GetReligion
Thursday, April 03, 2025

nothing in particular

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Concerning Prince Harry, Episcopalians and the choices faced by millions of 'nones'

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Concerning Prince Harry, Episcopalians and the choices faced by millions of 'nones'

If low-church Anglican evangelicals were active in the whole naming-saints thing, you know that the process would already be in motion to honor Queen Elizabeth II. The quiet dignity of her Christian faith was at the heart of her long life of service.

This brings us to what I would argue is a valid religion-angle story linked to “Spare,” the tell-all confessional memoir Prince Harry has released from the media-friendly alternative palace that he is creating with Meghan Markle here in America.

Here is the basic question: In what church will Harry and Meghan raise their children?

This points, of course, to broader questions about the seismic changes inside England’s Royal Family after the passing of Elizabeth the Great. Yes, some of these questions are linked to the complex ecumenical history of King Charles III (see “The Religion of King Charles III” at The National Catholic Register). But it’s pretty clear that there is another divide — in style and content — between the king and Prince Harry.

This brings us to a good news-bad news situation for one of America’s most symbolic denominations.

The good news: Prince Harry would make a great Episcopalian.

The bad news: Prince Harry would make a great Episcopalian, or he could be another “none” or “nothing in particular.”

In a way, Prince Spare faces choices about faith — even liberal Protestant faith — linked to the great exodus of Americans from established religion and, in particular, from the fading “Seven Sisters” of liberal Protestantism. Will the Duke of Sussex and his family become active, vocal Episcopalians or will they become examples of trends described in the book “Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America,” by Stephen Bullivant.

Think about this for a minute. If you sort through the 17,900,000 or so stories in a Google News file about “Spare,” it’s hard to find a better high-point in this drama than the 2018 wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. And who was the rock star of that media circus? It was the preacher — the leader of the Episcopal Church in the United States. You can hear the hosannas in the overture of this celebratory New York Times feature:


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NPR comes to hills of Tennessee and sees exactly the religion trends that you would expect

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NPR comes to hills of Tennessee and sees exactly the religion trends that you would expect

What do you know: National Public Radio came to my backyard here in East Tennessee to cover an important religion-beat story. And, well, NPR saw exactly what you would expect NPR to notice, while ignoring all of the details and questions you would expect this deep-blue news organization to ignore.

Once again, we are talking about a story that is totally valid, but its producers avoided the kind of diversity in sourcing that would have made matters more complex. Here’s the headline for the online text version: “As attendance dips, churches change to stay relevant for a new wave of worshippers.”

What’s missing in this story? It’s absolutely true that there are declining churches here in the mountains of East Tennessee, especially during COVID-tide. That’s an important story. The problem is that there are also growing churches in the region (yes, including my own Orthodox parish, which has grown at least 25% in the past three years) and that’s a detail that makes this story more complex. Here is the overture:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — It's Sunday morning and a small group sits around a fire pit in a community garden under the limbs of an expansive box elder tree. Church is about to start. And it's cold.

"God our Father, we are just so thankful for this time that we have to share this morning," says Pastor Chris Battle, a big man with a pipe clenched in his generous smile. "And we really thank you for fire that keeps us warm even as we sit up under this tree. We just pray that you would bless our time together."

Three years ago, Battle walked away from more than three decades leading Black Baptist churches and turned his attention to Battlefield Farm & Gardens in Knoxville. They grow vegetables and sell them at a farmer's market. They also collect unsold produce from around the city and deliver it to people in public housing once a week.

Battle says he left because traditional church was not connecting with people. He felt they were turned off by the sermons, the pitches for money, the Sunday-morning formality of it all.

This brings us to the first of two thesis statements describing the big picture:

American Christianity is in the midst of an identity crisis. Attendance is in steep decline, especially among millennials and Gen Z who say traditional church doesn't speak to their realities.


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Question for journalists to mull: What will America's religious life look like in 50 years?

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Question for journalists to mull: What will America's religious life look like in 50 years?

Scribes in the U.S. press snapped to attention last year when the Gallup Poll announced that as of 2020 less than half of Americans held religious memberships for the first time in its eight decades of asking the question. Only 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, mosque or other house of worship, a dramatic loss from the 70% as recently as 1999.

Now comes the Pew Research Center with a related pulse-pounder issued last week.

Pew figures that currently 64% of Americans (including children) identify as Christians in some sense, compared with 6% for other religions and a hefty 30% for “nones” and “nothing in particulars” — those without religious affiliation. Then we’re told that 50 years from now the Christian percentage may well fall to a modest 54% or even to a remarkable 35% in the worst-case scenario, while the non-religious population rises to somewhere between 34% and a slim majority of 52%.

Understandably, the Pew numbers became spot news for, among others, CBS, National Public Radio, the Washington Examiner and Washington Post, both newspapers in faith-focused Salt Lake City, USA Today, Britain’s The Guardian and a host of religious outlets.

This remains a good spot story for media that haven’t yet reported Pew’s basics. But even media that have reported the topline numbers could return to the theme with illustrative anecdotes and reactions from area religious leaders. And for sure journalists and religious analysts will want to give the full report some careful thought.

Pew emphasizes that its numbers are only “possibilities,” not “predictions of what will happen,” and comments that such a future would have “far-reaching consequences for politics, family life and civil society.” For example, also consider the multiple social science surveys that associate religious involvement with psychological and medical well-being and positive life outcomes for youths. Also, there is the impact of religious charity, not only effective huge organizations but private person-to-person interactions. Also, religions strengthen community in our “Bowling Alone” culture.

Pew calculated four future scenarios based largely upon the rates at which Americans may switch in or out of Christian identification and in or out of religious “none” status.


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Gen Z and trends in religious faith and practice: Looking at 2021 and beyond

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Gen Z and trends in religious faith and practice: Looking at 2021 and beyond

It’s been nearly two years since I’ve written a post about the precarious religious position of Generation Z (those born after 1995), and with data from late 2021 available it seems like a prime opportunity to update what we know about their religious inclinations.

Because almost all surveys only contact adult Americans (18+), we can’t get a full picture of the entirety of Gen Z, but just the oldest members of this generation. Thus, here I am analyzing those between the ages of 18 and 25 years old.

Let’s start broadly, comparing the religious composition of different generations beginning with the Silent Generation (who were born between 1925 and 1945).

In this generation, half of all respondents indicated that they were Protestant, while 22% said that they were Catholic. Just 8% of the Silent Generation say that they were atheists or agnostics and nearly the same share describe their religion as “nothing in particular” (10%). In sum, the oldest Americans are 72% Christian and 18% none.

Now, for Generation Z things are much different.

Just 22 % of the youngest adults describe themselves as Protestant — a more than 50% decline from the Silents. Catholics make up 14% of Gen Z, an eight percentage-point dip from the Silent Generation.

Of course, the share of nones is much larger. Seventeen percent of young people describe their religion as atheist or agnostic, and 31% say that they are attached to no religion in particular. Taken together, 36% of Gen Z are Christians, while 48% are nones.

For journalists, there is the news hook: This is the first generation in history in which the nones clearly outnumber the Christians.


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Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics

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Bravo! The New York Times reports that evangelicals are divided, not united on politics

If you stop and think about it, the latest New York Times feature about those dreaded White evangelicals includes a few signs of progress.

The good news is that the story focuses on the many ways White American evangelicals are divided, these days. That’s progress, since it undercuts the dominant news narrative of the years since 2016. You know the one: That White evangelicals from sea to shining sea just love Donald Trump and that’s that.

The truth was always more complex than that, but many blue-checkmark experts on Twitter really needed someone to blame for Trump. White evangelicals were the answer, of course, since it would have required a great deal of introspection to blame the Democratic Party for nominating Hillary Clinton — perhaps the only opponent that scared millions of depressed Americans more than Trump.

But back to the key truth in this Times report — which is that White evangelicals are divided, which is true, and that is certainly not the same thing as the myth of monolithic unity. For background, see this 2018 post: “Complex realities hidden in '81 percent of evangelicals' love Trump myth.”

At the heart of this story is a character that will be familiar to some news consumers — a conservative religious leader whose beliefs would normally cause heart attacks in blue-zip-code newsrooms, but this leader is shown to deserve sympathy because believers who are much worse are attacking him/her. (The irony in this case is that this particular pastor seems very familiar to me since he appears to represent the evangelicalism in which I was raised and that I greatly respect.)

The headline: “As a ‘Seismic Shift’ Fractures Evangelicals, an Arkansas Pastor Leaves Home.” Here’s the overture:

FORT SMITH, Ark. — In the fall of 2020, Kevin Thompson delivered a sermon about the gentleness of God. At one point, he drew a quick contrast between a loving, accessible God and remote, inaccessible celebrities. Speaking without notes, his Bible in his hand, he reached for a few easy examples: Oprah, Jay-Z, Tom Hanks.

Mr. Thompson could not tell how his sermon was received. The church he led had only recently returned to meeting in person. Attendance was sparse, and it was hard to appreciate if his jokes were landing, or if his congregation — with family groups spaced three seats apart, and others watching online — remained engaged.

So he was caught off guard when two church members expressed alarm about the passing reference to Mr. Hanks.


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Updates in the journalism style bible: Appropriate 'cult' advice and other tweaks

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Updates in the journalism style bible: Appropriate 'cult' advice and other tweaks

If you know anything about the nuts and bolts of reporting and editing, then you know that the Associated Press Stylebook is the bible — that’s with a lower-case “b” — of journalism.

It’s also a great place to chart tensions inside the news business. Consider, for example, the decades of debate about “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” as opposed to “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion rights.” Will the next major revision of the AP manual need to include an updated definition for the suddenly controversial word “woman”?

Our GetReligion patriarch, Richard Ostling, recently sent me an interestingly list of some of the religion-beat terms in the latest revisions to this AP bible. He served as a consultant on that revision project and, thus, doesn’t want to make any comments about the results. Here is one of the updates that is sure to lead to newsroom discussions:

cult (new)

A loaded term to be used with caution.

Yes, indeed — proceed with caution. I totally agree that this is a “loaded term” that journalists should avoid whenever possible.

The problem, however, is that this is a term that religious leaders, activists and even scholars are going to use every now and then and it will be hard to avoid the term when it is used in important direct quotations. Thus, editors need to know the various ways that informed people use the word — the key is sociology vs. theology — so that these loaded quotes can be placed in context for readers. Then there are activists of various kinds who throw this term around like a verbal hand grenade.

Readers can tell, with a quick glance at the venerable Merriam-Webster dictionary, that this is a complicated subject. Here are several of the definitions:

cult

noun, often attributive …

Definition of cult

1: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious (see SPURIOUS sense 2) also : its body of adherents


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Texas couple survives journey through COVID hell, apparently without clergy help of any kind

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Texas couple survives journey through COVID hell, apparently without clergy help of any kind

One of my closest friends is a veteran doctor in a town deep in the Bible Belt. I’ve had lots of conversations with him about this experiences during the coronavirus pandemic. He has had COVID and so have I.

One common theme in our conversations has been a sense of mystery that medical professionals, from the beginning, have had about this evolving disease. They understand why COVID hits some people hard, especially older patients and people who, for various reasons, have respiratory problems. The mystery is why this disease strikes with deadly force in some cases — but clearly not all — involving young, healthy adults. And why does COVID attack some hearts and not others?

Readers will collide with some of these mysteries while reading a stunning Washington Post story about a family’s 139-day hospital drama that has received quite a bit of attention in social media and the mainstream press. The headline: “Chris Crouch was anti-vaccine. Now his pregnant wife had covid, and he faced a terrible choice.” Here is the overture:

KINGWOOD, Tex. — Chris Crouch had had low expectations for online dating. He was a police officer in his 30s, almost a year out from a painful divorce, and, he said, the women he had met had been “playing games” in ways that left him dispirited.

Then he met her.

Diana Garcia Martinez was 24 and a busy single mom whose sister had set up her profile without her knowing. She was intelligent, empathetic and upfront, and by the third date, he was in love. “It was just a feeling. … I felt like I knew her my whole life,” he recalled explaining to his cousin Gilbert, knowing it was a cliche but also true.

What role does religious faith play in this story? That’s a complex question.

I mean, we are talking about people in Texas. No one should be surprised by frequent Godtalk and references to prayer.

However, as the son of a Texas Baptist pastor (who spend the last decade of his ministry as a hospital chaplain), I was very surprised that the word “church” is missing. Did this couple really go through this medical hell alone, without a pastor or friends who share a pew with them? Maybe this couple is in the “Nothing in particular” demographic, but I have my doubts.


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Podcast: Religion News Service offers new story about an old trend called 'Sheilaism'

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Podcast: Religion News Service offers new story about an old trend called 'Sheilaism'

One of the problems with covering the same religion-beat topics for multiple decades (in other words, I am old) is that you tend to see many “new” news stories as pieces of puzzles that are actually quite old.

Consider, for example, the Religion News Service feature that was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

The headline on that RNS piece stated: “A 300-year-old church hopes to connect with spiritual but not religious neighbors.” Here is the overture from this story by religion-beat veteran Bob Smietana:

For three centuries, Trinity Episcopal Church has tried to meet the spiritual needs of the small community of Southport, Connecticut, about an hour and a half outside of New York.

As more and more of the church’s neighbors ditch organized religion but not faith, leaders at Trinity hope a new initiative will help them find meaning and purpose in life even if they never attend a Sunday service.

The church recently launched the Trinity Spiritual Center, which offers lectures, classes on meditation and contemplation, and a sense of community during a trying time, said the Rev. Margaret Hodgkins, the rector of Trinity Church.

We will come back to some of the specifics of this piece — details that link it to several trends that are (#SIGH) decades old in the aging, shrinking world of mainline Protestantism and, to a lesser extent, parts of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, liberal Judaism and other established religious “brands.”

The Big Idea in this RNS piece is that an Episcopal parish that has some resources to spend has decided to help spiritual seekers find their own paths to the top of Mt. Eternity without proclaiming any of those narrow, tacky doctrines linked to 2,000 years of Christian faith and practice. You know, all that stuff about the Resurrection of Jesus, eternal salvation or moral theology (warning: veiled reference to the “tmatt trio”).

In other words, the goal appears to be a sort-of parish in honor of St. Sheila, the patron saint of “Sheilaism.”


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