The Rise of Secularism in the U.S.

Secularism is a term used for the first time in the mid-nineteenth century to denote a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life. Anything that is above or beyond the present life should be entirely overlooked. Whether there is a God or not, whether the soul is immortal or not, are questions which at best cannot be answered, and on which consequently no motives of action can be based. A fortiori all motives derived from any organized religion are worthless. Such are the opinions of secularists.

A study done recently by the Episcopalian Trinity College in Connecticut found a significant decline in Christianity in the U.S. The drop has occurred dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels.

The survey of more than 54,000 people conducted between February and November of last year showed that the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped to 76 percent of the population, down from 86 percent in 1990. Those who do call themselves Christian are more frequently describing themselves as "nondenominational," "evangelical," or "born again," according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

The survey is conducted by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and funded by the Lilly Endowment and the Posen Foundation. Conducted in 1990, 2001 and last year, it is one of the nation's largest major surveys of religion.

The increase in people labeling themselves in more generic Christian terms corresponds strongly with the decline in people identifying themselves as Protestant, the survey found. People calling themselves mainline Protestants, including Methodists and Lutherans, have dropped to 13 percent of the population, down from 19 percent in 1990. The number of people who describe themselves as generically "Protestant" went from approximately 17 million in 1990 to 5 million.

Meanwhile, the number of people who use nondenominational terms has gone from 194,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million. Northern New England has surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country; 34 percent of Vermont residents say they have "no religion." The report said that the country has a "growing non-religious or irreligious minority." Twenty-seven percent of those interviewed said they did not expect to have a religious funeral or service when they died, and 30 percent of people who had married said their service was not religious.

Another significant report on the status of religion in the U.S. comes from an extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid. More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

Although there are about half as many Catholics in the U.S. as Protestants, the number of Catholics nearly rivals the number of members of evangelical Protestant churches and far exceeds the number of members of both mainline Protestant churches and historically fringe Protestant churches.

Other surveys - such as the General Social Surveys, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago since 1972 - find that the Catholic share of the U.S. adult population has held fairly steady in recent decades at around 25%. What this apparent stability obscures, however, is the large number of people who have left the Catholic Church. Approximately one-third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. This means that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics. These losses, however, have been partly offset by the number of people who have changed their affiliation to Catholicism (2.6% of the adult population) but more importantly by the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S. The result is that the overall percentage of the population that identifies as Catholic has remained fairly stable.

So, what are the causes of these shifts in religious identification and the underlying move toward secularism?

First, we as Americans really do not like being told what to do. Believing in a God requires accountability and rules to one degree or another and some tend to resent that.

A second factor is that many in America view Christians as rigid, condescending, self-righteous, judgmental and hypocritical. The sordid tales of Swaggart, Bakker, Haggard, and the Catholic priesthood’s child abuse scandals are where some get their perception of leaders of Christianity.

Third, many believe that anything can be acceptable as long as society decides it is. The debate in this country over same-sex marriage would not have been imaginable in my youth. In my upbringing, marriage was between a man and a woman. Today, same-sex unions are becoming legal in several states, because the courts and state legislatures approve of the practice. This trend runs contrary to the traditional teachings of virtually all major world religions. Just to cite a few: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism.

Fourth, the desire for power among those who lead us in the political arena often leads to moral compromising. I have no intention of judging any specific person’s conscience in any of the attitudes I express in this column, but I will give some well-known examples of leaders whose religion teaches one thing, but whose political leadership contradicts the basic tenants of the religion they espouse and practice on Sundays.

Our Vice-President is a Catholic; our leader of the House of Representatives is a Catholic; our governor is a Catholic, the new Secretary of Health and Human Services was reared a Catholic in Ohio and Leland, Michigan, and so on…Their stance on abortion, for example, is publicly pro-choice. Most U.S. Catholic bishops find this inconsistency to be deplorable. The platform of the Democratic Party has been, in recent years, pro-choice. Many Catholics and evangelicals are one-issue voters, because they see abortion as the killing of innocent life. Many of these voters find that, biologically, it is incomprehensible that a 10 week-old fetus with all of its fingers and toes could be disposed of as nothing more than an inflamed appendix.

Fifth, in my experience as a public school administrator, I found that many young people equate morality with legality. Abortion is legal, so it’s okay. Divorce for virtually any reason is fine, as long as the legal paperwork is in order.

Sixth, public entertainers like Bill Maher and Howard Stern ridicule organized religion often. Hollywood itself is often a soap opera of drug addiction, failed marriages, promiscuous relationships, and disdain for anything morally binding. Books and movies like "The Da Vinci Code" call into question teachings of two thousand years. Never mind that Brown used obscure apocryphal writings to create a scenario that runs like a Rex Stout mystery novel, nor that, taking Brown's cue, Ron Howard and Tom Hanks have engaged in money-making efforts to perpetuate "religious" movies that are dismissed by emminent scholars as what they are...fictional rubbish. Yet such nonsense appears on big screens in Dolby sound and has an emotional, if not intellectual, impact on viewers. To Hanks' credit, he admitted "We play fast and loose with an awful lot of fact," in the Code's sequel, "Angels and Demons." No wonder biblical fundamentalists hold to literal interpretations of the Bible and are wary of any scholarly attempts to understand how the Bible came to be. Yet such fundamentalism runs counter to the idea of divinely-designed evolution, and, as such is rejected many biblical scholars.

Seventh, peer pressure among young people invades conscience with the mantra that “if everyone is doing it, it must be normal.” So, illicit drug use, violence, promiscuity, cheating in school, bigotry, and cynical racism become acceptable. And this is not just a problem among young adults.

Eighth, the role of television, the internet, the news media, and a host of growing technological wonders of communication have little regulation. Anyone’s opinion is just as good as anyone else’s. There are no absolutes in life the secularist might argue, no rock-solid moral truths upon which one can rely. I recently had a discussion with an agnostic who attempted to prove to me that 1 + 1 does not equal 2. In the mataphysical world, for example, if eternal verities do not exist, then religion and science itself fall apart. Maybe geometry has axioms you cannot prove? If you don't accept those primary, unproveable, axioms, there goes a big chunk of math out the window.

Ninth, there is such a rush in modern life to deal with a fast-moving world, that people have little time to reflect on the purpose of their existence, little time to read the wisdom philosophers and theologians have written down through the ages, and virtually no time to be silent and reflective for any length of time. There is little time to look up at the stars and wonder how they got there, little time to examine the beauty in nature and wonder if all of this just happened by chance, or whether there was a divine designer behind it all.

Tenth, Americans are a very impatient people. If one prays to God, and there seems to be no immediate answer, then forget God. We are Americans, after all, and anything is possible if we take control. We are a self-reliant people. No need for platitudinous preaching on the weekend. We can always pull ourselves up without divine help. Chance and serendipity are the rule..."Good luck" is a phrase that rules out a God who just might be watching over us, caring for us, and asking only that we seek His will.

Eleventh, the desire to experiment and try new things is the very nature of inquisitive minds. However, each of us desires to be "center stage" in life. So, whether its tatoos, body-piercing, pink hair, New Age belief in the "power" of gems, or whatever is the newest fad, it's all about "me" getting noticed. If I have a "Me" to adore, what place is there for a God?

Twelfth, true religion demands sacrifice and suffering. No one likes to embrace suffering as a means of self-purification. Many embrace mega-churches because of the promise of monetary success if one but tithes, not to God, but to an Elmer Gantry-type minister who preaches God's blessings in this life while coming to their church in a limousine from a multi-million dollar mansion.

Finally...and I could go on and on...“political correctness” often conflicts with religion and common sense. It is now almost politically "incorrect" to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Who would have ever thought that the “War on Terror” would be officially morphed into “Overseas Contingency Operation”…or “pregnant” into “parasitically oppressed”?

Alexis deTocqueville, an educated Frenchman who came to the U.S. in 1831 when he was only 25 years old, and spent quite some time in Michigan, later wrote Democracy in America, a two-volume study of the American people and their political institutions. He had some keen insights into our country relative to religion and our form of government.



I have selected a few quotes of his that may be of interest in this column. They do not always touch on the rise of secularism, but they touch on values and moral principles pertinent to our democracy.

"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

"Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith."

"The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality."

"There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle."

"There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."

"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own."

"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness."

It all boils down to what I see as the inherent danger of a democracy vis-à-vis religion: Democracy has the capability of marginalizing morality itself and installing the new state religion: Secularism.