THE QUESTION:

“Would America Be Better Off Without Religion?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

That provocative big-picture question is the title of an article by grad student Casey Chalk, which we’ll turn to after some ground-clearing. Atheism (or its cousin, agnosticism) isn’t what it used to be. Folks who didn’t believe in God used to mostly downplay it while polite public debate engaged certain thinkers like Bertrand Russell (“Why I Am Not a Christian,” 1927) or J. L. Mackie (“The Miracle of Theism,” 1982).

In recent times, faith has been thrown more on the defensive, not just by skepticism from without but damaging developments from within — Horrid scandals of sexual predators among Christian clergy. Angry Protestant splits over whether to shed traditional sexual morals. Terrorism by Muslim sects and certain Buddhists and Hindus.

Well-publicized “new atheists” have emerged more aggressively to attack believers as not merely mistaken but downright stupid, even evil.

Take James Haught, who wrote for the Freedom From Religion Foundation that because people are getting smarter they “perceive that magical dogmas are a bunch of hooey — just fairy tales with no factual reality…. Right before our eyes, supernatural faith is dying in America.” (Actually, there’s a slide, not death.)  Notably, Haught was West Virginia’s most important journalist, as longtime editor of the Charleston Gazette.

Such bludgeoning can have limited persuasive power except among those already convinced. But Max Boot offered an interesting new anti-faith line this year in a Washington Post column (behind a pay wall). This Soviet immigrant is a public intellectual to reckon with, as a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and acclaimed author (also conservative Never-Trumper on cable newscasts).

“Too much religion is bad for a country,” Boot contended. He made that case by compiling nation-by-nation statistics on e.g. per capita gross domestic product, unemployment, poverty, homicide, life expectancy, infant mortality, education and political liberties.

By those criteria “less religious nations are much better off,” he said, citing in particular Japan and de-Christianized Australia, Belgium, Britain and Sweden. Meanwhile, he said, devout countries lack such advantages, listing India (mostly Hindu), Nigeria (Christian and Muslim), Pakistan (Muslim), the Philippines (Catholic) and Thailand (Buddhist).

The United States remains an exception, democratic and prosperous yet much more religious than affluent western Europe, which has floated away from its Christian heritage.

Thus the question: Would America be even better off if it followed the Europeans’ secular path?

Boot’s challenge is taken up at ThePublicDiscourse.com by Chalk, a University of Virginia alumnus studying theology at Christendom College, a conservative Catholic school. He thinks Boot’s measurements for nations’ well-being are too narrow: “Being well-educated and living longer may not be so great if one lives depressed and suffering from compulsive addictions, then dies alone and forgotten.” Religious faith is a major reason people can escape such sad fates, he says.

Wealthy and secularized countries face “unprecedented levels of social isolation, depression and loneliness,” Chalk writes, noting Japan’s soaring suicide rate while religious nations are among the least suicidal — for instance the Philippines (ranking 159thamong the nations) or Pakistan (169th). The government in secular Britain was alarmed when a survey found 14 percent of people “often or always” feel lonely. 

Continue reading “Would America Be Better Off Without Religion?”, by Richard Ostling.