The decline of religion in the U.S., and the rise of the “nones”—those who say that they have no faith at all—is by now a familiar story. Examining the latest statistics, Chris Stirewalt observes another parallel trend among those who are not jettisoning their beliefs:
As the number of “nones” went up, attendance among those they left behind in various faiths went down. At the start of this century, 42 percent of U.S. adults attended religious services “weekly or nearly every week.” Now it’s 30 percent. But, again, that’s not the fault of non-believers. That’s within members of various denominations. Roman Catholics, down 12 points, and Orthodox Christians, down 9 points, saw the sharpest declines since 2000, while Protestants dipped 4 points.
This may be especially bad news for Jews, because, as Timothy P. Carney has argued, “unchurched Christians” are the group most likely to be drawn to right-wing anti-Semitism. Yet Stirewalt points out some good news for the Jews, and for America. First, Judaism and Islam, unlike all Christian denominations, “saw increases over the same period, with Jews climbing 7 points and Muslims up 4 points.” Second, he urges us to “look at the glass half full” in considering the bigger picture:
If 30 percent of Americans go to their church, mosque, synagogue, temple, or dimly lit shrine to David Hasselhoff nearly every week, that’s 78 million people or so in an adult population of about 260 million. Add in the monthly worshippers, and you have more than 106 million souls gathering together on a pretty regular basis.
That’s 57-percent more than the number who bet on the Super Bowl, more than triple the number who watched this year’s State of the Union address, and more than double the number of daily active TikTok users in the U.S.
Slim solace if you are interested in saving souls, I understand. . . . But it is worth saying that 106 million people is a lot of people, and that in America they can choose who, how, and where to worship. Indeed, the resilience of communal worship in the face of an onslaught of competition for our attention says something important about Americans and our faiths. After all, it could be worse. You could be in the movie-theater business.
Read more on The Dispatch: https://thedispatch.com/article/about-those-empty-pews/