number
one I'm not against half notes.
All right, so going back to theJapanese national anthem.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
That is a back reference.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
And the second thing here is we're trying to account
for this puzzle right, and onejust might be that as we
secularize in general, we'regoing to see this, and it might
be there's political reasons.
But another reason for thismight be just looking at the
broader question of how doesanyone ever develop their faith
belief?
In the past, at least, it usedto be through your parents.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
Let me go ahead and just broaden this out a little
bit, and we've already talkedabout these in a variety of ways
.
But I mentioned the free marketeconomic model earlier.
But different approach would bePeter Berger, who just
basically says the trends ofmodern society lead toward a
lack of religious conviction.
I've already mentioned thepluralism that it's difficult to

(40:44):
think of your religious beliefas important and distinctive
when you are seeing otherreligions with lots of different
ideas but also just the strongemphasis toward individualism
that we I'd mentioned this to myclass yesterday.
It's not that we don't want tobelong to religious institutions
, we just don't want to belongto institutions at all.
Right, we don't trust the press, we don't trust our government,

(41:07):
we don't trust religion.
Now we don't.
There's our big socialinstitutions.
We are very we take a verycynical, skeptical attitude, in
part because it's much easier tosee the corruption in this age
of transparency that we havebecause of the internet and
other factors, that we just seethe bad behavior of our leaders,
and so it's more difficult toattach ourselves fully and

(41:28):
identify fully with anyorganization, not just religious
organizations.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
The modern world does all these things that you're
talking about.
Right, the modern world isassociated with movement of
ideas, movement of capital,movement of people, which means
that local ties are broken allthe time, customs are broken all
the time, self-protected,hermetically sealed communities
are infiltrated.
Those people leave, and soyou're going to have this kind

(41:53):
of exchange of ideas.
The modern world is much moreassociated with an emphasis on
cause and effect and withscience and explaining things,
not because the world isenchanted and this is the world
of God, but no, this is howatoms work, this is how gravity
works, this is what we knowabout biology.
So I think that is one of thereasons those 19th century folks
thought it's just a matter oftime for us to grow up.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah, I think that's very true, and the last point
related to that that Bergermentions is how we don't look to
the past French wisdom anymore.
Dr Papasian, does you very muchdo.

Speaker 5 (42:23):
The hard sell, because yeah, people say what a
common refrain in studentswriting is yeah, Plato was smart
for his day.
For his day, yes, his day 2000,.
More than 2000 years ago.
He was pretty bright, but wejust know better.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
We know better and influence her.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Right yeah.
But we look to the future forsolutions.
We will find a solution withnew technological developments.
We'll find a solution with newideas.
We don't trust the past.
We think that the Jesus timewas just so different than our
post-industrial society that welive in now that it can't have
the answers for us today.

(42:58):
And so we just don't revere thepast like we did.
We don't go to our grandparentsfor information on what cell
phones to buy.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
That dude I quoted earlier with the citation Alexis
Tocqueville said even back inthe 1830s his perception was
that Americans were haunted bythe future, almost always wanted
to accelerate to get to thatpoint where we would think our
problems would be solved.

Speaker 4 (43:19):
I do think there's something about the celebration
of the individual and the focuson the individual over the
communal too, because none of us.
Increasingly, I think we wantto be involved less in
organizations.
You were talking about thedistrust in organizations, but
then I think that's alsocombined with the desire to be
exceptional and to not have todepend on other organizations or

(43:41):
community groups or connectionsto make your mark.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
And you made a little joke about influencers before,
right, but the whole idea ofentrepreneurship and I get to be
my own personal influencer andI don't really even need
producers, right, I can set upmy own oh, I can do my own
podcast, right, and you don'tneed these institutions to rely
on anymore.
I think that's.
There's a lot of truth to that.
I know that our, which is,would also explain the
popularity of community churches, non-denominational community

(44:08):
churches, rather than being tiedto a longstanding church
tradition.
No, it's cashing it on our own.
We're new and cool.
We're new and cool.
We're not.
We might look to Jesus in theBible, which is ancient, but the
way we're doing everything isinnovative.
I don't know where you are inthat podcast.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
I'm finished, okay, yeah, so you definitely saw that
point where they started hiringreally top notch marketers, not
because right of theirreligious convictions that are
piety or whatever but becausethey knew how to get numbers.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
I was actually in a meeting for that at a relatively
small church and was here intown and we had this little
retreat and the pastor, who Ihad great respect for, brought
in a professional marketer andwe thought we were going to
brainstorm about the future ofthe church and the mission and
it was how much do we want togrow by next year?
And we looked around each otherand we're saying isn't that

(44:56):
something for the Holy Spirit todecide?
Is that?
But no, we're going to set thegoal and then we're going to say
here's how we get to the goal.
It was just so corporatemindset and some kind of
antithetical to my understandingof what a church community
should focus on.
And it was.
It just felt for me.
Personally I don't want tocriticize everybody's approach,
but it just felt creepy to me.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Yeah, but that's part and parcel of that entrepreneur
market choice we were talkingabout.
This is the rational choice oflots of decisions.
You have to figure out whereyou are in that kind of market
niche.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yeah great.

Speaker 5 (45:26):
There's been some kind of a I don't know how big a
trend it is, but kind of apushback against that and a
return to tradition.
I know there was in the.
A year or two ago.
There was an article in the NewYork Times magazine about what
they called weird Christianityand about these young people who
want to go to the Latin mass.
They don't like the modernCatholic mass and they want the
incense and all that, all thosetrappings, and I wonder I don't

(45:46):
know how big a trend that is butif that might be kind of a
counterreaction that might growin the next decades.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
I think that's a great point, and you've got
personal stories here.
I know, michael, of studentshere who came from either a
megachurch background or a veryconservative, traditional
background and just by theirexperiences here turn to a much
more tradition-based faith.

Speaker 5 (46:08):
Yeah, I think there is that longing and a lot of
people to connect to.
Even though we live in ananti-institutional age that's
very cynical, there's still thisdesire to belong to this long
tradition and this history.
And once you expose them tothat because a lot of our
students are coming fromnon-denominational backgrounds
have no idea of church historythey don't know even Protestants

(46:31):
, don't really know who MartinLuther was that's like ancient
history.
But once you expose them tothat and this long, rich
tradition, a lot of studentsfind that very attractive.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Okay, so we have an irony here.
How can the traditional churchmarket itself better so it can
get all those traditions so wecan push back against this
increase of the nuns.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Yeah, and that actually raises the question
again.
Going back to the podcast, it'sa really delicate question of
are we as fallen creatures whoare vain and interested and are
just selves and are own prestige?
Are we using the marketingbecause we see numbers
themselves as a validation, oris it we really believe that
people will thrive and flourishif they're introduced to these?

(47:14):
And we want the good for people, we want people to be happy, we
want them to live rich,rewarding lives, and so the only
way to encourage that is byintroducing them as many as we
can.
Right to this, I think it'sdifficult, as a difficult razor
to walk.

Speaker 4 (47:28):
I thought I'd bring up a stat, because we've talked
about the rise of the nuns andnon-religious versus religious,
but we haven't really talkedabout the actual numbers who
have stopped attending church.
And so, according to anAtlantic article that I found,
40 million Americans havestopped attending church in the
last 25 years, which is around12% of the population.
So that kind of frames thatmelt as we would call it.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yes, it's quite generational and I think, mike,
some of your numbers spoke tothat.
The younger generation used todrop out for a while, almost
like your story.
When you go to college or whenyou're off on your own for a
while, you drop out, buthistorically they would come
back when they had children oftheir own, would re-assimilate
into the church life and thatwas a fairly common pattern.

(48:12):
But the last couple ofgenerations they leave and then
they just don't come back.

Speaker 4 (48:18):
Last year a Pew study found 31% of those raised
religious become unaffiliatedbetween 15 to 29 years old.
Yeah, that's 6.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
31% yeah, that's a lot, and so this current
generation is starting at a muchhigher baseline in terms of
unaffiliated than previousgenerations and the chances of
them returning.
Some will, obviously, but Ithink we've hit a tipping point
is the way I've always thoughtabout.
We've hit a tipping point whereit's not that unusual, it's not

(48:45):
that there's no shame in beingunaffiliated in most places, so
it's going to become much morecommon and much more regular.
I believe it's certainlypossible.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
A lot of those folks, initially at least, who left
the church were a white affair.
It was mostly just sort ofwhite society, and that's
shifted.
Now there are increasing numberof Hispanic folks who are also
recognizing themselves asunaffiliated, One of, if you
look at percentage of people inthe country who are either some
mainline Protestant orevangelical Protestant or
unaffiliated, or Catholic orother.

(49:14):
The Catholic percentage hasremained really over decade
after decade, remainedremarkably the same around 20,
21%, and so that sounds likethere's a kind of steadiness
there.
But what's really changes thecomposition of the Catholic
Church?
So there's been something akinto really serious white flight
from the Catholic Church asimmigration shot up in the 80s

(49:36):
and 90s.
There were many Asians but itwas overwhelmingly from Latin
America and 60, 70, 80% of LatinAmerican folks are Catholic.
So they would come into thechurch, they come into the
Catholic Church, and there wasjust a drain of white folks.
So that's what sort ofmaintained its steadiness.

Speaker 5 (49:53):
We're here in Rome too.
In the Catholic Church it'sabout maybe a little bit more
than a half of the congregationis Spanish speaking right now.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Yeah, Let me conclude with this cherry note this is
old data.
This data is over a decade old,but this is from a book called
UnChristian.
It was published by the BarnaGroup, which is they try to be
objective, but they're Christianbased research.
And here are.
I don't know if this is the top10, but these are the top
reasons why people who don't goto church say that they don't go
to church.
And I should just give you thisbud and you say hit it and I'll

(50:22):
hit the.
I'll hit the button every time.
Every time we got one of yourreasons here.
Okay, okay, you got it Allright.
It's anti homosexual, it'sjudgmental, it's hypocritical,
it's old fashioned, it's notreally, I just like hitting them
.
It's too involved with politics.

(50:43):
It's out of touch with reality.
Yeah, it's insensitive toothers.

Speaker 4 (50:52):
It's boring.
I would say it's too much of aspectacle now.
I like the boring.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Okay, it's not accepting of other faiths and
it's confusing.
Oh, he didn't press it on thelast one.

Speaker 4 (51:04):
I'm trying to think I would need more specifics to be
able to press that button.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
All right, I don't think, even though this is old
data, I don't think that haschanged much over the past, over
the past decade.

Speaker 4 (51:16):
I don't know if this is sounding a positive, hopeful
note or if it's just sounding anote that's shifting in
directions.
But Wendy Cage, who's asociology pro from Brandeis, and
Elaine Bamcheck.
Citation Wrote an article in theAtlantic that I thought was
really interesting, where theytalked about the move away from
churches, but how people ofshared faith find themselves

(51:41):
regrouping in different waysthrough, for instance, social
justice groups, through onlinegroups, and so how maybe it
might not be that we'renecessarily losing faith or
losing our religion, but that weare reorganizing around
different ways outside ofphysical buildings.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
That's interesting, because what 20 years ago, when
I was in graduate school, thatwas a very big thrust.
Look at the rise of theseparatroop organizations.
But it was always in concertwith the church, and so perhaps
some of these paratrooporganizations or these
faith-based groups are nowsupplanting religious conviction
.
No, I get my real meaning, myreal understanding and my real
conviction of my faith throughthis organization and not

(52:26):
through the institutionalized orthe traditional church.
That's interesting.
It could be Any last words.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
I think, for another podcast.
One thing that we could look atand this would not be the time
here is just, even at the gutlevel, is this promising for our
future or is it problematic?
Of course it's going to be bothright, but I'd be curious what
people have to say.
Is it actually an occasion fora kind of reformation of
Christianity again and a kind ofpurifying of Christianity?

(52:53):
And I'm not saying you havesomething like the remnant, but
folks who are willing, even in aculture that might may mock
them or dismiss them out of hand, find no, this is important
enough for me to be involved in,and they would not be operating
from the standpoint of grabbingpower because they wouldn't be
able to have it.
So there might be a kind ofhumility baked into it that

(53:13):
might be sorely missing.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Yeah, it'd be great for another podcast, because I
would love to discuss what woulda humility-based church look
like.
That would be my goal for sure.
I want to thank all three ofyou.
I've really enjoyed thisconversation and I hope all of
you out there have enjoyed it aswell.
I want to thank our audiencefor sitting around the table
with us today.
I hope that we have providedyou with some Kurt you came up
with these some food for thoughtand something to chew on.

(53:38):
I suspect that we will havesome leftovers, some
conversation amongst us afterthe music is over here, so feel
free to stay on and listen toour debriefing after the podcast
is over.
We appreciate your support,except for that one person out
there who gave us one star.
We got all five stars.
What's that?
First, they don't identify, butwe got all five stars, and it's

(54:00):
one little person.
I didn't understand the greatexistence.
I think that must be it.

Speaker 4 (54:03):
You have a disgruntled student.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
I don't know where this comes from, but anyway, we
do appreciate your support andas part of that support, please
do consider subscribing ratingwith five stars, not one.
You out there and reviewingChurch Potluck wherever you're
downloading.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Or at least coming back and apologizing for it.
There you go.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
I think you can change that review out there too
.

Speaker 5 (54:22):
You'll be forgiven.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Yeah, like old papaisi, will give you
absolution Right.
Yes, well, until we gatheraround the table next time.
This has been Church Potluck.
Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Yeah.
So one thing that we didn't doa whole lot of speculation which
is good right about how this isgoing to proceed, but based on
these pollsters, who they'vedeveloped some methodologies
that try to predict how muchwe're going to continue this on
in the future.
And it turns out, even ifthere's no one really dropping

(55:02):
out of Christianity, this trendis going to continue to rise
dramatically, just because allof the religious belief is
stacked with the people who areold and dying, and so the people
who have faith, who are sort ofshowing up the numbers, they're
going by the wayside, and itseems as if this commitment to,
or the lack of commitment to,religion and affiliation is much

(55:24):
stickier than they would haveanticipated.
It's not just like your as awayward journey between this
place and another, is it?
Once you land there, a lot ofpeople stay there.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
Yeah, and we've talked about people leaving.
Well, what we didn't talk aboutwas churches closing.
There, have you know, after youknow, church, the number of
just churches in the UnitedStates growing, growing, growing
.
It has actually declined andCOVID accelerated that big time.

Speaker 4 (55:46):
Sure, it used to be, when businesses closed down, a
church would open, and nowchurches are closing down.
I guess that's perfect forspirit Halloween stores.
Yeah, along with what Baileysaid, they, I guess projections
are 2070.
We will fall below 50% in termsof people who identify as

(56:06):
Christians If nothing changes.
But that's incrediblyconservative, right.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
So and, if anything, it seems like it's ramping up.
I don't remember StanleyHowarth I almost brought this up
during the podcast that StanleyHowarth, when he visited, kept
using the phrase the church isjust going to get leaner and
meaner.
Right that it'll be, and we'vewe're kind of losing the kind of
just the the fair weatherChristian that if you're going

(56:31):
to be a Christian you're goingto be all in, you're going to be
committed to it and so you'llbe devoted, rather than just
Christian in name only and kindof attending here and there.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
I know he's using a turn of phrase with that, but I
think one of the problems is alot of people think it's already
plenty mean, right.
I know it's a turn of.
I know it's a literally turn ofphrase.
I think that's a good point.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
And in fact I think, probably I've never used that
term in public except for apodcast.
Now because of that, because ofthe meaner aspect.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
I mean, I think another way of looking at it is.
There's just no denying that alot of Christianity in the
contemporary age is sort ofobsessed with power.
It's aligned oftentimes withthe partisanship and it sees
even sometimes the party as afundamental addendum right to,

(57:18):
or an appendage to, the church,or vice versa.
And once you get it below acertain threshold, you're going
to be able to see that you're.
There may be people who aregiving that quest up for social
power, for political power, andit might be.
This is how we understand.
Here's how we orient ourselvesto the cosmos.
This is what we understand ourobligations to your Lord, god to

(57:42):
be and let the chips fall wherethey may.
I won't have power, but atleast I know I'll have.
You know I can live withintegrity.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (57:54):
I mean your point earlier about Tocqueville, Mike,
I think.
I mean, isn't the problem thatyou know if Europe had a corrupt
Christianity and America waskind of immune from that?
That's no longer true.
It seems like we've politicizedthe church and the same
problems that Tocquevilleobserved in Europe are now

(58:15):
occurring here.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
Something that I think about a lot, but I hate
that.
I think about it because Idon't want this to be true.
But is it possible that thisamazing thing that the church
actually did do in my mind isthat the church's role in the
civil rights movement, that thatsomehow opened the door to
politicizing?
No, it was the church, becauseall of a sudden we had this big

(58:38):
victory in the 60s for civilrights.
All of a sudden, we say, well,we can use the church for other
political goals now.

Speaker 4 (58:50):
And so I mean the church was.
A lot of churches were involvedin abolition too.
So I would say that predatescivil rights yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
So it's okay for church to get involved in
politics, so long as it's therighteous causes.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
There's a really good argument for that to be exactly
true.
I mean to say that it's not thecase would suggest that what
should shape our view ofpolitics and religion is
liberalism rather than sort ofthe dictates of religion.
But I think you can make anargument, and one of our former
colleagues, david McKenzie,wrote an article that I found
very persuasive, and hisargument is that using the

(59:30):
church as a vehicle forimprovement when the goal is
inclusion and justice, is verydifferent than using the church
as a goal for exclusion andhierarchy, for the simple reason
being that all religious claimsone way or another are revealed
, which is to say that they'renot really open to public

(59:53):
transparency and reason.
So if you're going to be makingreligious claims, if you're
doing it for your own advantage,it's already just almost by
definition, out of line.
But if you're using this as away of inspiring people, to
allow more people into thesystem and to help them out,
then it's just, it's almost likea good marketing tool.

(01:00:13):
So I think you can make thecase that, yeah, you can use
religion when it's for the causeof inclusion and others for the
common good.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
So Pellan yes.
I think that is about ascompelling an argument as one
could make, but it just requiresa little philosophy, philosophy
, logic.
If A, then B, you know, andthen that, that's just that's
always that question of whatcounts as inclusive.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
So I mean, with respect to the abortion debate,
is that something that isimposing hierarchy or is that
protecting?
I mean, you can go either wayand I think really faithful,
good-hearted people are going todisagree about that one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Yeah, kurt, did we hit the points that you were
thinking we would hit?

Speaker 4 (01:00:59):
Yeah, this has been great.
I've enjoyed it.
I want to know a little bitmore about the Church of Dale,
though.
What's what's involved?

Speaker 5 (01:01:06):
Yeah, yeah, I will.
I'm intrigued I might join.
It begins with a podcast, ofcourse.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
And then just slowly grows from there.
I am grooming the audience andso just stay tuned, folks.
So it's really international.

Speaker 5 (01:01:23):
Right, you got 29 countries now.
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
I didn't think about that.
I just do realize that I ownthe domain rights for
TheHumblesscom, so but that issomething that I think about a
lot is how can the church be avibrant church but also just
really ooze with humility?

(01:01:48):
And because it just doesn'tfeel it feels like it's a
missing ingredient for a lot ofthe expression of Christianity
today.

Speaker 5 (01:01:55):
But anyway, yeah, I don't know.
I mean, maybe it is becauseit's just the person who's
talking about the Church of Dale.
Yeah, you're in a position ofpower and it's hard to be humble
when you got this big megachurch and this big spectacle
that you were saying.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
And you think you're, you think you must be doing
something right if you've gotthousands and tens of thousands
of people attending Part of itmight be just what you were,
what you mean by humble, whatyou're humble about.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
So if humility means being, I think, lukewarm,
wishy-washy, ambivalent aboutyour message because you don't
want to step on toes, that'sprobably not going to be very
effective.
But if humility means thatyou're not saying what you're
saying to promote your ownspecific self-interest and
you're including others in thefold, then I think that could be
very powerful.
Yeah.

(01:02:44):
That's good.

Speaker 5 (01:02:45):
Well, we solved it, we did, that's it.
We need a church of humility.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Oh, there you go, that's a problem, there you go,
I mean I mean this istraditional Christianity.

Speaker 5 (01:02:55):
I will be the best.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
at the church of humility, you'll be the greatest
I will be.
You're better than anyone elseI will be the better than anyone
else at the church of humility.

Speaker 5 (01:03:03):
That is what the paradox is, yeah, humility, but
if you go back, to like thedesert not to go back I always
talk about the desert fathers,but that was their key thing you
have to.
You have to cultivate this kindof humility.
It's not easy to do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Yeah, but see, I'm not willing to go out to the
desert.
That's the problem.
Oh yeah, we need.

Speaker 5 (01:03:19):
We need more people like the church of the desert.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
We need to cancel without air conditioning.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
This is a problem for people who believe you know
Moses wrote all five books ofthe Pentateuch, because there's
a part in there where it saysMoses was humble, the most
humble person there ever was.
But if Moses?
But if Moses wrote that, that'skind of a that was inserted
later.
Yeah Well, I think that is oneof the arguments, that that that
was inserted that it waswritten by Moses Plus his death

(01:03:44):
too.

Speaker 4 (01:03:44):
That was exactly it's kind of hard for Moses to write
about the details.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
He was a great man, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Well, thank you all so much.
I enjoyed that and I hope thatthe folks that are out there
will will do the same.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you, I'm not promising,but I am really hoping I turn
this around quickly and we getthis out tomorrow morning is the
goal, but we shall see if thegoal is realized.
But thank you, yeah.