We’ve talked about why people don’t identify as religious, but is it true that Conservative Churches grow at a faster rate? Is it true churches in the Global South are growing? Why is that? Dr Ryan Cragun answers this conundrum. Check oiut our conversation…
Don’t miss our other conversations with Ryan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPiSAV7aMxI&list=PLLhI8GMw9sJ5TNY30k0M5dZa_cM1S9bk8
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Rise of the Nones
GT 00:36 You know, we talked a little bit about the rise of the “nones.” I recently talked to Matt Bowman, and one of the things that he said, and I think I asked you this SSSR. But I want to ask it again. He said that there’s a rise in people who are into astrology, and New Age religion. Do you agree with that?
Ryan 01:01 No, not at all. Sorry, Matt. I love Matt. He’s a nice guy. I think he’s wrong on that. There’s a great sociologist named Steve Bruce. He’s from the UK. And he wrote, the worst-titled book I think I’ve ever read. It’s The Westernization of the Easternization of the West. I think that’s roughly what the title is, which is just terrible. But, basically, what he’s arguing is, we’ve got a lot of people. He’s using the UK, but we can use the US as a comparative case. In the UK, lots of people are leaving religion. They’re now above 50%. So, more than 50% of British people have no religious affiliations. It’s even higher in Scotland. But lots of people are leaving. And lots of people have then come out and said, “Oh, they’re all becoming spiritual. They’re turning to New Age spirituality.”
GT 01:52 Yeah, spiritual, but not religious.
Ryan 01:53 Yes, it’s that SBNR category, so spiritual, not religious. And
GT 01:57 That wouldn’t be in the “none” category, or would it?
Ryan 01:59 It would, actually.
GT 02:00 It would be.
Ryan 02:01 They would still be counted in the none category because they don’t have a religious affiliation. That’s all that that category means is I don’t have a religious affiliation. So, if you’re identifying as spiritual, that’s fine. What he did is he said, “Okay, well, what a lot of people are claiming is like, ‘oh, there’s like this innate sense that I have to have something.'” And so they leave religion, organized, formal religion, but then they find something else. So maybe it’s crystals. Or maybe it’s–who knows what it is?
GT 02:26 Tarot cards.
Ryan 02:27 Tarot cards, right, something like that. So they’re finding these things and they’re offsetting the religion with the more diffuse nonhierarchical Wicca, witchcraft, new age-y religions. So, he actually looked. He’s like, “Okay, how many people are doing yoga? And how many people are doing all these things?” The number of people who do it on a regular basis, let’s say, it’s crystals, or tarot, or astrology or something like that. It’s pretty flat. There hasn’t been this dramatic uptick that’s like, “Oh, I’m not a member of the Church of England anymore, therefore, I must practice Tarot.” It’s straight up, like, “I’m not a member of the Church of England anymore, and I’m nothing.”
Ryan 03:03 Those things, not really interesting. He then goes on and this is why the book is titled that way, to say that the vast majority of people who do yoga, do it for exercise, not because they’re now converts to this specific subset of Hinduism and they’re like, ‘I really believe all of the tenets of this.’ They’re like, ‘yoga is good exercise.’ So it’s the westernization of the easternization of the West. They’ve basically westernized all of these religious elements that have come to the west like meditation, mindfulness, yoga. All of those things, now, we just basically treat us health stuff. So, you’re doing things for your health. No one’s like, “Okay, I’m going to practice mindfulness, therefore, I’m a Buddhist, and therefore, I’m going to follow all of the teachings.” No one’s doing that. So even if there is like a little uptick in meditation, it’s not dramatic. And the vast majority people who are doing it, are doing it because it’s good for your health, not because they’re like, ‘I am now converting to some new age-y religion.’ We’re just not seeing that massive offset. What I don’t want to give the impression of, so I’m trying to be accurate here. It’s not that non-religious people don’t believe in some of these things. Some of them do, absolutely. Some of them believe in aliens. Some of them they believe in tarot. That’s true for all groups of people. We actually don’t see a huge difference between religious and non-religious people in their paranormal beliefs, which is surprising. Now, if you take the subset of atheists, that’s a very different group. They are much less likely to hold paranormal beliefs. But if we’re just looking at non-religious people, generally people who say they have no religious affiliation, they are about equally likely as people with a religious affiliation to hold paranormal beliefs. There’s just not a big difference there. But we’re not seeing a massive uptick. It’s not like everybody’s turning to spirituality. There’s no reason to believe that people are innately spiritual and that they have to have this. There’s no evidence to support that.
3rd Great Awakening
GT 04:51 Interesting. I’ve talked with some other people about spirituality and religious affiliation can rise and fall. The first Great Awakening was in the 1700s. Joseph Smith was part of the Second [Great Awakening.] I’ve asked if there’s been a third one from say 1940s, 1950s to 1980s. Would you think there’s a third? Would you call that a third great awakening?
Ryan 05:28 No. I probably wouldn’t. What happened…
GT 05:33 Because it seems like there was a rise in religious affiliation.
Ryan 05:38 So in my next book that’s coming out in October…[1]
GT 05:41 Oh, nice, so another interview.
Ryan 05:43 Probably. I’ll happy to do that.
Ryan 05:45 We’re looking at people who leave religion in the US. So, it’s me and Jesse Smith, University of Western Michigan, but we’re looking just generally. So, it’s not any specific religion, just religion, generally. But we talk about this specific time period 1940s through the 1980s, roughly, and what was going on. I mean, it’s fascinating in my mind. People seem to miss the clearly obvious thing that was happening during that period. It was the Cold War. Well, in the US, who were we fighting during the Cold War?
GT 06:17 The Soviets.
Ryan 06:18 The godless communists.
GT 06:20 Right.
Ryan 06:20 So, if they’re the godless, and I’m emphasizing this on purpose, the godless communists, who do we have to be? A lot of people don’t realize when we put Under God in the Pledge of Allegiance. That was in the 1950s. That wasn’t there when the Pledge of Allegiance was first created. When did we put, in God we trust, on our currency?
GT 06:43 In the 1950s. Eisenhower.
Ryan 06:44 Why did we do this? To make it so we were not the godless communists.
GT 06:51 Well, Eisenhower even joined a church because he became President.
Ryan 06:55 Yes. Right. We were constructing this identity in the US that opposed the godless communists. So we had a lot of emphasis on religion during that time period. We were pushing this, ‘we’re not them.’ And in order to not be them, we have to be religious and democratic. So, we push that rhetoric really hard, and then what happens? I gave this number earlier in the interview. In 1990, the Soviet Union collapses. It’s almost immediately after that, now people can say, because all the way through that period, I don’t know how old you are, Rick. I think you’re a little older than I am. But we’re probably close in age. I remember it well enough, but I don’t remember this kind of stuff happening. I grew up in a Mormon enclave in Utah. If you were let’s say, in 1970s. If you came out and said, “I’m an atheist.” Guess what the immediate next question was, “Were you also a communist?” Today, if somebody comes out as an atheist, is anybody then going to immediately say, “Are you a communist? ” That splits in 1990.
GT 07:56 Well, wait a minute, all the Birchers thought Eisenhower was a communist and he believed in God.
Ryan 08:03 Atheist usually gets thrown around. But that splits. So the attitudes towards communists, we still don’t love communists here in the US. But atheism is now not as widely, kind of, pilloried. People are like, whatever. You do you. It doesn’t matter. But people don’t immediately then assume that you’re a communist. So, it became much safer to be like, “You know what, I’m not religious,” and no one’s going, “Oh, You’re a communist.” Now, they’re just like, “I’m just not religious.” Everyone is like, okay, that’s fine, be not religious.
GT 08:32 So I want to make sure I understand this. So, I mean, you’re putting this in Cold War terms, which I think’s interesting. But wasn’t there a rise in religious affiliation? I mean, at least with the LDS Church, there sure was.
Ryan 08:47 I mean, there was growth, there was growth around the world and my first paper In Search of Religion actually tackles that. So the LDS Church, which is tricky, it grows at very specific times in economic development around the world. I probably should know more about your background. Did you serve a mission?
GT 09:10 I did.
Ryan 09:10 Yeah. Where do you serve?
GT 09:11 South Carolina.
Ryan 09:12 South Carolina, okay. In that very first paper, I should remember what year it was published, like 2011 or something, but it’s In Search of Religion. I’m looking at the human development index. This is the level of development of a country and growth rates. And I’m looking for Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists. For Mormons…
GT 09:31 Is that because they have good numbers, or the best numbers?
Ryan 09:33 They do have good numbers. And we also argued that there are three American originals that all proselytize. So, they do proselytize. The Catholic Church doesn’t really proselytize. So it’s trickier for some of those. But all three of them proselytize. So it makes it easy, and they care about their numbers. So, they report numbers. We can get access to them so we can use those. I’m comparing all three of them. And what you see is the LDS Church grows in countries where the HDI, which ranges from zero, like, no one can read, everybody’s dead, and it’s really bad, to one. I’m trying to remember all the numbers, I think it’s per capita GDP. I’m not going to remember all this, I should.
GT 09:56 HDI stands for?
Ryan 09:57 Human Development Index. So, it’s literacy rates, I remember that for sure. It’s life expectancy, that’s also in there. And I forget the third one. It’s three variables that can get combined. And one would be like, everybody can read. Everybody lives a really long time. And I think it’s per capita GDP, is really high. So, you have that range. The lowest countries, still today, are in like the 0.3 range, which means things are bad. A lot of people can’t read, life expectancy is short. There are lots of problems. Most of the highly developed countries, your Scandinavian countries, even the US, Australia, Japan, for instance, they’re all 0.9s. They’re above 0.9. And so what we saw in there is Mormons have the highest growth somewhere between like 0.6 and 0.8. Above about 0.85, their growth plummets, just drops off. So, once countries hit a certain level of economic development, and human development, they just lose interest in religion. It just goes away. Right. So that’s what we argue in there.
Ryan 11:10 Now, Seventh Day Adventists, they grow at a lower HDI, because of their approach. They go in and set up hospitals and schools in places that don’t have this. So they’ll go in earlier, and they’ll actually get a lot of growth when countries are still lower on that scale. Jehovah’s Witnesses are about the same as Mormons. They grow at about the same place. This also reflects where we send missionaries. We will send some missionaries to slightly more rural areas. But when we’re going into a country for the first place, where do we send the missionaries? The biggest cities around, we send them into the most developed places. So, the way that the LDS Church functions that way, is they’re looking for places that are developing. But once you hit a certain level of development, one of my good friends served in the Netherlands. I think he had one convert in two years. And she was an immigrant. So, it’s just like, you’re just not going to have any success in these highly developed countries. People have lost interest in religion. It just doesn’t matter to them anymore. They’ve got all of their, I mean, we call this existential security. Their existential security is covered. They don’t need religion for this. It’s only in the countries that are developing where you actually see growth. And this is exactly what we see today with the LDS Church. Where are they growing?
GT 12:22 Africa.
Ryan 12:22 Africa. Everybody knows.
GT 12:23 South America.
Ryan 12:24 Well, and even South America, that’s like pockets now. Chile is pretty well developed. They’re seeing no growth or seeing reversals in Chile now. So there are some pockets in South America where they’re still growing, but a lot of places, growth has just stopped. It’s over. So really the only place where you see a lot of Mormon growth: Africa. Are they developing countries within that range? Strangely, that’s what I predicted more than a decade ago. That’s exactly where we’re seeing the growth.
GT 12:52 Wow. That’s really interesting, because I saw a Facebook post recently from one of my Community of Christ friends. And he was ripping on the LDS Church, ‘The LDS Church needs to ordain women and allow more LGBT,’ and all of these progressive things. And I said, Well, wait a minute, Community of Christ does all that. Their growth is even worse than the LDS.
Ryan 13:20 Yeah, they’re not growing.
GT 13:20 And where are they growing? Africa, Haiti.
Ryan 13:24 Same places, true. Yeah, because they’re not going to grow in developed countries, developed countries just lost interest in religion. There’s no growth there.
GT 13:31 Do you see that continuing on? Because I still want to see, even if you don’t want to call 1950s through the 1980s a third great awakening, isn’t there one on the horizon? Isn’t it just cyclical, where we have growth? I mean, I talked to Cristina Rossetti. She said, “The Puritans came from England. That fueled the First Great Awakening.” But then where are the Puritans? They’re gone. Nobody’s a Puritan anymore. And so, she says [that] when you’re going through these, some groups are going to disappear, like the Puritans. And so, can’t you argue that this is a cyclical thing, and that there’s going to be another [rise.] There’s going to be a new Billy Graham in 2040 or something, and he’s going to bring everybody in. What do you think?
Ryan 14:35 Sure. So, this is this is fun. Right? We can wrestle with this. Sociologists wrestled with this. Starting the late 80s and early 90s, there was a wave among sociologists of religion, called the religious economies model. This is argued by people like Rodney Stark, and Larry Iannacone and Roger Finke. Then it culminated in this book in 2001, called Acts of Faith. Basically, what they argued was very similar, that religion is cyclical. So, their argument is, what happens in any given country is one religion will become dominant. So, that religion will grow. It gets lots of members, whether it’s by force or fiat, or just because they’re really successful. But, as they get big and dominant and become a monopoly, they become lazy: religious economies. So, they become lazy. Once they become lazy, they’re not putting all the effort in to keep religiosity up, and then some other competitor is going to sneak in, and they’re going to out compete them. So, when the monopolies get big, and they get lazy, you see a decline in religiosity, Then the competitors come in, and they drive that back up. So, they push it back up, and then you see an uptick. And then, of course, that new competitor eventually grows and becomes a monopoly, they get lazy. And so they argue that this is cyclical.
Ryan 15:50 That was a really popular idea for, like, 15 years in the sociology of religion. But foundational to this is an assumption. So we build theory in sociology, where you have these foundational assumptions, then you have propositions and you build up from there. Their assumption, and they lay this out very clearly, is that humans have an innate need for religion. They argue that every human on the planet is worried about death, and what’s going to happen after death. And as a result, we all have an innate need for religion. No, we don’t. That’s the easy answer for this. Their foundational assumption is just wrong. As almost a billion people on the planet today indicate, we don’t have that foundational need. If you raise people without religion, they will not invent it. You have to give them religion. You have to teach religion. Religion is not something that’s innate to humans. It’s something that’s taught to humans. So, their foundational assumption was flawed from the beginning. You don’t have to have religion. There are plenty of people who are like, nope.
Ryan 16:56 So, they thought that demand for religion was going to be constant, but supply was going to vary. That works if demand is constant. Demand isn’t constant. So, the religious economy’s model is just fundamentally flawed. And now, I think, almost all of the sociologists of religion around the world–the Europeans, that whole time, because religion was declining in Europe, all the way through from the 40s, through the 60s through the 80s. It was still declining. So, they’re looking at the US, they’re like, what is wrong with you guys? Can you not see outside your doorstep? Like, look beyond the US? They’re like, no, no, no. The US, that’s all we care about. The religious economies model was based only on the US, where that slight uptick during the 40s, 50s, 60s, through the 80s, there was a little bit of an uptick in terms of how important religion was, but now it’s gone. That’s totally gone. Religion is declining, and it’s going to continue down that path. I would be probably pretty stupid to come out and say religion is going to disappear. Everybody who’s ever done that, they’ve had to eat crow. Now, most of them have been dead when they had to eat crow. So, like, so be it. But it’s just a really bad argument to say like, oh, definitively religion is going to die. The current trends suggest that things are going to continue the way they are. Can I project into the future? I’m not going to prophesy here, that’s not what I do.
GT 18:15 It sounds like the stock market. Past…
Ryan 18:19 Past growth is no predictor of future growth. That said, unless things radically change, and in my latest book, Beyond Doubt: the Secularization of Society, we lay this out and say, look, it could absolutely change. There are certain things that can reverse these trends. If those don’t happen, there’s no reason to think that this is going to go any other direction than down. And once people go secular, they’re very unlikely to go back. In that latest paper that we published, we talked about, in Utah, in particular, members of the LDS Church only retain about two thirds of their kids. They’re losing about a third of their members. The group that’s retaining the most? Those who are raised with no religion. They’re now retaining more than 70% of their offspring. So, people who are raised without religion, today, in Utah, in particular, they’re far more likely than almost every other religious group to retain their young. Once you go secular, you don’t go back.
[1] It’s called Goodbye Religion and can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3PnGahm
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