Is Christianity Still Relevant? Part II: What Has Been Lost

We’re much less “religious” than we were not so long ago, if at all. Are we any happier?

Photo by Warren, Unsplash

Not a Medium subscriber yet? You should be: it’s not much to pay, and there’s great stuff here. In the meantime, click here to read this article for free.

This is the second article of a four-part series on Christianity in our secular Western society: why its role in our lives has declined; the consequences of that decline; the alternative spiritual frameworks many people have adopted; and a possible way back to greater relevance for the church.

The writer is an “almost” non-practicing Catholic, one nonetheless resistant to seeing this powerful, transcendent idea and largely positive cultural tradition fade away.

In Part I of this series, we saw how the decline in affiliation with the Christian faith in much of the West, and in church attendance specifically, can be attributed to several factors.

These are, principally, the age-old edging out of unquestioning dogmatic faith by rationalism; the displacement of participation in religious practices by the greater and easier temptations of consumerism and electronic/digital entertainment; and the modern shift from a faith-within-the-community mindset to the ethos of hyper-individualism. As contributing factors, the moral failings of the Church (primarily the sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups) and certain outmoded doctrines and canon laws, such as the prohibition for divorced Catholics to remarry in church, cannot be underestimated.

Having quantified the aforementioned declines and advanced a view as to what caused them, this second installment of the series will take a look at the consequences of those declines: what has changed, and what we’ve lost. This analysis isn’t meant to be at all theological, but rather a dispassionate review of how society has been affected by the much-diminished role (if any) the Christian church now plays in most people’s lives.

The Loss of Identity and Community

For centuries, Western societies integrated Christianity as part of each country’s national identity, even when clear separations between Church and State were formalized either within national constitutions, as in the U.S. and France, or in practice — via not having an official state religion — as in many other Western countries.

Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, was a fundamental part of the civilizational architecture that defined what it means to be American, or Italian, or Mexican. That identification with Christianity, at least in the last hundred years or so, was almost more rooted in history and tradition than in faith, with cultural markers ranging from ancient battles against invaders of other religions (Charles Martel at Poitiers; the lifting of the siege of Vienna); to the Christian principles that influenced America’s Founding Fathers (who however purposefully did not explicitly write those influences into the Constitution); to the celebration of what were originally purely religious holidays (“Holy Days,” lest we forget the origin of the word) like Christmas and Easter.

That religious affiliation, of course, didn’t extend to adherents of other faiths, such as the Jews and followers of Oriental religions that constituted virtually the only religious minorities in 20th-century America. But, by and large, those minorities didn’t feel marginalized as a result, and celebrated the secular traditions of Christmas just as happily as everyone else. At that time, a sort of mild background of historical Christian alignment meshed with cultural traditions originating in — but, in their expression, not at all limited to — the Christian religion to form a stable, tolerant, and cohesive identity at both national and local community levels.

That religio-cultural identity, built upon the Protestant and Church of England foundations of the early English, Dutch, German and Swedish settlers in America, was later extended via the waves of almost exclusively Catholic Irish, Italian, Polish and Portuguese immigration into the U.S. of the late 19th and early 20th century.

One would have thought that the subsequent sizeable waves of Hispanic immigration into the U.S. that characterised the second half of the 20th century right up to the present day — also almost exclusively from Catholic countries and numerically far outweighing more recent immigration from Muslim-majority countries — would have further solidified that identity. But by the late 1960s, the decline in popular identification with, and involvement in, Christian faith and its manifestations had already begun. That decline accelerated in the last two decades of the last century, and dropped off a cliff around 2010.

The general perception in the U.S. and elsewhere at about the same time of fragmenting social cohesion, lessened community involvement, and diminished shared values, is not, I believe, mere coincidence.

Even if correlation is not causation, it’s hard not to conclude that the erosion of the faith element of the national identity and the fading away of the Church as the societal and moral backbone of local communities loosened the invisible moorings that tied people to place and to each other. That loosening, which some elements of society welcomed as progressive, opened the way for the consumerism and hyper-individualism that has been contributing to our sense of a collective loss of connection and belonging for some time now.

Photo Chetan Heretoli, Upsplash

The Loneliness Epidemic

There is no period on record when young Americans have been both less religious and more isolated. How are those two data points related?

When a society’s sense of cohesion and community declines, social disconnection increases. When children, teenagers, and young adults no longer run into each other at weekly church services, or church charity drives like bake sales, or church-organized volunteering, sports clinics, or hobby clubs, it’s almost inevitable that in their spare time away from school or work they will turn inward, replacing friendships and informal interpersonal contact with digital media, online shopping, and video games. Social skills that were formerly developed naturally through community life thus never develop, creating a self-reinforcing loop of avoidance, seclusion, and loneliness.

The decline of religion — of identification with Christianity, to be specific — in the U.S. and much of the West isn’t the sole cause of increasing social disconnection. Labor unions and fraternal organizations like the Elks, which once served as community and social hubs, have shrunk to near-insignificance. The rising cost of living, and the need for at least two incomes in most households, as well as stagnant middle-class wages, have pinned adults down with longer hours at work and higher levels of stress, leaving little time or energy for community participation. And today’s emphasis on promoting the self, over the well-being of the collective, hasn’t helped either.

But much of the current social malaise can be traced back to what happens when a nation and its communities no longer feel that they have, at the very least, a common faith that binds them to a higher ideal than themselves as individuals.

The mental health crisis

Aside from the aforementioned loneliness epidemic, there has been a surge in mental health issues, especially among the young. People born after 1995 report considerably higher levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts than previous generations did at the same age.

How much of this is due to the retreat from a community-enhancing common religion, and how much can be attributed instead to other cultural and societal factors, is up for debate. However, large international studies, such as the 2021 Garsen et al. meta-analysis on the subject, generally find that active participation in religious communities is associated with higher subjective well-being and, in some contexts, better mental health.

There would seem to be more to it, though, than just loss of community via the retreat of religious practice. The sharp increases in anxiety disorders and depression are consistent with a generalized current worldview that feels a loss of meaning, and has nowhere to turn to in times of sadness or despair.

A belief in “nothing” inevitably reduces one’s vision of life to its everyday concerns and preoccupations, leaving no grander construct to put things into context and no recourse to faith-based hope when adversity strikes, or tragedy looms on the horizon. In such an empty, sterile mental framework, the feeling that life is ultimately meaningless and inalterable can easily lead to existential crises. Manifested via — you guessed it — anxiety and depression.

Royalty-free photo, Aestiora

We haven’t been very good at filling the void

Nature abhors a vacuum. For every action, there is a reaction. Every space vacated will soon enough be filled with something else.

It doesn’t seem too far-fetched to posit that when Christianity collapsed as a social and spiritual anchor, other practices and passions rose to the fore.

Although alcoholism has been with us for a very long time, the start of the widespread use (and abuse) of recreational drugs roughly coincides with the decline of religious affiliation and participation.

The sexual revolution that kicked off in the late 1960s may well have relaxed some overly buttoned-up moral strictures, but it also resulted in considerable promiscuity and open season on men seducing women without consequences; unwanted pregnancies and waves of abortions; a leap in divorces; and, ultimately, the AIDS epidemic.

The decline of faith and the sense of community it helped sustain created room for the extreme intolerance and political polarization that we are experiencing today. And the shift from at least background consciousness of moral guidelines like the Ten Commandments has led to an exaggerated pursuit of secular gratifications, from financial success-at-all-costs to sex to materialism and consumerism, influencer-style narcissism, gambling and gluttony.

We haven’t quite reached the societal corrosion depicted in the future Pottersville of It’s A Wonderful Life. But many would say we’re headed in that direction.

Stay tuned for Part III: Why “Spiritualism” Can’t Replace the Benefits of Faith.

[embed]Is Christianity Still Relevant? Part I: Why People Stopped Going to Church What was once a community bond has become a niche practicemedium.com

[embed]Feeling at Sea? It’s Because We’re All Odysseus Homer’s epic tale reflects our lifelong quest for balancemedium.com

[embed]Six Underappreciated Songs of Hope For Humanity Where the world is darkness, these are points of lightmedium.com