America's Religious Identity -- Boom, Shocks, and After-shocks (Part 2 -- Long 1960s)

In the Post World War II era, religion boomed in America, along with all sorts of other service and fraternal organizations.  Their wives, many of whom had worked at America's factories during the war, returned home, had babies (remember Leave It to Beaver?).   This is the generation to which the famed Baby Boomer Generation was born, and as the War babies and post-war babies matured into adulthood, they encountered a new kind of world, and in many ways remade the world -- especially religiously. 

According to Robert Putnam and Dennis Campbell, writing in American Grace, there has been one major shock (the Long 1960s) and two Aftershocks since the religious boom of the 1950s.  Religious attendance among young adults reached its apex in 1957, when 51% of young adults claimed regular church attendance (growing from about 31% in 1950).  That number would fall just as quickly as it rose as the 1960s hit.   

This new era of "Shock" is labeled the "Long 1960s" by Putnam and Campbell, because it stretched into the early 70s. As for me, having been born in 1958, I was spending my days in elementary school and junior high.  This was a decade of exceptional change, as war babies and the first cohorts of Baby Boomers started coming of Age.  During this long "decade" we witnessed the full expansion of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, three assassinations (two Kennedys and a King), and the birth of the sexual revolution.  Yes this was the era of "Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll," and of course the period in which a group of theologians declared that "God is Dead."   Historian Sydney Ahlstrom is quoted by the authors:  "It was perfectly clear to any reasonably observant American that the postwar revival of the Eisenhower years had completely sputtered out, and that the nation was experiencing a crise de conscience of unprecedented depth" (p. 92). 

Of course not everyone joined in embracing this season of change -- it was the youngest of adults who came of age during this period -- the older generations continued attending church and doing what they had been doing, and many as we'll see in Part 3, were scandalized by what they were observing, especially regarding the change in understanding of the permissibility of premarital sex.  In the cohort that came of age in the 1960s 80% said it was only sometimes wrong or not wrong at all, and in 1970 nearly 50% of Americans reported that they were more liberal on this subject than were their parents.  Although we will witness a conservative reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1960s, even among younger adults (first aftershock) there would continue to be considerable liberality on this subject.  

But, our focus here is not on politics and sexuality, but on religion, and here things were changing as well.  The authors note that whereas huge numbers were heading off to seminary in the 1950s and early 1960s, a survey of clergy in 1971 showed that 40% of clergy under forty were considering leaving the ministry.  The sale of religious publications dropped by a third.  Oh, and this was also a period of religious experimentation -- the beginnings of what has become known as the "spiritual but not religious" group.  

Here is the kicker that I want to leave with you, before I turn to the first aftershock in the next posting.  Concerning the dramatic decline in religious observance that was seen in the 1960s, Putnam and Campbell write:

The fraction of all Americans who said that religion was "very important" to them personally fell from 75 percent in 1952 and 70 percent as late as 1965 to 52 percent in 1978, while the fraction who said that "religion can answer today's problems" dropped from 81 percent in 1957 to 62 percent  in 1974.  According to the Gallup Poll, weekly church attendance nationwide plummeted from 49 percent in 1958 to 42 percent in 1969, by far the largest decline on this measure ever recorded in such a brief period. (American Grace, pp, 97-98). 

What is most telling is that even as total attendance figures saw  a decline, this was most pronounced among young adults.  They note that "among twenty-somethings, the rate of decline was more than twice the national average."  For those fifty and over, there was no change recorded, but for those who were age 18 -29, the drop from 1957 to 1971 was from 51% to 28%.  This cohort is now in their late 50s to early 60s, and while some of them came back to church, not all did.    The reasons for the decline are many -- including reactions to war, civil rights, sexuality, and more. 

This was the period of Shock, there was an aftershock to follow, and we must move to it in the next posting.

America’s Decline in Church Attendance -- Sightings

Perhaps it's fitting that the Monday after I returned from a brief but immensely helpful Pastor's Conference, where Diana Butler Bass helped us wrestle with the complexities of life in America and the implications of that complexity for the churches, that Martin Marty would proffer a column on the decline of church attendance.  Things aren't as bad in the US as in Europe, but there are plenty of red flags on the field, warning us that things aren't getting better.  My congregation is making some strides, but not quickly.  So, what are the implications?  I think one of the important points made here is that congregations and denominations have an important role in carrying into the future the beliefs, the  practices, the values, the ethics of faith -- and that being "spiritual" can't do that job.  There is a value in institutions, for they alone have the strength to continue bearing the load.  I invite you to read Marty's Sightings column and offer your thoughts. 

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Sightings 9/26/2010

America’s Decline in Church Attendance

-- Martin E. Marty

Pope Benedict XVI has expressed grave concern over the decline of church participation in Western Europe. His trip to the UK last week provided opportunities for him to address it. Most commentators in religious and secular communications found almost nothing that he said or did which might help reverse the downward trends. The fact that large crowds appeared at several of his appearances did not impress them; throngs line up for popes as celebrities. I’ve asked after each of Pope John Paul’s travels, which often drew masses of young people: did his Pope-mobiled words and gestures, eloquent though they be, lead any young man to enter the seminary ranks with intention to become ordained? Did mass attendance swell a month or a year later? Maybe the answer is yes, but it’s hard to find evidence.

Observation of the North American scene and data gathered by many polling agencies provide a cause for separating this continent’s milder declines from the plot which defines Europe today. So sudden have been the marked trends showing disaffection that leaders have not internalized the evidence. Exceptions? Yes, for now, Latino/a Roman Catholics sign up enough to keep the Catholic rolls deceptively high, if only relatively. For now, some astute, market-oriented mega-churches keep prospering, though even among them opinion-pollers and people-counters see signs which prompt concern.

Those who do care and who set out to address the issue of decline begin in a state of alarm. I was recently on a panel with an official who knew all about weapons of mass destruction, from nukes to germ-warfare capsules. Someone asked, “Knowing all that, how do you sleep?” He answered, “I sleep like a baby—for fifteen minutes, and then I wake up crying.” But sleeping or crying does not help and will not help people who seek to address the issues signified in the trends.

Some graphs and paragraphs in Lovett H. Weems, Jr.’s Christian Century show that from 1994 to 2000, two of four studied mainline Protestant church bodies showed modest gains and two others saw only modest losses. But from 2001 to 2008 the “growing” United Methodist Church saw the greatest plunge (-17.86%), and its losses were almost matched in the other three. Disconcerting to church-growth experts was Weems’s note that in the earlier decade, greatest growth was among the largest local churches—but that in the more recent decade, the largest among them suffered most decline.

Some readers may wonder why in columns like this, which are to be about “public religion,” we talk about church and synagogue (etc.) attendance and participation--aren’t their institutions part of “private religion?” Emphatically no. They are the bearers of traditions, the living expositors of sacred texts, the tellers of stories, the troop-suppliers for voluntary activities, the shapers of values fought over in the political realms.

Why are they declining? Certainly not because a few atheists write best-sellers. I always look for the simplest causes, such as rejection of drab and conflicted congregations and denominations. Or changes in habits. I watch the ten thousands running past in Sunday marathons or heading to the kids’ soccer games and recall that their grandparents and parents kept the key weekend times and places open for sacred encounters. Oh, and “being spiritual” is not going to help keep the stories, the language of ethics, and the pool of volunteers thriving. Their disappearance has consequences.

References

Lovett H. Weems, Jr. “No Shows: The Decline in Worship Attendance.” The Christian Century, September 22, 2010.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.