“In the United States,” the authors tell us, “somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 churches close down every year, either to be repurposed as apartments, laundries, laser-tag arenas, or skate parks, or to simply be demolished.” (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my apartment was once the rectory of a church, also built in the 1800s and transformed, a couple of decades ago, into condos for yuppies who want dramatic windows and a hint of ecclesiastical flavor.)
It’s not just the frequency of churchgoing or temple membership that’s declining in our country: Last month, The Wall Street Journal and NORC at the University of Chicago
surveyed around 1,000 American adults about the importance of different values to Americans, including the importance of religion. In 2023, only 39 percent of respondents said religion was very important to them, compared to 62 percent who said that in 1998.
When you look at
the full results, the picture becomes a bit more complicated. Sixty percent of respondents said that religion was either somewhat or very important to them, and only 19 percent said religion was not important to them at all. The United States is still a more religiously observant country than our peer nations in Western Europe —
according to Pew Research in 2018, for example, we are more likely to believe in God or some kind of higher power and more likely to pray daily...
nyt==
There's a questionnaire at the end. My responses:
Why did you become less religious?
I began reading philosophy, and became fascinated with science, in early adolescence. The failure of my Southern Baptist Sunday School teachers to address my questions about the universe's real origins hastened my discovery of the humanistic way of understanding our place in the cosmos.
What elements or practices, if any, do you miss about church, temple, mosque, or any other organized religious community?
The sense of a tight-nit and mutually-supportive community of like-minded friends... but that can be re-created in secular form.
Are there aspects of your previous religion that you still observe, like rituals you still practice or particular beliefs that you hold?
At its best, my early religious education encouraged humility and compassion. Same, I quickly discovered, is true of humanism.
Have you replaced religious observance with another activity or ritual?
I watch CBS Sunday Morning almost religiously... And always go for a meditative dogwalk on Sundays.==
a Harvard exhibiton about William James
William James once responded to a questionnaire about
his religion. Discussion of some of his responses
here...
James claimed that he could not call himself a Christian, nor enter into a personal relationship with God; he tried to but could not pray. Still, James saw his role as a mediator between scientific agnosticism, which he found oppressive and enervating, and religious faith. He shared with many of his contemporaries a passionate desire to believe that something in the universe transcended the material world.
The following document is not a letter, but a series of answers to a questionnaire upon the subject of religious belief, which was sent out in 1904 by Professor James B. Pratt of Williams College, and to which James filled out a reply at an unascertained date in the autumn of that year.
QUESTIONNAIRE. It is being realized as never before that religion, as one of the most important things in the life both of the community and of the individual, deserves close and extended study. Such study can be of value only if based upon the personal experiences of many individuals. If you are in sympathy with such study and are willing to assist in it, will you kindly write out the answers to the following questions and return them with this questionnaire, as soon as you conveniently can, to JAMES B. PRATT, 20 Shepard Street, Cambridge, Mass. Please answer the questions at length and in detail. Do not give philosophical generalizations, but your own personal experience.
James's answers are printed in italics. ANSWERS TO QUESTIONNAIRE
1. What does religion mean to you personally? Is it (1) A belief that something exists? Yes. (2) An emotional experience? Not powerfully so, yet a social reality. (3) A general attitude of the will toward God or toward righteousness! // invokes these. (4) Or something else? If it has several elements, which is for you the most important? The social appeal for corroboration, consolation, etc., when things are going wrong with my causes (my truth denied], etc.
2. What do you mean by God? A combination of Ideality and (final} efficacity. (1) Is He a person if so, what do you mean by His being a person ? He must be cognizant and responsive in some way. (2) Or is He only a Force? He must do. (3) Or is God an attitude of the Universe toward you ? Yes, but more conscious. "God" to me, is not the only spiritual reality to believe in. Religion means primarily a universe of spiritual relations surrounding the earthly practical ones, not merely relations of " value," but agencies and their activities. I suppose that the chief premise for my hospitality towards the religious testimony of others is my conviction that " normal" or "sane" consciousness is so small a part of actual experience. Whatever be true, it is not true exclusively, as philistine scientific opinion assumes. The other kinds of consciousness bear witness to a much wider universe of experiences, from which our belief selects and emphasizes such parts as best satisfy our needs. How do you apprehend his relation to mankind and to you personally? Uncertain. If your position on any of these matters is uncertain, please state the fact. 3. Why do you believe in God? Is it (i) From some argument? Emphatically, no. Or (2) Because you have experienced His presence? No, but rather because I need it so that it "must" be true. Or (3) From authority, such as that of the Bible or of some prophetic person? Only the whole tradition of religious people, to which something in me makes admiring response. Or (4) From any other reason? Only for the social reasons. If from several of these reasons, please indicate carefully the order of their importance. 4. Or do you not so much believe in God as want to use Him? I cant use him very definitely ^ yet I believe. Do you accept Him not so much as a real existent Being, but rather as an ideal to live by? More as a more powerful ally of my own ideals. If you should become thoroughly convinced that there was no God, would it make any great difference in your life either in happiness, morality, or in other respects? Hard to say. It would surely make some difference. 5. Is God very real to you, as real as an earthly friend, though different? Dimly [real]; not [as an earthly friend], Do you feel that you have experienced His presence? If so, please describe what you mean by such an experience. Never. How vague or how distinct is it? How does it affect you mentally and physically? If you have had no such experience, do you accept the testimony of others who claim to have felt God's presence directly? Please answer this question with special care and in as great detail as possible. Yes! The whole line of testimony on this point is so strong that I am unable to pooh-pooh it away. No doubt there is a germ in me of something similar that makes response. 6. Do you pray, and if so, why? That is, is it purely from habit, and social custom, or do you really believe that God hears your prayers? I cant possibly pray I feel foolish and artificial. Is prayer with you one-sided or two-sided i.e., do you sometimes feel that in prayer you receive something such as strength or the divine spirit from God? Is it a real communion? 7. What do you mean by "spirituality"? Susceptibility to ideals but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about them. A certain amount of "other worldly "fancy. Otherwise you have mere morality, or "taste." Describe a typical spiritual person. Phillips Brooks. 8. Do you believe in personal immortality? Never keenly; but more strongly as I grow older. If so, why? Because I am just getting fit to live. 9. Do you accept the Bible as authority in religious matters? Are your religious faith and your religious life based on it? If so, how would your belief in God and your life toward Him and your fellow men be affected by loss of faith in the authority of the Bible? No. No. No. It is so human a book that I don t see how belief in its divine authorship can survive the reading of it. 10. What do you mean by a "religious experience"? Any moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things more to one.
