Going secular?
I’ve had some interesting conversations the last few weeks sparked by my post about religious remembrance services in Binghamton.
I suggested that maybe it’s time for more secular-minded people, like myself, to develop parallel rituals — ones that celebrate community, offer comfort in times of grief — outside the context of religious faith.
One of my clergy friends emailed me a link to this article in the New York Times, about atheists who are speaking more publicly about their views.
“It’s not about carrying banners or protesting,” said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. “The most important thing is coming out of the closet.”
Two recent studies suggest that the number of non-religious Americans is growing fast. The massive ARIS study found that in 1990 86% of us described ourselves as Christian. The percentage is now 76%.
(In demographic terms, a 1% loss per year represents a revolutionary change…)
“The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions,” the authors conclude, “but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.”
A Pew study released earlier this month found a huge amount of churn within religious communities, but concluded, “The category of people who are unaffiliated with any particular religion has grown more rapidly than any other religious group in recent decades.”
The question posed by my religious friends is this: Where does morality come from if more of us (especially more young people) don’t get their values from church? Or synagogue? Or mosque?
A lot of Christians, in particular, are sincerely worried about a creeping moral decay in American society.
My answer, briefly, is two-fold: First, I see little evidence that church-goers are more or less moral than non-church-goers. In ethical terms, my secular friends and my “believer” friends are indistinguishable.
Second, I think our society has produced a new menu of moral and ethical resources. From poets to ethicists to philosophers, the secular options are beautifully rich.
I found this passage the other day in Joseph Campbell’s “Creative Mythology.”
[I]n the fields of literature, secular philosophy, and the arts, a totally new type of non-theological revelation, of great scope, great depth, and infinite variety, has become the actual spiritual guide and structuring force of the civilization.
So what do you think? Are we becoming more secular? Does a more secular future mean a less moral future? Is America still a Christian (or Judeo-Christian) nation? How will American culture accomadate a new, more outspoken “non-faith” community?
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