Today is Easter Sunday. For many churches, it’s the most attended service of the year. Traditionally, it means attendees dressing in their finest outfits, longer, more festive rituals, and restaurants and kitchen tables stuffed with families marking the occasion.
So it’s fitting, if not particularly encouraging, to note that this Easter, a study was just released that shows young Americans are giving up on attending religious services — in droves.
They’re not walking away. They’re running. In this study, weekly church attendance between 2003-13 sagged from 26% to 8%. Those who never went rose from 17% to 58%.
In the 1970s, the percentage of people Americans who did not identify with any religion was 1 in 20.
Today it’s nearly 1 in 3.
But what’s fascinating is that many of those who say they quit attending a church, synagogue or mosque claim they are not giving up on faith or God, just the institutions that frame them.
We’ve gotten used to “work from home.”
“Pray from home” is having a moment.
Thoughts and private prayers
Now, I’ve always been wary about polls about religion, mostly because they rely on answers from the people being asked. And when it comes to faith, God knows, we tend to bend the facts.
Many of us are dishonest about our religious attendance. Some of us consider being “involved” as paying dues. We claim to fervently believe in our religion’s values without having ever read their texts. And we offer phrases like “thoughts and prayers” when there is often no prayer involved.
All of this may come from guilt, the sense that we are supposed to be more faithful than we’re behaving. And one of the easiest ways to ease our conscience is to tell a pollster we are “spiritual, but not religious.”
Which is what many of the respondents said.
Now, I can understand why young people might embrace this idea. Many religious rituals seem archaic to them. The language is sometimes strange, the prayer melodies difficult.
But churches and synagogues have made major concessions to this. It is not uncommon now to find guitar-playing cantors or rock band worship music. Some mega churches offer services with lattes and muffins.
Yet attendance keeps falling, and disillusion keeps being given as the reason. Some in this recent study cited disagreements with the church over LBGTQ+ issues, or what they saw as hypocrisy between faith and dogma.
One respondent said she believed in God, but “not in the way churches tell you to.”
Which begs the question, if you claim to be faithful, but you walk away from a religion because of what the religion tells you to do, are you just creating your own?
Connections for generations
At the risk of sounding old — then again, God is older than any of us, so why should age matter? — there’s a fine line between righteousness and self-righteousness. I get that some religious tenets may seem outdated. But chucking centuries of practice because one thing about it bugs you may be throwing out the Bible with the bathwater.
Besides, when it comes to faith, rituals and traditions aren’t there to burden you, they are there to connect you. I remember asking a rabbi once why he so reveled in the daily practices of his Judaism. And he said, “Because I know that my parents did these things. My grandparents, too. All the way back through the ages. I am connected to the people on my faith through these acts.”
He also once wisely said, “Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just what you believe.”
Now, this works both ways. People who regularly attend church services, then turn their back on their neighbors or poor people, aren’t living the tenets of their faith, no matter how perfect their attendance.
But similarly, if being “spiritual” means you believe in a higher power that is only there to help you when you call, you may be asking too little of yourself.
The idea behind churches, mosques, and synagogues is partly that community is an integral part of religion. And that sharing, supporting and being involved with others is faith in practice, versus faith in your head.
Search for community
I suspect that some of the results in this poll reflect a world where we celebrate ourselves more and more. And where “connection” means sending a text on your phone while you lie on a couch. When we can FaceTime anyone, anywhere, the need to go to services to connect may seem superfluous.
But it isn’t. Virtual connection is not the same as in-the-flesh connection. And saying you believe in a higher power isn’t the same as putting some effort into it.
This is not a knock on meditation or private prayer. People do find God in their own way. But it seems no small coincidence that the world’s major religions spell out actions to demonstrate belief. Baptism. Holy Communion. Tefillin in Judaism. Puja in Hinduism. Ahdan in Islam.
These things are not easy and are sometimes onerous.
Kind of like faith itself.
A recent New York Times piece contrasted Americans’ belief in a higher power with their increasing disinterest in traditional practice. And with the story was a photo of joggers, over the tagline: “As Americans have left religion, some have turned to running clubs for community.”
If God laughs, that one had to bring a chuckle. Because people often join running clubs as a nudge to do something they’re tempted to skip.
Kind of like … going to church?
Contact Mitch Albom:malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events atMitchAlbom.com. Follow him@mitchalbom.
