Why religion went obsolete - Part 3
Christian Smith argues that traditional religion in America has gone obsolete, meaning most people feel it is no longer useful or needed because something else has superseded it in function, efficiency, value, or interest.
Traditional religion has been “put out of business.”[1]
But traditional religion’s obsolescence, Smith says, was unplanned.
Some obsolescence is planned. Apple plans for the iPhone 10 to become obsolete because they intend to design the iPhone 11 and so forth. And that planned obsolescence leads to other types of planned obsolescence. The lightening jack is now obsolete because newer phones use a USBC port. Eventually the USBC port will be replaced with something else, and we’ll all have to order a 12-pack of new wall plugs. Until wall plugs go obsolete and we’ll all be charging things some other way.
This kind of planned obsolescence is economic strategy. For companies like Apple to stay in business they have to selling us newer, cooler, faster, more functional products, rendering the older products (which may still work just fine) obsolete. There’s a great picture of this in the movie Joy starring Jenniefer Lawrence. Joy invents a self-cleaning mop she boasts will never have to be replaced. When she pitches her idea to a manufacturer they tell her they don’t want a mop that doesn’t need to be replaced. They want mops that need to be replaced, that way they can sell more mops.
Planned obsolescence.
Smith argues traditional religion’s obsolescence did not come about that way. There were no secular or atheist architects sitting in a conference room plotting to take religion down or to replace with newer, cooler, faster, more functional religions.[2] According to Smith, traditional religion became obsolete due to an unforeseen conflation of causal forces (both macro and micro) over time. This conflation eventually produced a cultural “perfect storm” that wiped traditional religion off the map.
Here’s a list of the some of the causal forces Smith identifies.
Higher education for the masses
Women entering the paid workforce
The deinstitutionalization of marriage and family
Declining participation in face-to-face membership organizations
Neoliberal capitalism and mass consumerism
The end of the cold war
The digital revolution
Pop post-modernism
The rise of intensive parenting
September 11, 2001
The New Atheism
The third sexual revolution
Religious pluralism
Multiculturalism (especially in education)
The disappearing “American Dream”
And you can add to this list all of the ways traditional religion hurt itself, especially in the two-decade period Smith identifies as the tipping point. Smith includes a five-page appendix that lists all of the religious leaders who were accused, charged, and indicted for either serious financial or sexual abuse scandals (or both) during this period. And the appendix doesn’t include the names of Catholic priests because it would make the list too long to share!
As you can see, traditional religion doesn’t have a whole lot going for it, culturally speaking.
I have a few high-level takeaways from this part of Smith’s book. The first is that my work as a religious professional is subject to macro-level cultural forces I have little to no control over. If it ever was, helping someone in today’s culture to know Christ and grow up into Christian maturity is not as simple as getting him to read his Bible and pray more. People are simply being influenced too consistently and pervasively by forces bent against God.
That leads me to both greater grace and also increased resolve to do the work well. If Jesus recognized 2,000 years ago that people didn’t know what they were doing (and prayed for God’s mercy because of it), how much truer is that today. People aren’t just out there consciously choosing sin. They are under the influence of forces they don’t recognize or understand. That compels me to have more grace.
It also compels me to do a better job. You would think that in a culture like this a pastor should conclude, “What difference is a sermon going to make?” And in one sense that’s probably true. But where else might a person here something that can open their eyes to the forces at work on their lives, perhaps encouraging them and equipping them to more consciously engage those forces? Words make worlds. Sermons are important, especially sermons that thoughtfully and respectfully bring Christ and culture into the light.
My second reflection has to do with unintended consequences. Not everything on Smith’s list was a conscious “choice.” In fact, very few of them were. But the ones you might be able to argue were intentional decisions, like the turn to neoliberal capitalism in the 80’s and 90’s or the invention of birth control, people pushed for what they believed to be good, noble reasons. Neoliberal capitalism was going to open markets and make it so more people could create more wealth. And it did just that. Birth control was going to make it possible for women to have more independence, which it did.
These are not bad goals.
But both had unintended consequences. Neoliberal capitalism made it possible for more people to create more wealth, but it also created an economic culture where generating wealth was the point. That, in turn, led to more and more people needing to higher levels of education, creating greater educational debt. Finding and securing high-paying jobs became the primary factor determining where a person would live, often resulting in people leaving their friend and family support systems, spending all of their time at work, or investing all of their free time and money securing for their kids the kinds of experiences that would set them up for similar “success.” All of this wedged out the time or need for traditional religion.
Birth control gave women increased independence, which they used to enter the workforce (following the siren song of neoliberal capitalism). That move in turn delayed marriage and children, which in turn led to the deinstitutionalization of marriage and family, key institutions that drive participation in traditional religion. Birth control also, ironically, contributed to the sexual exploitation of women. Birth control was originally thought of as a win for the women’s lib movement but once the prospect of pregnancy was decoupled from sex, women became even more subject to sexual objectification, which didn’t help the establishment of healthy marriages and families.
My point is that socio-cultural moves, regardless of what originally motivates them, will always have unintended consequences. It is imperative that advocates of any socio-cultural reform think deeply about what might happen if society moves in their preferred direction.
And this is especially important for followers of Jesus. My last reflection on Smith’s list is that often Christians were not sitting on the sidelines watching these things happen as passive observers. They were active participants, often advocating for certain reforms in the name of Christ.
You better believe evangelical Christians were strong advocates for neoliberal capitalism. And I’m sure more liberal Christians were strong supporters of birth control. Both groups had what they perceived from their limited frames of reference to be good reasons. Ironically, however, the very reforms they supported eventually contributed to their own demise. I’ve said this many times but we are living in a cultural moment that demands Christian leaders who are not just people of moral integrity but significant wisdom.
We need Christian leaders with minds at work, people who can tap into the rich history of the church, both theologically and culturally, and prophetically imagine where culture and society will end up depending on which levers which choose to pull. I’m not sure how many leaders like that we have. I perceive they are almost entirely missing from evangelicalism, and most progressive Christian leaders seem to be merely echoing culture.
The Catholic Church certainly has the wisdom and the tradition but because of its scandals I’m not sure it has a credible voice. Pope Francis did much to change Catholicism’s public perception and it would seem that there is something of a revival in the Catholic Chruch globally. That’s good news.
And to end on a note of good news, people who grow up in chaos tend to crave order. We’ve created chaos. If we think of culture like an atmosphere, we’ve created a world that feels like storm upon storm upon storm, no reprieve, with fewer and fewer things for people to lash themselves to. If people left traditional religion because they no longer found it helpful, perhaps having built a world of chaos they might find it helpful again.
And return.
[1] Smith, p. 4
[2] Though that is effectively what happened.
Traditional religion has been “put out of business.”[1]
But traditional religion’s obsolescence, Smith says, was unplanned.
Some obsolescence is planned. Apple plans for the iPhone 10 to become obsolete because they intend to design the iPhone 11 and so forth. And that planned obsolescence leads to other types of planned obsolescence. The lightening jack is now obsolete because newer phones use a USBC port. Eventually the USBC port will be replaced with something else, and we’ll all have to order a 12-pack of new wall plugs. Until wall plugs go obsolete and we’ll all be charging things some other way.
This kind of planned obsolescence is economic strategy. For companies like Apple to stay in business they have to selling us newer, cooler, faster, more functional products, rendering the older products (which may still work just fine) obsolete. There’s a great picture of this in the movie Joy starring Jenniefer Lawrence. Joy invents a self-cleaning mop she boasts will never have to be replaced. When she pitches her idea to a manufacturer they tell her they don’t want a mop that doesn’t need to be replaced. They want mops that need to be replaced, that way they can sell more mops.
Planned obsolescence.
Smith argues traditional religion’s obsolescence did not come about that way. There were no secular or atheist architects sitting in a conference room plotting to take religion down or to replace with newer, cooler, faster, more functional religions.[2] According to Smith, traditional religion became obsolete due to an unforeseen conflation of causal forces (both macro and micro) over time. This conflation eventually produced a cultural “perfect storm” that wiped traditional religion off the map.
Here’s a list of the some of the causal forces Smith identifies.
Higher education for the masses
Women entering the paid workforce
The deinstitutionalization of marriage and family
Declining participation in face-to-face membership organizations
Neoliberal capitalism and mass consumerism
The end of the cold war
The digital revolution
Pop post-modernism
The rise of intensive parenting
September 11, 2001
The New Atheism
The third sexual revolution
Religious pluralism
Multiculturalism (especially in education)
The disappearing “American Dream”
And you can add to this list all of the ways traditional religion hurt itself, especially in the two-decade period Smith identifies as the tipping point. Smith includes a five-page appendix that lists all of the religious leaders who were accused, charged, and indicted for either serious financial or sexual abuse scandals (or both) during this period. And the appendix doesn’t include the names of Catholic priests because it would make the list too long to share!
As you can see, traditional religion doesn’t have a whole lot going for it, culturally speaking.
I have a few high-level takeaways from this part of Smith’s book. The first is that my work as a religious professional is subject to macro-level cultural forces I have little to no control over. If it ever was, helping someone in today’s culture to know Christ and grow up into Christian maturity is not as simple as getting him to read his Bible and pray more. People are simply being influenced too consistently and pervasively by forces bent against God.
That leads me to both greater grace and also increased resolve to do the work well. If Jesus recognized 2,000 years ago that people didn’t know what they were doing (and prayed for God’s mercy because of it), how much truer is that today. People aren’t just out there consciously choosing sin. They are under the influence of forces they don’t recognize or understand. That compels me to have more grace.
It also compels me to do a better job. You would think that in a culture like this a pastor should conclude, “What difference is a sermon going to make?” And in one sense that’s probably true. But where else might a person here something that can open their eyes to the forces at work on their lives, perhaps encouraging them and equipping them to more consciously engage those forces? Words make worlds. Sermons are important, especially sermons that thoughtfully and respectfully bring Christ and culture into the light.
My second reflection has to do with unintended consequences. Not everything on Smith’s list was a conscious “choice.” In fact, very few of them were. But the ones you might be able to argue were intentional decisions, like the turn to neoliberal capitalism in the 80’s and 90’s or the invention of birth control, people pushed for what they believed to be good, noble reasons. Neoliberal capitalism was going to open markets and make it so more people could create more wealth. And it did just that. Birth control was going to make it possible for women to have more independence, which it did.
These are not bad goals.
But both had unintended consequences. Neoliberal capitalism made it possible for more people to create more wealth, but it also created an economic culture where generating wealth was the point. That, in turn, led to more and more people needing to higher levels of education, creating greater educational debt. Finding and securing high-paying jobs became the primary factor determining where a person would live, often resulting in people leaving their friend and family support systems, spending all of their time at work, or investing all of their free time and money securing for their kids the kinds of experiences that would set them up for similar “success.” All of this wedged out the time or need for traditional religion.
Birth control gave women increased independence, which they used to enter the workforce (following the siren song of neoliberal capitalism). That move in turn delayed marriage and children, which in turn led to the deinstitutionalization of marriage and family, key institutions that drive participation in traditional religion. Birth control also, ironically, contributed to the sexual exploitation of women. Birth control was originally thought of as a win for the women’s lib movement but once the prospect of pregnancy was decoupled from sex, women became even more subject to sexual objectification, which didn’t help the establishment of healthy marriages and families.
My point is that socio-cultural moves, regardless of what originally motivates them, will always have unintended consequences. It is imperative that advocates of any socio-cultural reform think deeply about what might happen if society moves in their preferred direction.
And this is especially important for followers of Jesus. My last reflection on Smith’s list is that often Christians were not sitting on the sidelines watching these things happen as passive observers. They were active participants, often advocating for certain reforms in the name of Christ.
You better believe evangelical Christians were strong advocates for neoliberal capitalism. And I’m sure more liberal Christians were strong supporters of birth control. Both groups had what they perceived from their limited frames of reference to be good reasons. Ironically, however, the very reforms they supported eventually contributed to their own demise. I’ve said this many times but we are living in a cultural moment that demands Christian leaders who are not just people of moral integrity but significant wisdom.
We need Christian leaders with minds at work, people who can tap into the rich history of the church, both theologically and culturally, and prophetically imagine where culture and society will end up depending on which levers which choose to pull. I’m not sure how many leaders like that we have. I perceive they are almost entirely missing from evangelicalism, and most progressive Christian leaders seem to be merely echoing culture.
The Catholic Church certainly has the wisdom and the tradition but because of its scandals I’m not sure it has a credible voice. Pope Francis did much to change Catholicism’s public perception and it would seem that there is something of a revival in the Catholic Chruch globally. That’s good news.
And to end on a note of good news, people who grow up in chaos tend to crave order. We’ve created chaos. If we think of culture like an atmosphere, we’ve created a world that feels like storm upon storm upon storm, no reprieve, with fewer and fewer things for people to lash themselves to. If people left traditional religion because they no longer found it helpful, perhaps having built a world of chaos they might find it helpful again.
And return.
[1] Smith, p. 4
[2] Though that is effectively what happened.
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