Wars of religions

For those that watch for them, ripples of reaction have been spreading across US religious thinkers over the last twenty-four hours. It's not the tumult of impeachment or Syria (or not only that). It's the new Pew study that confirms the continued decline of religious affiliation--especially Christianity--among USAmericans. Only 65% of adults now identify as Christian, down 12 points over the past ten years. And for the first time, a majority of millennials do not identify as religious.  

The post-Christian epoch, long prophesied, is upon us.

For a while now, the religious right in this country has written about the decline of faith in public life with the same fervent apprehension that scientists use when discussing shrinking ice caps in a warming globe. The why and the what to do about it questions seem similar. Are we causing it? Can we stop it? How might we adapt if we can't stop it?

For Erick Erickson at The Resurgent, some blame lies with those who call themselves born-again Christians. The faith of many of these, he argues, is shallow:

It is important to note that it is very likely that the number of self-described evangelicals already does exceed and certainly will exceed the number of actual church going Christians in the country too. Evangelical is rapidly becoming an ethnic identifier of someone who loves Jesus, but doesn’t really have a relationship with him.

A profession of faith, in other words, is increasingly less about describing a theological commitment and more about signalling membership in a political tribe. Erickson singles out strongly conservative (Baptist and/or Reformed) institutions like Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as bulwarks against such a-religious drift.

Rod Dreher cites a similar tribal identity argument in a fascinating post with the dire title, "Our Coming War of Religion." Note that, contra lots of other right-leaning pieces, Dreher is not framing a war on religion. He gestures toward the constellation of beliefs that make up the left's "wokeness"--feminism, critical race theory, sexuality and gender studies, postcolonialism (he doesn't use these terms exactly). Dreher suggests that these beliefs cohere into a kind of de facto mythology, by which he means a comprehensive, deeply held set of assumptions about how the world is and ought to be. This view, he suggests, contributes to the deep antipathy left-leaners have toward Trump and toward traditional Christianity. Christianity, in turn, holds an opposing mythology.

In other words, what's at stake in polarizing conflicts of today isn't a rational disagreement beetween opposing arguments but a war of mythologies, a war of religions (whether they be called so or not). Beneath questions about what Trump has or hasn't done and whether Trump is or isn't right to do those things, Americans are divided over what kind of world we ought to be trying to make, what that world should look like.

This conflict isn't made of reasons coolly discussed. It's made of visceral reactions, stomach churning feelings stirred up by the very thought of the other side triumphing. Such felt orientations, warns Dreher, aren't likely to submit to the ordered game of democracy. If Warren (say) wins, how will die-hard Trump supporters react? If Trump wins a second term, are progressives likely to roll over?

Worrisome stuff.

JF