The Benefits of Babble

(WSJ illustration)

We have lamented before the diminishment of organizations, e.g., Elks, Kiwanis, Freemasons, where people can mingle with others outside of work and family.

The last significant redoubt is religion, but even churches have already experienced and are likely to continue to experience significant declines in attendance.

Baptist pastor Ryan Burge touts a benefit of going to church that's unrelated to increasing the chances of going to heaven. [bold added]

In 2022, 30% of people with a college degree and an income of at least $60,000 a year attended services weekly; among those with a high school diploma making less than $30,000, only 20% did.

This development has implications beyond religion itself. One of the strongest predictors of increased economic mobility is whether an individual has access to economically diverse social spaces. People at the lower end of the economic spectrum benefit greatly when they can build personal relationships with those who have higher incomes.

In an article published in the journal Nature last year, a team of researchers examined the Facebook connections of over 70 million users to find where they were most likely to encounter people with a higher income than their own. Neighborhoods, schools and workplaces turned out to offer very little economic diversity. The one venue that did was houses of worship.

Although Pastor Burge means well, I think it's a little unseemly to view church as just another network that can improve one's secular fortunes.

On the other hand I suppose it's okay to do it for the kids, i.e., for them to have playmates that are more likely (but not invariably, of course) to be raised with good character.

Well, these are desperate times for churches, so maybe it's time to host events with a promise not to proselytize:

Why not set aside a portion of the annual budget for purely social gatherings? Cook-outs, carnivals or back-to-school bashes are ideal events to welcome a diverse cross section of the community. At Ravenswood Covenant Church in Chicago, for example, a weekly farmers market for local vendors features live music and activities for kids as a way to create opportunities for social interaction.

Such events are primarily about the horizontal part of religion (individuals building relationships with each other), not the vertical part (individuals strengthening their relationship to God). They create space for people to get to know each other and create social bonds, without any real agenda or time constraint. The theology can (and should) come later.

I'm so old that I remember that one of the main criticisms of churches was that they were social clubs where people came to gossip during coffee hour. Perhaps a little social-clubbing wasn't so bad after all.