The misunderstood reason millions atlantic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Church attendance in America has been on the decline in recent decades.

In pretty short order, the article was widely shared on social media. People were talking about it online, writers were writing about it. Why this is happening has been of significant concern and importance to religious leaders, as well as interest to sociologists. While many would point to corruption and abuse scandals that have plagued the church sexual abuse, residential schools, pandemic restrictions, etc… , the most predominant reasons that sociologists are finding are more mundane. The central thesis of the article is that the shape of American life has changed to be productivity and achievement focused.

The misunderstood reason millions atlantic

Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. As a Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith will still exist for our four children, let alone whatever grandkids we might one day have. This change is also bad news for America as a whole: Participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life , higher financial generosity , and more stable families —all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency. Timothy Keller: American Christianity is due for a revival. The Great Dechurching finds that religious abuse and more general moral corruption in churches have driven people away. This is, of course, an indictment of the failures of many leaders who did not address abuse in their church. But Davis and Graham also find that a much larger share of those who have left church have done so for more banal reasons. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. Numerous victims of abuse in church environments can identify a moment when they lost the ability to believe, when they almost felt their faith draining out of them. Consider one of the composite characters that Graham and Davis use in the book to describe a typical evangelical dechurcher: a something woman who grew up in a suburban megachurch, was heavily invested in a campus ministry while in college, then after graduating moved into a full-time job and began attending a young-adults group in a local church.

When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission, the misunderstood reason millions atlantic. Sign in with a password below, or sign in using your email. A healthy church can be a safety net in the harsh American economy by offering its members material assistance in times of need: meals after a baby is born, money for rent after a layoff.

Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. As a Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith will still exist for our four children, let alone whatever grandkids we might one day have. This change is also bad news for America as a whole: Participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life , higher financial generosity , and more stable families —all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency. Open navigation menu.

Millions of Americans are leaving church, never to return, and it would be easy to think that this will make the country more secular and possibly more liberal. After all, that is what happened in Northern and Western Europe in the s: A younger generation quit going to Anglican, Lutheran, or Catholic churches and embraced a liberal, secular pluralism that shaped European politics for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. Something similar happened in the traditionally Catholic Northeast, where, at the end of the 20th century, millions of white Catholics in New England, New York, and other parts of the Northeast quit going to church. Today most of those states are pretty solidly blue and firmly supportive of abortion rights. So, as church attendance declines even in the southern Bible Belt and the rural Midwest, history might seem to suggest that those regions will become more secular, more supportive of abortion and LGBTQ rights, and more liberal in their voting patterns. But that is not what is happening. Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist. Jake Meador: The misunderstood reason millions of Americans stopped going to Church. In fact, people become even more entrenched in their political views when they stop attending services.

The misunderstood reason millions atlantic

N early everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years. As a Christian, I feel this shift acutely. My wife and I wonder whether the institutions and communities that have helped preserve us in our own faith will still exist for our four children, let alone whatever grandkids we might one day have. This change is also bad news for America as a whole: Participation in a religious community generally correlates with better health outcomes and longer life , higher financial generosity , and more stable families —all of which are desperately needed in a nation with rising rates of loneliness, mental illness, and alcohol and drug dependency.

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Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. As each year gets harder, they drop one more nonessential service or pleasure they once enjoyed. The book suggests that the defining problem driving out most people who leave is … just how American life works in the 21st century. Quick navigation Home. What is more needed in our time than a community marked by sincere love, sharing what they have from each according to their ability and to each according to their need, eating together regularly, generously serving neighbors, and living lives of quiet virtue and prayer? It inspired Communism and socialism alike. They know better! Older generations often cite those causes as well, along with the scandals and abuses that Dechurched graciously concedes as valid reasons for disaffiliation. In fact, people become even more entrenched in their political views when they stop attending services. I suspect this new reality is part of what drove Meador to write that post: The evangelical complementarian ideal of one wage-earning husband supporting a wife and a passel of kids has been completely out of reach for most Americans for decades now.

Nearly everyone I grew up with in my childhood church in Lincoln, Nebraska, is no longer Christian. Forty million Americans have stopped attending church in the past 25 years.

But they still get very tetchy about anything that smacks of socialism. Search The Atlantic. Most of them joined in the first place to get stuff from others even if some of that stuff is intangible: safety from Hell, attention, conferred power, ready-made friendships , not to give their own stuff away to others. As well, all too many religious charities force aid requesters to sit through sermons in order to earn a single meal or a place to sleep that night, like this example from a Christian forum. The Atlantic 5 min read Social History. So far as it goes, we can probably say that complementarianism served its intended purpose. Work in Progress: Experts were certain that America was headed for a recession. And if that were true, churches would not be in decline, because they tell people that all the time as it is. And that someone else did in , too. And they can go far past a particular church community, too. Rather, it is designed to maximize individual accomplishment as defined by professional and financial success. A quick glance at the politics of historically Catholic but no longer heavily churched areas of the country bears this out. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic.