Christian Smith's Paralyzing Pessimism

Looks like it's all over for Christian faith. Again.

Christian Smith’s Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America made me sad. Not really for the reasons it was supposed to make me sad. It doesn’t please me, of course, that organized religion has been declining for several decades. Churches have been closing as once-thriving congregations peter out. Since the mid-twentieth century, each generation has been less observant than the one before, both squishier on Christian orthodoxy and less likely to attend church. That’s all quite depressing, but, I was already aware. Old news.

What made me sad was the way that Smith himself seemed to have given up completely on institutional faith. Not personally perhaps, but as a cultural force. Institutional churches will never again shape America or the West. Despite that very bleak diagnosis, however, the mood of this book is not so much sad as sour. Some writers on this topic try to draw out the human dimension, crack a window of hope somewhere, or strategize about best-case scenarios. Smith seems almost to take a grim pleasure in his role as Prophet of Doom. One strange segment of the book bombards the reader with a rapid-fire barrage of metaphors, all reinforcing the basic point that It’s All Over. Institutional faith is compared throughout to archaic devices: typewriters, rotary phones, record players. Smith regularly references the “cultural zeitgeist,” a foe that is at once vague and (apparently) utterly unstoppable.

In short, Christian Smith wants everyone to understand that worshiping God in a traditional church will soon be a personal eccentricity, like an enduring attachment to vinyl. Moral Therapeutic Deism has won.

It would be foolish to deny that the numbers from the last half-century are bad. Christians have recently (and rightly) been celebrating an uptick in conversions, but thus far these are a drop in the bucket after decades of hemorrhaging membership. In Smith’s view, this is a consequence of a culture deeply shaped by technology, relativism, expressive individualism, anti-institutionalism, and a preference for personally tailored forms of spirituality. In such a world, set liturgies or catechisms will naturally be rejected in favor of buffet-style religion, presented as an option menu or choose-your-own adventures. Modern people want their faiths to cater to personal feelings and individualized needs. Smith anticipates that Americans will remain “spiritual” in some sense, flitting perhaps from Transcendental Meditation to Marie Kondo to a New Thought church or neo-pagan community, but whatever the latest fad, they’re exchanging credo for volo. They don’t want to be straitjacketed by inflexible moral codes or ancient liturgies.

So, thus far at least I do agree with Smith. He doesn’t think we should find too much hope in the fact that many, perhaps most, “dechurched” Americans (one-time churchgoers who no longer attend) still have neutral-to-positive feelings about institutional faith. It is interesting of course to learn that most former churchgoers aren’t intensely bitter, so much as apathetic. They don’t hate Christianity; they just got busy and didn’t make time for it anymore. Quite often there are some other relevant circumstances: they moved, dislike a particular pastor’s preaching style, or felt socially awkward in a particular congregation. So they stopped coming and then just didn’t get around to finding a church they liked better. To some, like Evangelical writers Jim Davis and Michael Graham, this seems like good news. If ex-churchgoers aren’t actively hostile to the faith, they might be lured back. Have more parties! Invite people to dinner! Be friendlier!

Smith is less sanguine, essentially reasoning that churches are fighting a losing battle if people care so little about them that they’ll shrug and wander away at the slightest provocation. Christian communities aren’t perfect! They’re made up of fallen humans, like other communities. If people aren’t willing to live with that, a few more potlucks or game nights probably won’t make that big of a difference. I’m inclined to agree.

But I don’t agree that expressive individualism and neo-pagan cults are simply our culture now. Smith likes to say that “deep culture matters,” and I agree. But those things are not deep! There are, to be sure, some ways in which modernity has changed human beings and our way of experiencing the world, and Christianity must adapt in certain ways, to speak to people where they presently are. But the idea that new-age fads could take the place of institutional religion seems fanciful. They don’t have helpful answers to hard questions. They can’t supply meaning and order to people’s lives. They don’t bridge the gap between past and future, as a healthy and fruitful tradition must do. Shallow things don’t stand the test of time.

Occasionally, when a very picky child refuses to eat anything nutritious, a good strategy is simply to wait until he gets hungry enough to eat what’s on offer. Eventually it will happen. Nobody dies on hunger strike in protest of eggplant parmesan. Admittedly, a parent would normally refuse the child cookies or candy in the interim, and we cannot ban “junk food” spirituality to prevent Americans from choosing self-help fads or feel-good pseudo-faiths over more spiritually nutritious alternatives. After awhile though, even kids get tired of trying to live on candy. Are Americans really such a frivolous people that we’ll try to survive endlessly on cookies? I don’t believe it.

Anyway, that’s how I’m placing my bets. When shallow do-it-yourself spirituality fails to supply needed answers, direction, and healing, I think many will search for better alternatives. Seek and ye shall find.

Of course, there’s an underlying assumption there: That Christianity does, in fact, have “the goods.” That’s central to the project of Christendom Reborn. I do think we have what modern people most need, so, we should tell them. Like Jesus instructed us to do.

Of course there are some places in the world where Christianity is already growing like gangbusters. That’s tomorrow’s topic. Stay tuned for a discussion of Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom.