Atheists & Agnostics

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Two think pieces on changes in American religious life, with a few political twists

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Two think pieces on changes in American religious life, with a few political twists

It’s time for another “think piece” weekend double-shot.

In other words, I want to point readers toward two different online features that, at first, may not seem to be related. However, when you look closer you can see the DNA that connects them.

The first is a blog post by my friend Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher, but I want readers to consider his post as a mere frame work around a blast of data from the Pew Research Center team. The headline on Dreher’s post states, once again, an old trend (think “Sheilaism”), but one that is being more — not less — important: “Christianity Declines — But Not ‘Spirituality’.”

Dreher points to this quotation from a recent Pew feature, which digs deeper into the center’s mine of religiously unaffiliated research:

The secularizing shifts evident in American society so far in the 21st century show no signs of slowing. The latest Pew Research Center survey of the religious composition of the United States finds the religiously unaffiliated share of the public is 6 percentage points higher than it was five years ago and 10 points higher than a decade ago.

Christians continue to make up a majority of the U.S. populace, but their share of the adult population is 12 points lower in 2021 than it was in 2011. In addition, the share of U.S. adults who say they pray on a daily basis has been trending downward, as has the share who say religion is “very important” in their lives.

Currently, about three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) are religious “nones” — people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity. Self-identified Christians of all varieties (including Protestants, Catholics, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Orthodox Christians) make up 63% of the adult population. Christians now outnumber religious “nones” by a ratio of a little more than two-to-one. In 2007, when the Center began asking its current question about religious identity, Christians outnumbered “nones” by almost five-to-one (78% vs. 16%).

The recent declines within Christianity are concentrated among Protestants.

A trend this massive will affect almost every area of American life, including politics.


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Five big Catholic news angles that journalists will need to cover during 2022

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Five big Catholic news angles that journalists will need to cover during 2022

As 2021 comes to a close, everyone is looking towards 2022. The news cycle over the last two years has been dominated by COVID-19 and that doesn’t seem to be subsiding — given the rash of infections the past few weeks as a result of the Omicron variant.

The Catholic world, meanwhile, had in 2021 one of its busiest years. The election of Joe Biden as president — this January will officially mark his first year in office — also dominated news coverage. That Biden was also a Catholic (only second after John F. Kennedy in 1960) thrust Catholicism into the political news coverage. Politics plus religion equals news. It’s a familiar formula.

Biden, a practicing Catholic who attends Mass on Sundays, was at odds this year with many U.S. bishops — setting up a year-long debate over whether he (and other pro-abortion politicians) should receive Holy Communion. In the end, the bishops offered more clarification in the importance of the Eucharist without singling out Biden. Truth is, no one knows if the bishops actually considered mentioning Biden or other pro-abortion-rights Catholics.

Issues around politics and religion will likely dominate once again in 2022. The abortion issue and a pending Supreme Court decision regarding access to it will be a big story in the coming year. The Catholic church, a major part of the abortion debate in this country for decades, will play a major role in news stories that will be written over the coming months.

At the same time, Pope Francis, who recently turned 85, will again be surrounded by rumors that he will either resign or die. Whether this pope — the most polarizing in centuries — can chip away at his agenda to change the church in the 21st century will continue to pit traditionalists versus progressives.

Here are the five big news trends and stories journalists need to keep an eye on in the new year:

(5) Pope Francis and his focus on a progressive agenda

This coming year could be the one where the battle between this pontiff and doctrinal traditionalists intensifies even further. A Dec. 17 Associated Press story set the stage for such a confrontation in what will be Francis’ ninth year as head of the Catholic church.


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In search of the elusive liberal evangelical: Is this tiny flock worthy of big news coverage?

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In search of the elusive liberal evangelical: Is this tiny flock worthy of big news coverage?

I was listening to a podcast the other day and the host asked a guest a question that I have heard way too many times over the last year — “Why did you decide to focus only on conservative evangelicals?”

I fully admit that a lot of my work does focus on conservative evangelicals. Why? Because, in the current political landscape, there’s not a more important force in American politics. The nones are too disorganized at this juncture to have a systemic impact. Catholics and Mainline Protestants are too politically divided to be considered anything close to a coherent voting bloc.

The fact is simply this: 13% of all American adults in 2020 were white evangelical Republicans.

No other group comes even close to that size. Nine percent of Americans are nothing in particular Democrats — but that’s not an easy group to wrap your arms around. There are twice as many white evangelical Republicans as there are white Catholic Republicans. For every Democratic atheist, there are 2.5 white evangelical Republicans.

But, I wanted to devote some time trying to look at the other side of the evangelical coin: those who describe themselves as politically liberal. Because the Cooperative Election Study is so large, even if that group is a relatively small percentage of the population, it’s still possible to do in-depth statistical analysis of liberal evangelicals.

Of all self-identified evangelicals, 58% describe themselves as conservative, 29% indicate they are moderate, while 13% say they are liberal. If that is restricted to just white evangelicals: 8% are liberal, 24% are moderate, and 68% say they are conservative.

That’s obviously much different than the general population. In 2020, 30% of all Americans said they were liberal, along with 28% of just white respondents.


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Thinking about a newsy mystery: Why are Gideon Bibles vanishing from hotel nightstands?

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Thinking about a newsy mystery: Why are Gideon Bibles vanishing from hotel nightstands?

Thanksgiving is once again upon us and with it the official start of the busy holiday travel season that extends through Christmas.

As Americans continue to cope with the ongoing pandemic, travel has seen a steady increase once again. That means packed airports and bumper-to-bumper traffic on most major highways starting Wednesday. It also means more people will be staying in hotels.

This brings us to an interesting and highly symbolic news story, one that deserves coverage.

I have done my share of travel — both in the United States and internationally — over my two decades working as a journalist. The few things you could always count on for much of that time was a newspaper at the front desk, usually USA Today, and a Bible in your nightstand.

Not anymore. Print is slowly dying, and newspaper readers have migrated to the internet in recent years.

What about those Bibles?

They, too, seem to be slowly disappearing. I noticed this past summer, while on a trip to Washington, D.C., that there was no Bible in my hotel room.

The phasing out of Bibles in hotel rooms is actually part of a steady trend across the country over the past few years. In 2016, Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, typically supplied both a Bible and Book of Mormon in its rooms. But the company decided that forgoing religious materials was the way to go at two of its hipper hotel brands such as Moxy and Edition. Note that both of these chains target younger guests.


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From Off Broadway to movie screens: The complicated conversion story of C.S. Lewis

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From Off Broadway to movie screens: The complicated conversion story of C.S. Lewis

While historians argue about what C.S. Lewis did or didn't say, it can be stated with absolute certainty that the Oxford don never patted down his rumbled, professorial tweed jacket before exclaiming, "Where's my phone?"

That line occurs at the start of "The Most Reluctant Convert," as actor Max McLean enters a movie set preparing for the first scene. Seconds later, the camera follows him into the real Oxford, England, where Lewis was a scholar and tutor at Magdalen College.

At first, the famous Christian writer explains how he became an atheist. When he walks into the real White Horse pub, he orders two pints of beer, with one for the viewer. Soon, scenes from his memories spring to life, with Lewis striding through them as a narrator.

"Lewis is in his imagination. He's personified in his thoughts. … I do think that the structure emerged out of the fact that Lewis had a lot to say," said McLean, laughing.

Thus, director Norman Stone -- a BAFTA winner for BBC's "Shadowlands" -- let the "voice of Lewis articulate his struggle, his passion. He is one of those rare individuals where one's intellect, one's emotions and one's spirituality are completely intertwined," said McLean.

All of this is second nature to McLean since the film covers much of the same territory as his own "C.S Lewis Onstage." This was a one-man show at the Fellowship for Performing Arts in New York City, an off-Broadway company McLean founded and guides as artistic director. It has staged other Lewis works, such as "The Screwtape Letters" and "The Great Divorce," drawing warm reviews from The New York Times and other major publications.

The first-person narration, explained McLean, was primarily drawn from Lewis' autobiography, "Surprised by Joy," and the many volumes of his personal letters.

The jump from stage to screen, of course, allowed the film's creators to seek permission to film in some of the most important sites linked to Lewis' life.


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Looking for signs of life? Study the birth rates among religious faiths in America

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Looking for signs of life? Study the birth rates among religious faiths in America

A team of economists from Wellesley College and the University of Maryland recently published a working paper that focused on a peculiar puzzle facing the United States: declining birth rates.

More particularly, the team of researchers was trying to understand why birth rates continued to fall even after the economy was recovering from the Great Recession of 2007. Those economists concluded that one of the biggest factors was shifting priorities among younger Americans — away from raising children and toward career and travel aspirations.

But fertility is obviously incredibly multifaceted. The decision to become a parent is often one that is made with a number of factors in mind. Young adults have to consider their educational plans, the amount of income they would have available to pay for a child and how to handle childcare responsibilities once they become parents.

One factor that can have a tremendous impact on this decision is religion.

Every major religious tradition on Earth encourages reproduction, and thus there can be a theological nudge for people to have children. But a local religious community can also make the decision easier for potential parents by offering up a safety net that can provide financial support or easy access to caregivers for babies and children in the congregation.

Clearly, it’s in the best interest of religious groups to encourage their young families to have children if they want to ensure the long-term viability of their traditions. It’s no secret that families with children are the easiest pathway to ensure that a church, mosque or synagogue will be able to sustain itself for decades to come. But which traditions are doing a good job of having children, and which ones aren’t? And what does that tell us about the future of American religion?


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Don't neglect the Supreme Court's potentially weighty case on religious schools funding

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Don't neglect the Supreme Court's potentially weighty case on religious schools funding

Media eyes are trained on the U.S. Supreme Court's December 1 argument on Mississippi's abortion restrictions, preceded by a fast-tracked November 1 hearing about the stricter law in Texas. But don't neglect the Court's December 8 hearing and subsequent decision on tax funding of religious schools in the potentially weighty Carson v. Makin case (docket #20-1088).

University of Baltimore law Professor Kimberly Wehle certainly wants us to pay heed, warning October 14 via TheAtlantic.com that this is a "sleeper" appeal that "threatens the separation of church and state." In her view, the high court faces not just the perennial problem of public funding for religious campuses. She believes the justices could decide "religious freedom supersedes the public good" by aiding conservative Christian schools that, based on centuries of doctrine, discriminate against non-Christian and LGBTQ students and teachers.

Journalistic backgrounding: Thinly-populated Maine provides an unusual context for this story because the majority of its 260 school districts do not operate full K-12 systems and instead pay tuition for public or private schools that families choose for upper grades. Religiously-affiliated schools are included, but not if Maine deems them "sectarian."

Notably, the parents' plea for tuition is backed by major institutions of the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical Protestants, the Church of God in Christ (the nation's largest African-American denomination), Latter-day Saints (formerly called "Mormons") and Orthodox Judaism, alongside the 63-campus Council of Islamic Schools. A reporter's question: Has such a religious coalition ever formed in any prior Supreme Court case?

Of further interest, the case engages a major religious-liberty theorist, Michael W. McConnell, director of Stanford University's Constitutional Law Center and former federal judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He wrote that circuit's 2008 opinion in Colorado Christian University v Weaver (.pdf here), which tossed out a law that barred "pervasively sectarian" colleges from a state scholarship program.

In Carson, McConnell filed a personal brief September 8 that hands the Supreme Court a history lesson (.pdf here) on religious freedom as conceived when the Constitution's First Amendment was framed. He has explored this ground since a significant Harvard Law Review article in 1989.


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Jill Biden's reborn Christian faith: Washington Post dug for some key details (AP didn't)

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Jill Biden's reborn Christian faith: Washington Post dug for some key details (AP didn't)

Since I grew up Southern Baptist, I have heard many, many people give “testimonies” about how they embraced faith and were “born again.” Now that I am Eastern Orthodox, I have heard many people tell similar stories about how they came to embrace ancient Christian doctrines and beauty of sacramental worship.

Most of the time these stories include some details about history of the person’s faith or lack thereof. One part of telling the point to which a believer has travelled is to share some background information about where the journey started.

I would certainly think that this would be true when the person who is “testifying” is America’s current First Lady. Thus, I had a few expectations when I started reading the Associated Press report that ran with this headline: “Jill Biden says SC ‘prayer partner’ helped change her life.”

The hook for this story was the surprise visit that President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden made to West Columbia, S.C., to honor the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Charles B. Jackson becoming the pastor of Brookland Baptist Church. The focus of the story, however, was on Jill Biden’s “prayer partner” relationship with the pastor’s wife, Robin. Here is the crucial passage in this AP report:

The first lady doesn’t usually speak publicly about her faith but said Sunday that “it’s always been an important part of who I am.” She recalled being a teenager who “fell in love with the peace of the quiet wooden pew,” the “joy of the choir” and the “deep wisdom of the Gospels.”

She said prayer helps her “connect to the people that I love and to the world around me.”

“But in 2015, my faith was shaken,” the first lady said, her voice breaking as she described watching “my brave, strong, funny, bright young son fight brain cancer.”

“Still, I never gave up hope,” she said. “Despite what the doctor said, I believed that my son would make it. In the final days, I made one last, desperate prayer and it went unanswered.”


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Notable omission among liberal religious voices in phase 2 of Supreme Court abortion case

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Notable omission among liberal religious voices in phase 2 of Supreme Court abortion case

The media are prepping for the U.S. Supreme Court's December 1 hearing on the strict Mississippi abortion law and the subsequent ruling.

In a prior Guy Memo on religious "friend of the court" briefs filed on the pro-life side, I promised a second rundown when pro-abortion-rights activists weighed in with their views. Now that second wave of religious arguments has landed — with a notable omission in those ranks that journalists will want to pursue.

To explain, we'll need some religion-beat history on this issue.

In 1967, two years before NARAL Pro-Choice America was founded, the 1,400-member Clergy Consultation Service formed to help women obtain abortions and fight legal barriers. After the high court legalized U.S. abortions in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision currently at issue, the related Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights was founded to campaign for moral acceptance. (In 1994 it dropped the A-word and was renamed the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice or RCRC).

Founders included a significant chunk of "mainline" and liberal Protestantism, including the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Mission Agency, United Church of Christ and several independent Protestant caucuses. The United Methodists' General Board of Church and Society hosted the founding, and the Methodist women's division also joined, but both later backed away. The Coalition also included major non-Orthodox Jewish organizations and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

In the new Court filings, abortion-rights law gets continued support from RCRC, UUA and Jewish organizations. But no Protestant denomination that favors abortion choice has joined to support Roe. Reporters should find out why they sidestepped this historic showdown. For example, have complex schism talks led to silence on the United Methodist left, as opposed to earlier debates (see YouTube video at the top of this post)?

The silence from "mainline" churches deprives the high court of in-depth moral thinking from pro-choice Christians that answers conservatives on issues that make abortion unusually difficult for public policy, among them: Does a genetically unique and developing human embryo or fetus have value? Why, or why not?


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