The Sexual Revolution and the Decline of Religion Go Hand in Hand https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/religion-holidays/2020/07/the-sexual-revolution-and-the-decline-of-religion-go-hand-in-hand/

July 16, 2020 | Mary Eberstadt
About the author:

In conversation with Ryan Anderson, Mary Eberstadt discusses the connections among secularization, the sexual revolution, and identity politics—which is the subject of her most recent book, Primal Screams:

Data of all kinds confirm that religious practice, particularly among Christians, shows a steep decline across the West beginning around 1963. This is just as the sexual revolution takes off in earnest—and . . . the connections between these two phenomena are not just coincidental dots on a graph; they are legion, and deep.

One of the revolution’s consequences is the atomization and shrinking of the family via unprecedented rates of divorce, cohabitation, abortion, and fatherlessness—all of which have continued to transform the United States and other Western societies for almost six decades. Familial atomization in turn has made religious practice more onerous for all kinds of reasons: from the logistical issues presented by broken homes, to more metaphysical quandaries—like the difficulty of understanding God as a benevolent father, in a world where many people have no idea what a benevolent father even is.

We moderns have bought into a seductive secular story—namely, that we’re smarter and more sophisticated than the people who came before us; that we’ve outgrown antiquities like God and church and a transcendent code by which to live. This kind of self-flattering tale blinds us to the possibility that in some critical areas, the opposite may be true.

Yes, in many ways, the world has progressed both morally and materially. At the same time, people today are more unknowing about certain elemental matters than any of the generations that preceded us. As families continue to shrink and crumble, fewer and fewer understand what a robust kinship network even looks like. . . . Similarly, as many people fall away from religious practice, they lose working knowledge of profound themes like sin and redemption, as well as other concepts essential to understanding Western history and civilization.

Read more on Public Discourse: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/07/67214/