The Decline of Religiosity: A Brief History
The contemporary world presents an increasingly challenging environment for mission outreach. Many outreach-oriented Christian faiths experienced dramatic worldwide growth from the post-World War II era until the early 1990s. Faiths engaged in proselytism generally did well. However, the growth rates of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as many other religious groups have fallen substantially since that time.
From a societal perspective, the decline in religiosity represents the culmination of both old and new trends. The practices and policies of various churches and religions have also impacted receptivity, but this entry will focus only on societal (demand-side) factors.
In the ancient and medieval world, most people were religious. However, religion had different meaning and purpose for many than is the case today.
Ancient Paganism
Ancient pagans relied on mythology to explain natural phenomenon, from the daily passage of the sun ("the sun-god driving his chariot across the sky") to thunder and lightning (the storm god casting lightning bolts) to rain and fertility. In an age when only about half of children survived to adulthood, deaths from childbirth, war, and infectious disease touched almost every family, and a bad harvest could lead to famine and starvation, life was tenuous and neither rich nor poor were ever far from death. Individuals looked to propitiate the Gods for bountiful harvests, fertility, health, and military victory or protection.
Paganism, at least as practiced in the West, was primarily about propitiating the gods for prosperity and to avoid calamity. The religion of the classical Greeks, Romans, and Germanic and Celtic pagans has been described as essentially religion without ethics. In contrast to the ancient Israelite religion with its ethical commandments, pagans by and large did not view murder, theft, rape, or adultery as matters of religious morality. Societal laws were necessary to retain order, yet such crimes were primarily viewed as civil rather than religious infractions. The Olympian gods themselves engaged in such conduct, and Greek epics including The Odyssey praise the cunning deceit of Odysseus as a positive quality.
The gods were deemed to be largely uninterested in the petty affairs of mortals. Their motives were primarily selfish and favor was curried through temple gifts and sacrifices rather than ethical behaviors. Crimes against other humans were deemed matters of concern to the gods only when they transgressed religious protections or involved sacrilege. The massacre or enslavement of conquered villagers, for instance, was deemed to represent no infraction, whereas killing a political opponent in the temple sanctuary or a guest under the divinely-upheld law of hospitality would invoke the wrath of the gods.
In Oedipus Rex, the protagonist's murder of several men at a crossroads in what we might today term an act of road rage does not seem to have shocked ancient theatergoers. Funerary inscriptions from around the ancient Mediterranean document that deaths from highway thuggery were common. Oedipus is presented as a great warrior rather than as a murderous psychopath. Only the fact that one of the men he killed turned out to be his father, and that he subsequently married his mother, represented crimes against the gods. Nor was any contradiction seen in Julius Caesar offering sacrifice as the Pontifex Maximus or chief high priest of Rome and subsequently committing genocide against Germanic tribes. Even in Genesis, the ham-fisted design of Joseph's brothers to kill him and take his stuff (before Reuben talked them into selling him into slavery instead) represent all to frequent reality of ancient life. Nor is Joseph's sale as a slave (a reprehensible act which today we can scarcely imagine) conveyed in the text as inherently immoral. It is rather the brothers' deceit of their father (who had tasked them to protect Joseph) which the ancient authors find objectionable.
Ancient religion was a matter of state interest to the extent that the tribe or nation required the gods' favor to prosper and to be victorious against their enemies. Thus, blasphemy against the gods was typically a capital crime out of concern that the impiety of individuals could bring down divine retribution on an entire nation. Again, piety was understood not in the modern sense of moral scruples and uprightness, but as the fulfillment of ritual obligations and avoidance of sacrilege.
As patriarchal clans coalesced into chiefdoms and then kingdoms, as some humans were elevated whereas others were enslaved. The putative egalitarianism of nomadic hunter-gatherer groups gave way to stratified social classes, from slaves with no rights to the king with vast power. Priests legitimated the power structure and social stratification in a way that rulers themselves could not, asserting that the king or chief had the right to rule. In its weak form, this paradigm maintained the the ruler was favored of the Gods; it its strong form, rulers were seen as literal gods on earth.
This contrasts to the arbitrary nature of pagan kingship, in which the ruler's actions were defined as ethical by virtue of his position, and he was not held accountable to any higher law. Modern communism, as we will see, took this approach in its most extreme form in defining its own actions as ethical and denying any higher ethic. These were not the teachings of Judaism or Christianity. Judaism maintained that whereas the king was anointed by God, he was also accountable to the Gods and could be removed for disobedience. Nonetheless, many rulers of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and other ancient kingdoms boasted on inscriptions of their ethical actions to promote the well-being of the citizenry. How much of this is real and how much represents savvy propaganda is a matter of debate, but the rulers at least acknowledged the primacy of the gods and tried to be perceived by their subjects as just and fair.
The Enlightenment and Higher Textual Criticism
Enlightenment thought challenged religiosity in two ways. The first was that through study of the natural world, religious explanations of natural phenomena and human history were increasingly supplemented by scientific ones.
To be sure, leading scientists including Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal and Johannes Kepler were deeply devoted Christians for whom science reaffirmed belief in God. Yet others, like Pierre-Simon Laplace, found no need to invoke God to provide explanations of the natural world. When asked by Napoleon why his work did not mention the Creator, Laplace is claimed to have replied that "I have no need for that hypothesis." The increasing naturalistic explanations of the world left, it seemed, less place for God.
Second, some Enlightenment thinkers challenged the miraculous stories of scripture as irrational or inconsistent with their understanding of principles observed in the natural world. In the early 18th century, the Tübingen School of theology organized by Ferdinand Christian Baur built on the work of Enlightenment thinkers to engage in "Higher Criticism" of the Bible. "Higher Criticism" analyzed the overall narratives, including contradictions, challenges, and the correlation of textual claims with outside evidence, in contrast with "Lower Criticism," which focused on reconstructing the original text through comparison and analysis of textual variants.
Higher criticism offered a useful framework for study of the Biblical text. However, the Tübingen School also presented evidence that the gospels and epistles of the New Testament had undergone changes in their development. Some were of doubtful provenance. The majority of modern Biblical scholars believe that the four canonical gospels were not written by Jesus' apostles and contain various historical and textual discrepancies, and that several epistles attributed to the Apostle Paul were not written by him.
These trends did not kill Christianity, but they did present challenges to the Church's narrative. Christians typically dealt with these issues in one of four ways, with some overlap. Some continued to assert that the Biblical teachings represented literal historical truth, and that contradictory information from science must be inaccurate. Liberal religious thinkers increasingly came to view scriptural teachings as consisting of moral lessons rather than literal history. Others discounted scripture altogether as unreliable and became atheists or agnostics. Still others remained largely unaware of the salient issues.
Communism
In the USSR, anti-religious campaigns were conducted from 1921-1928 and 1928-1941. Priests were painted as enemies of the working classes. The Russian Orthodox Church lost most of its churches, declining 29,584 to fewer than 500 in the Russian Republic, and 85,000 Orthodox priests were killed in 1937 alone. Its remaining institutions were heavily infiltrated by government informants. The reasons for communism's war on religion are myriad and the subject of other scholarship. In brief, some key factors include the atheistic ideology of the state, communism's quasi-religious nature which supplanted God with its own dogmas. The Communist state sought to define morality on its own terms without accountability to a higher power, and demanded the unquestioning loyalty of all citizens with no conscience or transcendent ethic. Those who taught scriptural ethics and obedience to God were branded as enemies of the state to be brutally suppressed and exterminated. In later years, many communist states adopted limited tolerance of religion, but in an eviscerated form with limited societal influence which was subject to heavy surveillance.
Post-World War II
Some mainline faiths in developed nations saw increasing disillusionment of their adherents several decades earlier. In the aftermath the unspeakable atrocities of World War II, many Europeans lost their faith in God. Many continued to identify themselves with mainline Christian churches, but increasingly as a matter of culture and heritage rather than of firm conviction or literal belief. An expanding minority identified as atheist or agnostic.
If the Enlightenment contributed to a perceived lack of philosophical need to invoke the divine, the agricultural and industrial revolutions, enhanced by subsequent developments in health and medicine, have reduced the perceived practical dependence on the divine. Whereas ancients implored the gods for a successful harvest, which could mean the difference between life and death, few today worry about starvation. Life expectancy and general health are far more predictable today, due to a combination of improved public safety measures (from regulation of food content to traffic laws and well-organized police and fire departments), modern medicine (safe baby deliveries, preventive medicine, and more successful treatment of illness), and widespread availability of food and shelter, decreasing risks from the environment. These developments have added immensely to human well-being and quality of life; it is their perceived impact on mankind's relationship with the divine which will be explored here.
Materialism has also been identified as a key factor in the decline of organized religion. Sociologist Ryan Cragun and Ronald Lawson's 2010 paper "The Secular Transition: The Worldwide Growth of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists" documented a significant inverse relationship between Human Development Index (HDI) and religious growth. In essence, as indicators of material prosperity grow, including health and well-being, education, and income, church growth declines. My own regression analysis (which will be presented in a subsequent post) demonstrate that this is not merely a matter of income. The negative correlation between church growth and human development index is greater than the correlation with gross domestic product per capita.
This background narrative is provided to describe some of the headwinds the Church faces today. I have attempted to set forth these matters candidly; my intention is not to challenge anyone's faith. Having acknowledged limitations and challenges to faith, the reader may wonder: why bother with organized religion at all? What does faith have to offer? Ultimately, faith is a matter of belief; no one can "prove" religious claims. Today, believers have the opportunity to be more informed than ever before. Similarly, atheism and agnosticism are also matters of belief, and not conclusions of science as their proponents often claim.
Faith offers many benefits, but Christian apologetics (defense of the faith) and advocacy of theological claims are beyond the scope of this blog. For those interested in more detailed treatment of theology and apologetics, I suggest visiting The Foundation for Apologetics Information and Research, it's Wikipedia or bookstore. I particularly enjoy the books by my friend Mike Ash, but FAIR offers a range of excellent books by well-qualified authors in addition to free resources.
From a societal perspective, the decline in religiosity represents the culmination of both old and new trends. The practices and policies of various churches and religions have also impacted receptivity, but this entry will focus only on societal (demand-side) factors.
In the ancient and medieval world, most people were religious. However, religion had different meaning and purpose for many than is the case today.
Ancient Paganism
Ancient pagans relied on mythology to explain natural phenomenon, from the daily passage of the sun ("the sun-god driving his chariot across the sky") to thunder and lightning (the storm god casting lightning bolts) to rain and fertility. In an age when only about half of children survived to adulthood, deaths from childbirth, war, and infectious disease touched almost every family, and a bad harvest could lead to famine and starvation, life was tenuous and neither rich nor poor were ever far from death. Individuals looked to propitiate the Gods for bountiful harvests, fertility, health, and military victory or protection.
The gods were deemed to be largely uninterested in the petty affairs of mortals. Their motives were primarily selfish and favor was curried through temple gifts and sacrifices rather than ethical behaviors. Crimes against other humans were deemed matters of concern to the gods only when they transgressed religious protections or involved sacrilege. The massacre or enslavement of conquered villagers, for instance, was deemed to represent no infraction, whereas killing a political opponent in the temple sanctuary or a guest under the divinely-upheld law of hospitality would invoke the wrath of the gods.
In Oedipus Rex, the protagonist's murder of several men at a crossroads in what we might today term an act of road rage does not seem to have shocked ancient theatergoers. Funerary inscriptions from around the ancient Mediterranean document that deaths from highway thuggery were common. Oedipus is presented as a great warrior rather than as a murderous psychopath. Only the fact that one of the men he killed turned out to be his father, and that he subsequently married his mother, represented crimes against the gods. Nor was any contradiction seen in Julius Caesar offering sacrifice as the Pontifex Maximus or chief high priest of Rome and subsequently committing genocide against Germanic tribes. Even in Genesis, the ham-fisted design of Joseph's brothers to kill him and take his stuff (before Reuben talked them into selling him into slavery instead) represent all to frequent reality of ancient life. Nor is Joseph's sale as a slave (a reprehensible act which today we can scarcely imagine) conveyed in the text as inherently immoral. It is rather the brothers' deceit of their father (who had tasked them to protect Joseph) which the ancient authors find objectionable.
Ancient religion was a matter of state interest to the extent that the tribe or nation required the gods' favor to prosper and to be victorious against their enemies. Thus, blasphemy against the gods was typically a capital crime out of concern that the impiety of individuals could bring down divine retribution on an entire nation. Again, piety was understood not in the modern sense of moral scruples and uprightness, but as the fulfillment of ritual obligations and avoidance of sacrilege.
As patriarchal clans coalesced into chiefdoms and then kingdoms, as some humans were elevated whereas others were enslaved. The putative egalitarianism of nomadic hunter-gatherer groups gave way to stratified social classes, from slaves with no rights to the king with vast power. Priests legitimated the power structure and social stratification in a way that rulers themselves could not, asserting that the king or chief had the right to rule. In its weak form, this paradigm maintained the the ruler was favored of the Gods; it its strong form, rulers were seen as literal gods on earth.
This contrasts to the arbitrary nature of pagan kingship, in which the ruler's actions were defined as ethical by virtue of his position, and he was not held accountable to any higher law. Modern communism, as we will see, took this approach in its most extreme form in defining its own actions as ethical and denying any higher ethic. These were not the teachings of Judaism or Christianity. Judaism maintained that whereas the king was anointed by God, he was also accountable to the Gods and could be removed for disobedience. Nonetheless, many rulers of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and other ancient kingdoms boasted on inscriptions of their ethical actions to promote the well-being of the citizenry. How much of this is real and how much represents savvy propaganda is a matter of debate, but the rulers at least acknowledged the primacy of the gods and tried to be perceived by their subjects as just and fair.
The Enlightenment and Higher Textual Criticism
Enlightenment thought challenged religiosity in two ways. The first was that through study of the natural world, religious explanations of natural phenomena and human history were increasingly supplemented by scientific ones.
To be sure, leading scientists including Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal and Johannes Kepler were deeply devoted Christians for whom science reaffirmed belief in God. Yet others, like Pierre-Simon Laplace, found no need to invoke God to provide explanations of the natural world. When asked by Napoleon why his work did not mention the Creator, Laplace is claimed to have replied that "I have no need for that hypothesis." The increasing naturalistic explanations of the world left, it seemed, less place for God.
Second, some Enlightenment thinkers challenged the miraculous stories of scripture as irrational or inconsistent with their understanding of principles observed in the natural world. In the early 18th century, the Tübingen School of theology organized by Ferdinand Christian Baur built on the work of Enlightenment thinkers to engage in "Higher Criticism" of the Bible. "Higher Criticism" analyzed the overall narratives, including contradictions, challenges, and the correlation of textual claims with outside evidence, in contrast with "Lower Criticism," which focused on reconstructing the original text through comparison and analysis of textual variants.
Higher criticism offered a useful framework for study of the Biblical text. However, the Tübingen School also presented evidence that the gospels and epistles of the New Testament had undergone changes in their development. Some were of doubtful provenance. The majority of modern Biblical scholars believe that the four canonical gospels were not written by Jesus' apostles and contain various historical and textual discrepancies, and that several epistles attributed to the Apostle Paul were not written by him.
These trends did not kill Christianity, but they did present challenges to the Church's narrative. Christians typically dealt with these issues in one of four ways, with some overlap. Some continued to assert that the Biblical teachings represented literal historical truth, and that contradictory information from science must be inaccurate. Liberal religious thinkers increasingly came to view scriptural teachings as consisting of moral lessons rather than literal history. Others discounted scripture altogether as unreliable and became atheists or agnostics. Still others remained largely unaware of the salient issues.
Communism
In the USSR, anti-religious campaigns were conducted from 1921-1928 and 1928-1941. Priests were painted as enemies of the working classes. The Russian Orthodox Church lost most of its churches, declining 29,584 to fewer than 500 in the Russian Republic, and 85,000 Orthodox priests were killed in 1937 alone. Its remaining institutions were heavily infiltrated by government informants. The reasons for communism's war on religion are myriad and the subject of other scholarship. In brief, some key factors include the atheistic ideology of the state, communism's quasi-religious nature which supplanted God with its own dogmas. The Communist state sought to define morality on its own terms without accountability to a higher power, and demanded the unquestioning loyalty of all citizens with no conscience or transcendent ethic. Those who taught scriptural ethics and obedience to God were branded as enemies of the state to be brutally suppressed and exterminated. In later years, many communist states adopted limited tolerance of religion, but in an eviscerated form with limited societal influence which was subject to heavy surveillance.
Post-World War II
Some mainline faiths in developed nations saw increasing disillusionment of their adherents several decades earlier. In the aftermath the unspeakable atrocities of World War II, many Europeans lost their faith in God. Many continued to identify themselves with mainline Christian churches, but increasingly as a matter of culture and heritage rather than of firm conviction or literal belief. An expanding minority identified as atheist or agnostic.
If the Enlightenment contributed to a perceived lack of philosophical need to invoke the divine, the agricultural and industrial revolutions, enhanced by subsequent developments in health and medicine, have reduced the perceived practical dependence on the divine. Whereas ancients implored the gods for a successful harvest, which could mean the difference between life and death, few today worry about starvation. Life expectancy and general health are far more predictable today, due to a combination of improved public safety measures (from regulation of food content to traffic laws and well-organized police and fire departments), modern medicine (safe baby deliveries, preventive medicine, and more successful treatment of illness), and widespread availability of food and shelter, decreasing risks from the environment. These developments have added immensely to human well-being and quality of life; it is their perceived impact on mankind's relationship with the divine which will be explored here.
Materialism has also been identified as a key factor in the decline of organized religion. Sociologist Ryan Cragun and Ronald Lawson's 2010 paper "The Secular Transition: The Worldwide Growth of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Seventh-day Adventists" documented a significant inverse relationship between Human Development Index (HDI) and religious growth. In essence, as indicators of material prosperity grow, including health and well-being, education, and income, church growth declines. My own regression analysis (which will be presented in a subsequent post) demonstrate that this is not merely a matter of income. The negative correlation between church growth and human development index is greater than the correlation with gross domestic product per capita.
This background narrative is provided to describe some of the headwinds the Church faces today. I have attempted to set forth these matters candidly; my intention is not to challenge anyone's faith. Having acknowledged limitations and challenges to faith, the reader may wonder: why bother with organized religion at all? What does faith have to offer? Ultimately, faith is a matter of belief; no one can "prove" religious claims. Today, believers have the opportunity to be more informed than ever before. Similarly, atheism and agnosticism are also matters of belief, and not conclusions of science as their proponents often claim.
Faith offers many benefits, but Christian apologetics (defense of the faith) and advocacy of theological claims are beyond the scope of this blog. For those interested in more detailed treatment of theology and apologetics, I suggest visiting The Foundation for Apologetics Information and Research, it's Wikipedia or bookstore. I particularly enjoy the books by my friend Mike Ash, but FAIR offers a range of excellent books by well-qualified authors in addition to free resources.
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