In the last 15 years, the percentage of people who say they are atheist, agnostic or nothing at all has increased in nearly all 50 States. Where I live, in Washington State, more than half of people are among these “Nones”.
Even in Utah, the state founded less than 200 years ago by a religion, the Nones are nearly 40% of the population. There is no end in sight for this trend.
No doubt part of the reason for the “Rise of the Nones” is the decline of local community. After all, whatever else it is, organized religion IS community; something you do with others.
Absent communal ties, the practices of religion feel outdated to most people living today; utterly useless in the context of modern living. An example of this is the evolution of the Sabbath Day: from its use within small, Christian towns and communities, to how Sunday now works for the average American.
In the communities of old, you didn’t shop on Sundays because the shops were owned by your friends and neighbors. It didn’t matter if you went to church or not, you didn’t work on Sundays because no one else worked on Sundays. Even after the car was introduced, many gas stations were closed on Sundays; where were you going to go? In those communities, the Sabbath takes on a deep and social meaning.
But that context is mostly dead, if not all dead today. Nones now rise in our time because concepts like the Sabbath are incoherent. The shop, and in fact most of the shops, are owned, not by local people but by global conglomerates who set store hours from an office building thousands of miles from your home; who are not invested in your community but are invested in your consumer choices.
So, in our world the choice to forego shopping on Sundays is downgraded from a communal expectation to a matter of individual will power and consumer preference; of a man deciding all by himself, for himself, Sunday after Sunday, what he will and won’t do.
Irrational Religion
Your community forms your reality and in turn impacts what seems rational or irrational. It’s important for Christians of all kinds to realize that nearly every belief they have is seen as deeply irrational in the eyes of modern culture. Pried from their old communal purposes and meaning, Christian tenets, including the concept of sin itself, are simply not coherent and can be easily disregarded and ridiculed by the most mid of wits.
Absent a Community to make it all coherent, to make it all make sense, the pressure to give up those religious beliefs will only grow over time. After all, why should the arbitrary label of “sin” keep a man from doing all the things that are available for him to do?
As his religious experience becomes more individual, it must by necessity also become more logically unsound, ridiculous, or even the most dreaded of all: boring in comparison to modern culture. By the time a man decides to quit his faith, he had long before mentally or emotionally quit his community… on the path to being a None.
The Burden of Irrationality
Perhaps without realizing it, the religionist today must carry the burden of faith not only in the supernatural but also in the communal purposes and contexts of the religion itself. As one writer said about his experience with Taoist rituals:
“What they were doing was part of a whole worldview, a whole understanding of “We have to set off these firecrackers, otherwise, the ghosts are going to inhabit our new business. We have to parade the temple Gods through the streets so that we will have good luck.” It was just as serious as people today going through the ritual of hand washing to protect themselves from invisible spirits that they call viruses. People in our society don't think of that as a ritual because it makes sense in their reality.”1
With this in mind, we can better understand a recent teaching of President Russell M. Nelson, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
“In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.”2
Without that reaffirming conversion to the practice of religion itself, many can and will give up all the tension with modern life. Because no one wants to look like the guy setting off firecrackers to scare away ghosts. And you’re much more likely to look like that, and your children are much more likely to feel like that, if your religious participation is an individual experience, rather than a communal one.
Being Irrational Is Good Actually
So why should a man invest his heart and mind into a seemingly irrational and inconvenient religious and communal life? What’s in it for him?
In my view, religion and faith lead to more truth, beauty and power than the modern consumer, individualist culture can even comprehend, much less offer.
CS Lewis tapped into this truth when he wrote, The Silver Chair. A group of characters are trapped underground with a sorceress who, with seeming authority and rationality, insists that Narnia and Aslan (respectfully, the world and God in this story) do not exist. For the characters in this story, the underground world is all that could be seen and understood. One of the trapped characters, Puddleglum, courageously responds:
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real-world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So… if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for [Narnia]. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.”
Just as there was more to Narnia than the dark underground cave, the rational, materialist, data-based view of the world isn’t all there is. More truth, more peace, and a viable cultural future can only be accessed through a spiritual and communal approach to life.
A man wanting to reverse the growth of the Nones in his own heart should seek not just to practice faith, but to practice it as much as possible in a communal setting. The first steps towards a more communal religious experience can be very simple:
hosting or attending study/discussion groups outside of church.
having dinner with families from church.
going out of your way to include yourself in church social circles.
asking for and giving acts of service to others.
perhaps the most obvious is finding a church to attend consistently in the first place.
put church activities, classes, events at the top of your calendar. If they suck, participate and make them better.
A man doing these things will inevitably cross paths with people he disagrees with and can perhaps barely stand at first. But learning to work with those with whom he’d rather not is itself a valuable spiritual truth; one which modern culture attempts to sidestep.
Once he’s taken those first steps toward a communal religious experience, he’ll see further opportunities to rely on his church community in ways that most people today simply can’t fathom:
How can he economically support them? What do they offer which he could purchase and use? And vice versa?
How can he help them achieve personal goals and development? How can they help him?
How can his children and theirs be educated, or trained in hobbies or sports together?
What norms will they share?
What educational and professional credentials and opportunities can be created through the community?
These questions only have answers for those who do the seemingly irrational thing and persist in a communal religious experience. It’s knowledge closed off to all others. Small religious communities seeking revelation and wisdom from God create a portal away from the dark cave of “liquid modernity” to obtain a glimpse into a realer world.
That I’ve experienced that revelation first hand a few times in my life is one reason why I go to church.
Charles Eisenstein, On Creating Culture, September 26, 2023
Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives, April 2018
Excellent perspective. I love the advice about participating in communal church activities even when they are not tailored to us or our tastes - elevating the quality of the activity over time because of our participation.
The New Testament more or less defines the spirit in as a communal group mind--“where two or three are gathered...”
Even as a rationalist, I could believe that a healthy group mind is an oracle of wisdom, which perhaps is necessarily brought together by a common commitment to unrational beliefs. But not just any beliefs--tested beliefs.