A New Word for You, Apatheism.

An academic in religion who is also a preacher has posted using a word I had not encountered, apatheism. Even my spell check did not recognize the word. It refers, of course, to people who do not care if there is or is not a god nor care about the narrative the surrounds religion. 

Another academic/preacher who write on religious pages has described his experience of taking on, probably as an unpaid volunteer, the pastorship of three churches that were almost closed and trying to keep them open as long as possible. He wrote about the common experience of pastors who notice people stop coming to church but do not show up in other churches. They are not against church life; they just lost interest. 

I asked one of my adult granddaughters, who grew up going to Sunday school and then was confirmed, why she no longer goes to church. She said, "I just could not see a place for me." This may fall into the category of apatheism.

The link author, who dislikes apatheism, wrote that it is not "religiously neutral." He considers it a religious choice. I think this reflects his bias that religion is a very important topic and people are required to treat it as such. If a person has never heard the tenets of the faith until becoming an adult, then hears them and finds them of no interest, this is not making a religious choice, at least in my view. The sports page is filled with people who think about little but sport teams. There are the hunters and bridge players and on and on, The rest of us are apathic about their interests? Religion is no different.