Commonly Believed Benefits of Religion

From the book Why Religion Went Obsolete is a list of benefits the author often hears when those he interviews and from written material. Each reader can decide for herself whether each is commonly believed or not. Hear is the list:

1. Morals.

2. Positive psychology (good/positive feelings)

3. Getting along with each other

4. Modeling (models of good people0

5. Moderation

6. National Solidarity

The book is about cultural attitudes toward religion and how the culture no long supports religion as it once did. The list above is how the culture saw religion in the 1950's. The author devotes 20 pages discussing these which we can only touch on here

I've read several books about our founding fathers, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, etc. It is often said our founding fathers were Christians therefore our nation is Christian. The basis for saying these men were Christian is they said things in speeches and letters about God or the deity. I never saw that any of them were very interested in Christianity or religion in general. They did not refer to sin, Washington left church to avoid communion. Frankin wrote of different the different planets each having their own gods. What seems to be common was the belief that there was some board societal benefit from Christianity such as seen in the list above. 

Anyone who reads about the six qualities attributed to Christianity and reflects on actual experience will question each of them. It's hard to take the totality of either recent or ancient experience and conclude Christianity achieves or even promotes any of the six. To the extent that none of them can clearly be seen as the national benefit of Christianity or being a "Christian nation" it is not hard to understand why the culture is no longer friendly to the faith and it is becoming "olselete."