A Good Description of Our Times: Religious Secularists


In the Des Moines Register this morning was an article authored by three professors, two from Notre Dame and one from the University of Akron. I'm sorry I was not able to link it here. They described what they had found from polling people about religion. Rather than people being "religious" or "secular", a wide swath is both.

It is not unusual for people to hold two opposing views at the same time. We find many who oppose abortion, believing the fetus to be a person, to be in favor of killing people in other ways. But a new adjustment has to be made for a Chaplain at Harvard to be an atheist. How could that be?

Religious secularists are the largest and fastest growing group in the U.S., possibly in the world. There are twice as many as there are Southern Baptists. They make up about one-sixth of the population. Traditional labels in the group would be many Jews and main line Protestants and Catholics as well as atheists and such. On politics they are against religion in government. They are big on volunteering in their communities and vote in huge numbers. 

From what I've read even those active in their churches are not very interested in arguments about fine points in theology. Whatever the "statement of faith" says in their particular church it is of little importance to them. They are not interested in whether there was a virgin birth or a Resurrection. Maybe happened, maybe not, doesn't matter.

There is an old definition of secular religion which seems to replace religions of gods and such with religious of politics such as fascism. It would include those who see Donald Trump as a deity.  This is not the group the professors were referring to. The group they referred to might belong to a Christian church but find more satisfaction from the church's work with the homeless than they do from attending Sunday services. Such people might be more interested in what is called "the common good" than with "the common god."

I have discussed often Christian pundits who write about what is needed to fill churches again. Almost without exception what is needed, they say, is a clear understanding of the gospel and Jesus' death on the cross to absolve sins. The big numbers of potential church goers, however, are not interested in these abstract religious ideas. 

They are interested in a world where these ideas are not central but remain out on the periphery. I think we need a church named "Yeah, Whatever."  

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