Why are young people losing religion? Are they becoming atheist or something else? Is mixing politics & religion to blame? Dr Matthew Bowman answers these questions. Check out our conversation…
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Why Institutional Religion is Losing Influence
Interview
GT 00:38 This gets into something else we talked about last week that I’d like to dive into because institutional religion, maybe I’ll say it that way, is losing influence. And one of the things that you said was–I will term it fundamentalist religion, where they ask you to do hard things. They ask you not to drink. They ask you to pay tithing. They ask you to go to church and to the Relief Society and Sunday school and everything. And I’m putting that in an LDS context. But it applies to evangelicalism as well. Pentecostals don’t drink. Muslims don’t drink. And it’s when a religion becomes less strict, it seems to lose adherents. But when it becomes more strict, it demands more of its members, that can be really attractive too. Can you talk about that? Is that something–I mean, the LDS Church is wrestling with this right now. And not just the LDS Church, Catholicism, Protestantism, everybody’s dealing with this.
Matthew 01:53 Yeah, absolutely. And this is really interesting and it’s also a deeply American question. Because, as I said earlier, the way American religious life is structured, we take it for granted in the US, that this is how religion works. There are different churches, different denominations, different institutions of religion, that compete for members. You get to pick the one you want to go to. That’s actually, historically speaking, a very bizarre way to do religion in global culture. Historically, this has never been the norm. But it’s something that the US created with de-institutionalization. The disestablishment of religion with the First Amendment and the gradual application of the First Amendment to the states. We have created what some scholars call a religious marketplace. So, the idea here is, and it’s something that comes from a really famous article by a sociologist of religion named Laurence Iannaccone, called “Why Strict Churches Are Strong.” He observed that many of churches with what he called high tension with the society around them in the United States, that is, churches that asked their members to act in ways contrary to broader American cultural norms, tended to be retaining membership and even growing. And he was talking here about some of these conservative evangelical churches, but also about the LDS Church. Whereas religions with low cultural tension, religions that did not ask their members to do anything counter to broader American norms, tended to be losing members.
GT 01:53 When was this written?
Matthew 01:55 This was written the 70s. And he’s looking at the 70s, 80s and 90s, in particular.
GT 03:47 Okay, so we’ve caught up with the other churches.
Matthew 03:49 Well, yeah, and that’s what many sociologists have observed. And this is why there’s some pushback against his idea, is that this idea seemed to be true in the waning decades of the 20th century. Now, it appears that some of that trend, that trend of losing membership, which is really, really afflicting, especially mainline Protestant churches, that is to say these more liberal Protestant churches that accommodated themselves to American culture. That is, the ones that largely abandoned Sabbatarianism, the idea that you do not engage in economic commerce on the Sabbath. Mainline Protestant churches abandoned that a long time ago. Mainline churches that were advocates for temperance, like not drinking alcohol, gave that up as well. These churches were just hemorrhaging members in the late 20th century. Whereas churches that held to Sabbatarianism, that held to temperance, that held to strict sexual norms, whereas many mainline churches were abandoning strict sexual norms after the sexual revolution in the 1960s and 70s–churches that held to those things were retaining members and even growing.
Matthew 04:58 So, Iannaccone thought this was very interesting. His theory, the theory that he offered as to why this was happening was that that high demand brought with it rewards, as well. And we might have a conversation about what those rewards are. One was a strong sense of community, that these strict churches maintained a really strong social network, this social network that meant that members took care of each other, and that there was a safety net, essentially, for economic catastrophe. The members of the churches would care for each other. They had friends. They had a community. They had companions. Whereas he noted, these mainline churches, as they became less and less high demand of their members time as much as anything else, that community dissipated somewhat. That may be one reward. Another reward would be what other sociologists of religion, I think you hear of Starcon Bambridge, particularly, called them supernatural compensators. That is, those strict churches were also the churches that held to talking about things like faith healing, prophecy, these ideas that God could touch your lives in a way that mainline churches were less and less talking about.
GT 05:02 Miracles, that kind of thing.
Matthew 05:28 Miracles, right, precisely. And so now there is, as I say, there’s a lot of questions about this thesis. One is, does this apply outside the United States? I mean, I think it’s such a common thing for people in the United States to assume that their ways of thinking about religion are universal, whereas religion functions in very, very different ways in Europe, in Latin America, in India. And is this idea mappable onto, say, Indian society, or Egyptian society where that marketplace of religion idea, that notion, that there’s a lot of denominations that compete for members, doesn’t really exist in the same way in many other societies around the world?
GT 07:02 Right. I mean, especially Arab countries, if you’re a Christian, and if you’re doing any sort of missionary work, you’re going to jail.
Matthew 07:10 Yeah, and, even a church, say, like England, where there actually is an established church. There’s a church that the government supports, with tax dollars.
GT 07:20 Still?
Matthew 07:21 Yes.
GT 07:22 The Anglican Church is supported by the government?
Matthew 07:23 King Charles is the head of the Anglican Church. And Germany, actually, in the same way, in Germany, there are established churches in Germany as well. And I notice, your astonishment at that, I think, demonstrates that disconnection.
GT 07:36 Well, I mean I knew that was the case before, but I was like, still?
Matthew 07:40 Yeah, it actually absolutely still is the case. So religion functions in very different ways in other communities. And this phenomenon, then, might not map on to other non-American societies in the same way. Another issue with that thesis is what we mentioned a moment ago, which is that it appears that for many of these churches, this trend of membership is beginning to catch up with even stricter churches, as well, that this disaffiliation from institutional religion is increasingly happening within those stricter churches.
GT 08:17 But instead of going to atheism, they’re just going to astrology and tarot cards and things like that right?
Matthew 08:25 Yeah, I want to say that is true nationwide. The majority of the Nones are still interested in various spiritual practices.
GT 08:36 Spiritual, but not religious.
Matthew 08:36 Yes, exactly. And that’s such an interesting phrase. People who say that phrase, what they’re thinking in their brains, is that religion is something institutions do. Spiritual it’s something that individuals do. And their redefinition of those terms, I think, is really fascinating. Because you will find, I mean, there are many people, I think, especially outside the US for whom those terms are synonymous, they mean the same thing. But, in the US, we have spiritual means individual, religious means institutional. There may be many–there are actually more people in the US who say I am religious and spiritual, than who see it as a dichotomy in that way. That spiritual but not religious group is a growing, growing minority.
GT 09:20 Well, and so I know I’m putting you in the case to counsel religious leaders here, but I’m going to put you there anyway. {Rick chuckling} What can religious leaders: LDS, Protestant, Evangelical, Catholic, whatever, do to not only to create more high demand if that’s what it takes, but it also seems like politics, especially here in the United States. I don’t know about Europe and other places, but that’s what has really forced a lot of people to say, “I don’t want to be Catholic. I don’t want to be Mormon. I support abortion rights, gay rights, things like that.” And so it’s the infusion of religion and politics that it’s forcing a lot of people into the Nones, I guess I should say.
Matthew 10:17 Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. And one caveat, though, before we start, I think religion and politics in the United States have always been deeply intertwined. There’s really no way to separate them. And so, I don’t know that saying that church should not mix with state, religion should stay out of politics. I think that that’s just a fundamental impossibility. Like, the Ten Commandments bars murder. So, does that mean we should not make laws against murder because religion teaches it? But I think what people often mean when we say that is exactly what you’re saying, which is to say, the extent to which a certain faction of Christians in the United States have come to identify traditional sexual teachings as being fundamental to what it is to be religious.
Turning Youth off of Politics & Religion
Interview
Matthew 11:12 To be precise, that is what has happened is that a number of Christians in the US have come to really identify the word Christian, with more or less Victorian sexual norms, and have staked, have linked the idea of Christianity and Victorian sexual norms so closely, that ironically, many people on the left have actually bought into that. Many people on the left have said, “Yeah, I guess being Christian means that I’m against same-sex marriage, and I’m against abortion, so I’m not going to be a Christian anymore.” Which, I think is ironic, because I think these people have already accepted what sexually conservative Christians have told them is right and said, “Yes, you’re right. So I’m just going to walk away,” rather than say, “Are there other ways of imagining what Christianity is? Is this link that you’ve made actually real?” It is undeniably true, I think, there’s a great amount of statistical data on this. And I would recommend the work of David Campbell on this an LDS sociologist at Notre Dame, his book, American Grace, I think, dives into the ways in which young people, especially young people who are identifying increasingly as Nones, cite issues of sexuality.
GT 12:30 Well, and it’s also interesting to me, because I’m going to say, talk about the Christian Coalition, the religious right. I mean, they’re highly–and even the LDS Church has integrated itself with evangelicalism and evangelical politics. But when you look at Jewish religion, some Jesuit scholars, are a little bit more accepting of abortion, of gay marriage, that sort of a thing. They don’t have the same megaphone as the Jerry Falwell’s, and people like that, that are just as religious. But when people think, “Oh, I’m religious, therefore, I’m against gay marriage. I’m against abortion rights. I’m against all this.” And so, they throw the baby out with the bathwater, and they don’t go to these liberal Jews, Catholics, even Mormons. I mean, yeah, the leadership in the LDS Church seems more accepting of right-wing conservative views than left-wing liberal views. Would you agree with that?
Matthew 13:46 I mean, I think I recoil at the idea of saying like– of grouping religions on the left/right axis, because what that does is that states that the left/right axis, that’s our fundamental.
GT 13:59 But that’s what a lot of people are reacting to, aren’t they?
Matthew 14:01 I think that’s what many people think. And I wish it weren’t that way. I think, though, you’re absolutely correct to say one of the great successes of the religious right in America is its public relations, its ability to stand up and say, “This is Christianity. Christianity means you are against same-sex marriage. If you’re not against same-sex marriage, you’re not a Christian.”
GT 14:25 Is that coming back to bite them in the butt now?
Matthew 14:27 Oh, I think it is, young people, particularly.
GT 14:28 Because people are like, oh, I ‘ve got to leave my church because I disagree with that.
Matthew 14:32 I think that’s exactly right. I think it has contributed to this exodus of young people and this tendency, on the part of young people, to hear religion or hear the word Christian and simply say, that means anti-homosexuality, and not look at the many, many other resources that historic Christianity has within it to do and offer other things. You said a moment ago, who am I to counsel the leaders of American religions, and particularly the leaders of my own church?
GT 15:11 You’ll get a call from your stake president, right?
Matthew 15:12 No, I’m just a dude. I’m nobody here. And it’s a tough question, because in one sense, what we’re talking about here are really macro, large-scale cultural trends that I don’t know, that are not the cause of any one group of people sitting around a table and saying, we’re going to do this now. Culture doesn’t work like that. If 25 people agree to do something, even if they’re the leaders of religions, it’s really, really hard to push cultural trends in one way or another. I think one valuable thing, though, is to make well-informed decisions. One of those well-informed decisions, one thing I think, that is valuable to know is what we’ve been talking about here, which is to say that all the surveys show that the Nones, the spiritual, but not religious people, and the people who say they’re no religion in particular, they’re not atheists. They are not simply saying, “Oh, religion is dumb, and I don’t want any part of it.” Many of them hunger for the sorts of things that religion does. They are interested in this large-scale meaning-making, a mechanism for explaining the cosmos, for the purpose of human existence, for ordering your universe. And that, if you think about it, that’s what things like astrology and tarot, and all of these other practices that are just taking off on Tik Tok and Instagram [are doing,] and they’re attracting so many young people. There’s one survey that I’ve seen by a group called the Springtide Institute, which studies young people and religion. And I have read, recently, in their work that 70% of LDS members under the age of 29, say they’re familiar with the tarot, 70%!
GT 17:06 Wow.
Matthew 17:07 Yeah, which I think shows how rapidly these sorts of things are spreading. What these things are, what is–
GT 17:14 Isn’t that just the new Ouija board from the 80s?
Matthew 17:17 Yeah, and that’s a great analogy. Because all of these things are tools. They are religious tools for trying to access spiritual power, spiritual knowledge, the sense that the universe is fundamentally not just blind, chaotic atoms bumping into each other, that there is meaning here. And young people want that. Everybody wants that meaning. The tools by which we see that meaning, that’s the real question. And why is it the young people are flocking to tarot, and to energy work and to this sort of stuff? It’s because the way that they are encountering it is consonant with how they understand what the society they want to live in is like, that is to say, fundamentally driven individually, driven by their peers, their friends, the people that we’re seeing on social media. It doesn’t have associations for them that institutional religion increasingly does, which the success of their religious right. And that’s where they’re going, in that direction.
Matthew 18:19 Now, moving the stuff around, as I said before, this is not the work that any group of 25 or 30 people is going to be able to do, even though those people are in charge of major institutions. But it is to say, I would hope, that the leaders of these major institutions might be aware of this, and not simply say that sacrament meeting is dropping. The people who aren’t coming to sacrament meeting must be atheists and must be against religion now. Because I don’t think they are. I think they’re still they’re still hungering for that sort of thing.
Double-Down or Liberalize?
Interview
GT 18:52 It leads to the question then, and once again, it goes, do they go softer or do they go harder? I’ll just put it in the LDS Church [terms] since this is an LDS podcast. Does the LDS Church become less strident about abortion rights, gay marriage, that sort of a thing, in order to attract these people back in? Or do they become more fundamentalist? We cracked down at BYU against intellectuals. I mean, Boyd K. Packer famously had that talk, it was in 1993, about the biggest threats to the Church are feminists, intellectuals and gays. Do they [the Church] become more fundamentalist, or do they become more accepting in order to grow? Do you have an answer for that?
Matthew 19:41 That’s a tough one. It’s a really tough one. Because, I think the premise of that question is that there’s two spectrums. I’ll put it this way. Say that the Church embraces the sexual revolution, which is not something I think will happen and for good reasons, but say that it did. The Unitarians did that.
GT 20:10 The Community of Christ did that.
Matthew 20:12 Yeah. And are they growing?
GT 20:15 No. They’re suffering the same problems we are.
Matthew 20:19 Yeah. And so this is to say, I think that this is not simply—now the Community of Christ, for instance, they’re attracting a lot of, I think, disaffected LDS folk, who are interested in culture war issues. And so, there’s that impetus.
GT 20:38 But the real growth is in places like Africa where they’re against gay rights and things like that.
Matthew 20:43 And, I think, have this high sense, this really high sense of supernatural power.
GT 20:52 And patriarchy.
Matthew 20:54 Which is to say, yeah, Americans, now this is what I said a moment ago, that I’m uncomfortable saying left/right axis and you have to pick somewhere on the left/right axis.
GT 21:02 I’m sorry. I keep forcing you into it.
Matthew 21:02 And if you pick the left and liberals and stuff like that, then you’re going to attract liberal people. But I think one of the things that’s happening with religion worldwide is not on that axis at all. It’s about what I said a moment ago, which is to say spiritual hungers, and the desire for power and ordering the universes. How do we get access to that? Where do we find meaning? What gives us—the theologian Paul Tillich said, religion is ultimately about ultimate meanings, fundamental modes of organizing our universes. Certainly, I think, issues of sexuality and so on, they are there, but they are downstream from that basic idea of what fundamentally gives you meaning in life? How do you understand what the meaning of your existence is? How do you gain power to heal and solve your problems? Where do you turn for that sort of thing? And what’s interesting is, and I think you used the word fundamentalist a moment ago, which is another term we could dissect, I think. But in the US, at least, groups that tend to hold very strictly to—and we said this a moment ago, to issues of doctrine.
GT 22:15 Biblical literalism.
Matthew 22:17 These are also the groups that talk the most about miracles, and that talk about that supernatural power and supernatural efficacy. The question I think, is, and it’s an interesting one. Especially, you will see, I think, many feminist leaning and queer young people in the church are flocking to things like paganism and Wicca magic.
GT 22:17 Because it’s miracles.
Matthew 22:21 What’s the difference between that and priesthood blessings? It’s filling the same kind of hungers.
GT 22:49 Hmmm.
Matthew 22:49 So I think what we’re seeing here is, young people still want this stuff. They’re looking. I don’t mean for this to sound insolent when I say, what’s the difference between Wiccan magic and priesthood blessings? I mean, obviously, to believers, there’s a vast difference there. But as a sociologist of religion, which I am not, but if I were a sociologist, I would say, what we’re seeing here is people looking for the same sorts of things: the difference between a patriarchal blessing and astrology. Now again, there’s a vast difference there, perhaps. But fundamentally, these are ways in which people look for direction and look for explanatory mechanisms and look for ordering of their universes.
Matthew 23:39 There’s a lot of different vectors here that are intersecting at the same time. All this is to say, I don’t think it’s quite as easy as saying, do they move left on abortion, and then people are going to come to church again, right? There’s a lot of factors here and a lot of cultural trends, and politics is one of them. But I think, absolutely, consumerism in America is another. Consumerism/capitalism has taught us. I used that metaphor earlier, a metaphor of the marketplace of religion. That’s a metaphor. And that’s saying, we think about religion the same way we think about shopping for breakfast cereals. You pick the one you like the best. And the fact that we do that in America, we say, well it’s a question of which church fits my tastes? We’ve been trained to think about that. And all the churches in the United States have to grapple with the fact that they live in a society in which we think that way. This is why churches worry about websites and put up billboards. If you think about it in a deep level, it’s bizarre that religions do that. But they do it because they’ve been taught and disciplined by capitalism to think of themselves as existing in the marketplace and having to appeal to people.
Matthew 24:55 We see this, I think, in the missionary program of the LDS Church. Missionaries are taught sales techniques. They function explicitly. Alvin Dyer, the great young mission leader of the mid-20th century was a salesman, and he explicitly spoke about mission work as a sales job. Because he had been disciplined in capitalism in that way. So, just as with the politics issue, and the issue of gender and all of that, it’s not as easy as just saying, “Well do something different.” It’s about digging into this deeply, and thinking, “Why is it that we assume that religion has to work in this way?” It’s because we live in a society that’s already been disciplined into a left/right political access. We live in a society that’s already been disciplined in capitalist and consumerist ways. And I wonder if it would be valuable for leaders of these organizations to realize that and to think–not simply think, “Where are we going to stand on this spectrum?” But to think, “Why is it we’re standing on the spectrum in the first place? How can I talk about my religion in such a way that makes us all aware that this is a spectrum that exists?” And instead of just having the same fights over and over and over again, maybe we should think about how we can try to transcend that spectrum?
GT 26:18 Well, this whole idea about miracles, I think, is really fascinating, because I look at the Denver Snuffer followers. Those are the people who are seeking the spiritual gifts the most. ulie Rowe, Chad Daybell, I mean, I don’t want to put them on the same plane. But, once again, they’re seeking these spiritual gifts. And I look at Pentecostalism, speaking in tongues, those can be really popular. I attended a Bickertonite service in Florida in January with Steve Pynakker. I don’t know what they call their service, but it sure felt like sacrament meeting to me. The theme of sacrament meeting was miracles. They all got up and talked about the miracles in this life and miracle healings and everything. And, Patrick McKay, he’s an apostle in a restoration group, and he has a book, Healing the Breach. The whole book is about miracles. And so, I can understand how that is attractive to a lot of people. It’s attractive to me, for heaven’s sake. Maybe I keep asking this question, and maybe you’re just telling me that you don’t really have an answer. {Rick chuckling} And that’s fine. But do you see if the LDS Church, Catholic Church emphasize these miracles, would that bring more people back to the pews?
Matthew 27:55 Maybe, and here’s the thing. Again, I think we have to think in a global perspective. There’s a lot of miracles happening in the LDS Church in Africa.
GT 28:04 Oh, absolutely.
Matthew 28:05 There are healings. There is vision. There’s prophecy, all sorts of stuff like that. I think the interesting question here is, again, about the evolution of American culture, and the emergence of science as a way of thinking and a way of talking, which makes miracles increasingly implausible. That’s one factor here. There’s a lot of people in the United States…
GT 28:29 Do we need more three Nephite stories?
Matthew 28:31 Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of people who will say that’s silly. And Joseph Smith seeing angels, he’s a con man.
GT 28:38 Cain on the road?
Matthew 28:39 He’s a con man. People will say Joseph Smith was a con man, because those things don’t happen. We don’t see angels. Another factor in this is ideas about respectability. It is likely true that the LDS Church began downplaying and discouraging speaking in tongues in the early 20th century, because by that point, it had become deeply associated with Pentecostalism. And Pentecostalism…
GT 29:06 We were the ones that started it.
Matthew 29:08 Pentecostalism.
GT 29:10 They took it over!
Matthew 29:10 [Pentecostalism] was seen as very lower class, very uneducated. The early Pentecostalism was quite racially inclusive. And they had female preachers. All of these things which were perceived by middle class, upper class white Americans as disrespectful and this is a time when the LDS Church is very much seeking respectability.
GT 29:34 They were never classified as a so-called cult, though, because they worship the right Jesus, even though they were just a bunch of knuckleheads.
Matthew 29:41 There are some that are. One-ness Pentecostalism denies the trinity and many evangelicals really do not like them. Pentecostals and evangelicals have a very troubled history. But this is to say that the reasons why miracles, tongue speaking, glossolalia, as it’s called, all of these things began to fade in the LDS Church, at least publicly in the LDS Church, that is not a part of public worship, not something publicly discussed, I think has a lot to do with the rise of the authority of science in American culture, and respectability politics, to use an academic phrase, which is that people want to do things that they think people higher up the social ladder will like and respect. So, the LDS Church adopts respectability in the mid-20th century. It’s the respectability of the white, American, middle and upper class that they adopt. That does not include speaking in tongues. That does not include faith healing in sacrament services, all this sort of stuff. So that stuff falls out of American LDS culture. But as I say, it’s still very much a part of LDS culture in the Global South, because the same respectability politics aren’t at work down there, as they are in the Global North.
GT 31:05 Fascinating. Well, I’ll give you one last thing here. What advice can you give to religious leaders to get more butts in the seats? {both chuckling}
Matthew 31:14 Oh, you’re asking me that again? (Chuckling) As I say, I think I would encourage them to think broadly about the processes that are happening to American institutional religion in the 20th century, to avoid simplistic answers, to avoid saying that people are leaving the Church because of thing X, or thing Y or Z. It’s lots of things. And to understand, in a sense, that this is a broad, multi-Vaillant cultural trend, that I, frankly, don’t know that any single religious institution has it within itself to reverse. Because it’s not happening within a single religious institution. It’s happening to all religious institutions. And so, we have to think really deeply about how American culture functions, how American societies function, and make decisions based on that.
GT 32:14 All right.
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