Legal Protections Aren't Just for One Side

Although there have been a number of religious-freedom disputes regarding Islam, the more highly publicized state vs. religion cases have involved conservative Christians. In Masterpiece Cakeshop the U.S. Supreme Court supported the bakery when it declined to design a wedding cake for a same-sex couple when the bakery was ordered to do so by the State of Colorado. More recently we've posted about Washington State's efforts to break the seal of the confessional and the U.S. Postal Service's refusal to accommodate an employee when he didn't want to work on Sundays for religious reasons.

Christ Episcopal Church members demonstrate against the Toms River eminent domain action (ENS)

Christ Episcopal Church of Toms River, NJ wanted to build a homeless shelter, after which town officials, who opposed construction, sought to seize the property "by eminent domain if necessary, to create new public parkland."

Christ Episcopal Church has two strong lines of defense. The first is that Toms River may be abusing the power of eminent domain. (Fifth Amendment: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.")

The town’s proposal is “clearly an abusive use of eminent domain,” Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, told ENS, though it would be up to the courts to decide whether such a move would be illegal. He thinks the church has a strong argument that the officials’ actions really were intended to thwart the congregation’s interest in creating a homeless shelter on the property.

The second line is that the town is infringing upon the church's First Amendment rights ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.") Saner heads in the Toms River government appear to have prevailed for now, as the eminent domain action has been postponed.

After an initial outcry, the vote on the plan was postponed until July 30. More recently, Mayor Dan Rodrick postponed the vote indefinitely, likely because of growing public opposition. He now says the town will go through with the vote only if a poll of town residents he plans to conduct on the subject reveals majority support for it.

This story is also noteworthy because Mayor Rodrick and six of the seven Township Council members are Republicans, the party which generally takes the side of Christian churches in battles with government. To Republicans this is a reminder that the First Amendment protects everyone, friend and foe alike.

Endangered Seal

(Image from ncronline)

The State of Washington wants Catholic priests to break the seal of the confessional: [bold added]

A new law, signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson in May, would require clergy to violate the confessional’s seal of confidentiality if they hear about potential child abuse. Failing to break the seal and report suspected abuse to authorities carries a penalty of up to 364 days in jail and a fine as high as $5,000.

Catholic clergy in the state sued, and U.S. District Judge David Estudillo of the Western District of Washington blocked the law with a preliminary injunction on July 18. Judge Estudillo ruled the law likely violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion because it denies priests the confidentiality extended to other professions. The state has until Aug. 18 to appeal.

Confession is an essential practice of the Catholic faithful, who believe it reconciles a sinner with God. In the sacrament, the penitent admits wrongs and receives God’s forgiveness through the priest’s prayer of absolution. The seal of confession is so crucial to the Catholic faith that any priest who violates it is automatically excommunicated.

“For us, that’s a matter of spiritual life and death,” says Bishop Robert Barron, an American Catholic evangelist who filed an amicus brief in the case. The bishop says even “the slightest suspicion” that one’s confessed sins might be repeated elsewhere is an obstacle to the sacrament. Any law that might discourage a repentant sinner from seeking God’s forgiveness would hinder the free exercise of religion. Washington’s law is “the most egregious violation of religious liberty” in the U.S. right now, Bishop Barron said.

Child abuse is a heinous crime but is not so horrible that lawmakers want attorneys to break confidentiality with accused clients:

Washington lawmakers passed another bill this year exempting higher education attorneys from reporting abuse related to clients they represent. For these legislators, sins confessed to a priest don’t merit the confidentiality of what is said to an attorney. That “appears to be a textbook example” of targeting religious conduct, Judge Estudillo wrote.

Attorney-client privilege originated from English common law and does not derive from the Constitution, while confessional confidentiality is protected by the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"). The latter would seem to have a stronger pedigree constitutionally, but your humble blogger is no lawyer.

Timelines Timeliness

(Image from eBay)

Just in time to assuage unhappiness with current politics, the concept of multiverse timelines has caught fire:

On Joe Rogan’s podcast last month, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen explained his theory that “the timeline has split twice in the last nine months. . . . The world was going to head in two totally different directions.” The first split was when Donald Trump was shot in Butler, Pa., on July 13. The second was on Election Day. Twitter is awash with posts from some users exclaiming that they “love this timeline” and others lamenting that they “hate this timeline.” Ezra Klein, doyen of the intellectual left, said in a Nov. 19 podcast that he’s watching Mr. Trump’s nominees “to see what timeline we’re in.”

The notion of this timeline implies the existence of that timeline—an alternative reality in which things unfold differently. Much as the idea “We are living in a simulation” saturated social media during the Covid-19 pandemic, “this timeline” is the latest exclamation of discomfort with our present reality.

Though it’s especially prominent among those who are online and anti-Trump, references to the timeline aren’t the sole province of the left. Last month, David Friedberg, co-host of the tech podcast “All-In,” repeatedly used the term to indicate his elation with political circumstances: “I am so shocked and surprised in a positive way that we ended up on this particular timeline. . . . We’re on this timeline and I do think the United States, as Neo, dodged a lot of bullets here.”

The invocation of Neo, hero of the film franchise “The Matrix,” is telling. The concept of timelines originates in science fiction and is linked intimately with the multiverse, the idea of parallel realities with similar people and personalities but different events and outcomes. This connection to science fiction is perhaps why the theme has resonated with Silicon Valley’s newly right-leaning techno-utopians, as well as members of the left.

Human beings have always believed--or imagined--that there are realities different and maybe better than the one we are stuck in. From heaven to reincarnation, from a simulated universe to a multiverse, there may be a super-reality where our good behavior is rewarded or our lives can have a second chance.

Just as Marxists saw benefits in religion because it was the "opiate" of the masses, conservatives won't decry multiverse-ology because it keeps many leftists quiet, and besides, it may be true (!). Meanwhile, your humble blogger has given up trying to understand the current timeline and is just enjoying the show.

David Mamet: "America..will go one with Nineveh and Tyre. But not today."

David Mamet: the America-in-decline narrative is akin to
Israel's 40 years in the wilderness. (image from Medium)

Pulitzer-winning playwright David Mamet says that America's decline, prior to the November election, was due to individuals' fear of challenging the dominant narrative: [bold added]

Yet half of America not only abides but fervently supports a codependent decline to poverty, crime and a nascent police state. Why? The leftist politicians and their media courtiers and designated beneficiaries profited from the perks of power. But why did the everyday American endorse them and their fear mongering? The actual threat wasn’t global warming, Islamophobia, the Supreme Court, the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Mr. Trump. It was exclusion from the herd.

An existential secret is one whose revelation would destroy the group. If dad is a drug addict or a sex criminal, acknowledging it would shatter the family. The protection of the secret becomes the family’s unifying endeavor. If anyone says anything, it might reveal that everyone is in on the secret. The sick family devotes all necessary energies to collusion—to mutual and self-censorship.

During the past four years, American politics has been dominated by a coalition each of whose members, like codependent kin, has its own investment in group integrity and the power it derives therefrom. The superrich, academia, Islamists, Marxists and the media have colluded to suppress the true and impose the false.

We know that their perfidies, lawfare, slander, blacklisting and civil persecution were practiced on conservatives and Republicans, particularly on Mr. Trump. But the suppression was targeted primarily at their own voters.

To remain unthreatened by reason, the liberal populace had to be convinced to endorse various lies and fantasies: Black Lives Matter, Israel’s perfidy, unlimited abortion as a woman’s right, men’s right to compete in women’s sports, the abolition of the police, Mr. Trump’s demonic power and so on.

Why would rational people vote to destroy their borders, their cities, their jobs and their children? For the same reason the sick family must tolerate its dysfunction: The co-opted liberal electorate was terrified that any deviation would result in destruction of its protective unit. As it would.

While a reader may disagree with David Mamet's list of "lies and fantasies," there is no denying that Democratic voters were asked to accept abrupt reversals of positions this year--from President Biden's sudden cognitive decline to the newfound acceptability of fracking, law enforcement, and Christianity.

Even the one theme that they stuck with to the end--Trump is Hitler--was cast overboard the day after the election by Democratic politicians who promised to work with the President-elect and opinion-writers eager for an interview.

The important lesson, IMHO, is not the wrongness of Democratic policies but the fact that their thought leaders didn't even believe their own arguments. They look like people who will say anything to acquire power, and, if I were a follower, I wouldn't believe anything they had to say.

Still at the Acorn Stage

Some in Hollywood understand that the woke messaging (the villain is the white guy, the heroine of color is strong and independent and has no weaknesses) that has lost millions (see Disney's Star Wars prequel the Acolyte) requires a change of direction. The success of small-budget religious, specifically Christian-themed, movies has attracted investors' attention:

Faith-based film makers are getting bigger budgets.

[Jon] Erwin, 42, is a Christian filmmaker whose driving purpose is to put out uplifting stories that families can watch together. After nearly two decades of making small-budget movies in the parallel world of faith-based entertainment, he’s part of a loose tribe of filmmakers, producers and independent studios from that realm now storming into the mainstream.

Some key successes turned this corner of the industry into a hotbed. The Chosen, a multiseason TV drama about the life of Jesus and his apostles, became one of the most popular series in the world. Jesus Revolution, a movie by Erwin about a pastor and a hippie evangelist who create a surge of groovy Christians, pulled people into theaters in the shaky movie market of early 2023 and grossed about $54 million. Sound of Freedom, a thriller about child trafficking, had nothing to do with religion on the surface—but it galvanized religious viewers and grossed $250 million worldwide on a $15 million budget, becoming a box-office phenomenon second only to “Barbenheimer” last summer.

While my values are more aligned with Christianity than wokeness, I hope the new family-values film makers don't forget that the story is the key. Their movies will fail like the wokesters' if they forget that audiences want to be entertained, not lectured to.

The Arrogation of Godly Language

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and unto God the things that are God's"
----Rubens' The Tribute Money

Catholic priest Brian Graebe of the New York Archdiocese decries the secularization of "godly language": [bold added]

[The] arrogation of godly language for civil matters follows a recent trend in political discourse. That was perhaps most notable after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. In condemning the attacks, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to the building as a “temple of democracy.” A temple is a place to worship God and, in a specific Judeo-Christian understanding, to offer him sacrifices. The U.S. Capitol is famous, iconic, and worthy of protection and respect. But it isn’t a temple, and democracy isn’t a religion.

Other examples abound, from Donald Trump’s declaring himself the “chosen one” to congressmen condemning anti-Israel demonstrators for “desecrating” various landmarks, not simply defacing or vandalizing them.

Jesus warned against confusing the things of God with the things of Caesar. Yet an increasingly irreligious culture seeks to adopt these orphaned words. In so doing, many give an outsize importance to the things of this world, to civic monuments and political processes. Scripture reminds us that we have no lasting city here and that the world as we know it is passing away.

My own pet peeve is the gross over-use of the phrase "existential threat," as in "Trump is an existential threat to democracy" or "climate change is an existential threat to the planet." Why the apocalyptic language for these problems--indeed, if these are problems at all?

Mr. Trump, even if he does become President, will be gone in four years, and there are no signs that his political philosophy--supposedly the ruin of America's constitutional order--has a cohesiveness that will last years beyond his term in office.

As for climate change--it appears that the elites who say that it's urgent we solve the problem now or we're all doomed don't behave as if that's true.

My humble advice is not to panic, don't give the Chicken Littles more power over our lives, and go to church (or study the Cold War's mutually assured destruction philosophy) to learn what a true apocalypse might look like.

"endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"

Trump supporters pray at the site of the
assassination attempt Saturday. (WSJ)

While there has been a great amount of contemporary controversy surrounding the appropriateness of religion in the public square, there is no question that one of the founding documents of the United States of America was based on Christian principles: [bold added]

There is ample precedent for a religious interpretation of the Declaration. On July 4, 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams described it as the culmination of a Christian revolution. In “theories of the crown and the mitre,” Adams proposed, “man had no rights.” The discovery of inalienable liberty of conscience in matters of doctrine led to a re-evaluation of man’s obligation to ecclesiastical and civil powers. Whig reformers took tentative steps against “the oppressors of church and state” in Britain but still saw freedom as a privilege. The natural basis of rights was recognized only in America, where the government was founded on “a social compact formed upon the elementary principles of civil society, in which conquest and servitude had no part.”

...Adams’s words remind us that reconciliation has always been a feature of the American enterprise. We’d do well to heed his encouragement “to bless the Author of our being for the bounties of his providence, in casting our lot in this favored land; to remember with effusions of gratitude the sages who put forth, and the heroes who bled for the establishment of this Declaration.”

One doesn’t need to be a Christian nationalist to believe something miraculous happened in Philadelphia in 1776. Yet appreciation for that event should make even secular Americans wonder whether there are forces at work in history that transcend human understanding.

The Bible cites frequent instances of God's intervention in the affairs of man. His absence in the modern era--if He didn't stop the Holocaust of the Chosen People, when will He intervene?--lends credence to the notion that the Bible's examples were greatly exaggerated, or even imaginary, and/or that God has chosen to be aloof.

Every now and then a miracle occurs--the Founders' creation of a governing structure that lasted over 200 years, the clearing of the weather on D-Day, or the split-second turning of Donald Trump's head--resurrects the idea that God watches over the United States of America. Your humble blogger doesn't quite believe it either, but it's comforting to know that it's a possibility.

And now, for your edification, here is ChatGPT's take:

What evidence is there that the United States of America is a Christian nation?

The question of whether the United States is a Christian nation is complex and can be approached from various perspectives: historical, cultural, legal, and demographic. Here are some points often cited as evidence supporting the idea that the U.S. has Christian foundations:

Historical Evidence

1. Founding Fathers' Beliefs: Many of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, were influenced by Christian ideals. Some of their writings reflect Christian values.

2. Colonial Charters and State Constitutions: Early colonial charters and state constitutions often referenced Christianity and required officeholders to be Christians.

3. Declaration of Independence: The Declaration of Independence references a "Creator" and "Nature's God," which some interpret as aligning with Christian beliefs.

Cultural Evidence

1. Major Holidays: Christmas and Easter, both Christian holidays, are national holidays.

2. Pledge of Allegiance: The Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase "under God," which was added during the Cold War era.

3. In God We Trust: This phrase is the national motto and appears on U.S. currency.

Legal Evidence

1. Supreme Court Rulings: Some Supreme Court rulings, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries, made references to the U.S. being a "Christian nation" in dicta (statements made in decisions that are not legally binding).

2. Chaplains in Government: Both the U.S. Congress and the military have chaplains who are predominantly Christian.

Demographic Evidence

1. Population: A significant majority of Americans identify as Christian. According to various surveys, the percentage has been decreasing but remains a majority.

Counterpoints

1. Constitutional Secularism: The U.S. Constitution does not establish a national religion and includes the Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

2. Diversity of Belief: The U.S. is home to a wide variety of religions and belief systems, and religious freedom is a foundational principle.

3. Founding Fathers' Intent: While many Founding Fathers were influenced by Christian ideals, they were also influenced by Enlightenment thinking and intended to create a secular government.

In summary, while there are many elements of American history, culture, and law that reflect Christian influences, the U.S. was explicitly founded with a separation of church and state, and it is home to a diverse array of religious beliefs.

We'll Miss It When It's Gone

Graph from https://allisonkyff.domains.trincoll.edu/

Related to last Sunday's post ("A Progressive Sees the Social Benefits of Religion"): a "growing body of research" covering many thousands of people showed religiosity is correlated with good mental health.

“There is a mounting body of empirical evidence suggesting that people who are active in their faith tend to be the recipients of a number of important physical and mental-health benefits,” says Byron Johnson, professor of social sciences at Baylor University.

Believing in a higher power can foster a sense of connection, research has shown. Helping others, which many religions facilitate through organized-outreach programs, builds compassion, which psychologists have found can improve mental health.

Now that religion is on the wane its societal benefits have become more obvious, even to social scientists who are not religious advocates. Let's hope that it's not too late for organized religion to escape its own "doom loop."

A Progressive Sees the Social Benefits of Religion

(Atlantic image)

A self-proclaimed Progressive agnostic now laments the emptying of pews across America:

As an agnostic, I have spent most of my life thinking about the decline of faith in America in mostly positive terms. Organized religion seemed, to me, beset by scandal and entangled in noxious politics. So, I thought, what is there really to mourn? Only in the past few years have I come around to a different view. Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence...

Suddenly, in the 1990s, the ranks of nonbelievers surged. An estimated 40 million people—one in eight Americans—stopped going to church in the past 25 years, making it the “largest concentrated change in church attendance in American history,” according to the religion writer Jake Meador. In 2021, membership in houses of worship fell below a majority for the first time on record...

That relationship with organized religion provided many things at once: not only a connection to the divine, but also a historical narrative of identity, a set of rituals to organize the week and year, and a community of families. PRRI found that the most important feature of religion for the dwindling number of Americans who still attend services a few times a year included “experiencing religion in a community” and “instilling values in their children.”..

“Places that used to anchor community life, like libraries and school gyms and union halls, have become less accessible or shuttered altogether.” Many people, having lost the scaffolding of organized religion, seem to have found no alternative method to build a sense of community...

I’m not advocating that every atheist and agnostic in America immediately choose a world religion and commit themselves to weekly church (or synagogue, or mosque) attendance. But I wonder if, in forgoing organized religion, an isolated country has discarded an old and proven source of ritual at a time when we most need it. Making friends as an adult can be hard; it’s especially hard without a scheduled weekly reunion of congregants. Finding meaning in the world is hard too; it’s especially difficult if the oldest systems of meaning-making hold less and less appeal. It took decades for Americans to lose religion. It might take decades to understand the entirety of what we lost.

I appreciate what he's trying to do, but writer Derek Thompson's reconsideration of the value of religion is along utilitarian lines; just as Marxists trash religion because it causes more people to be anti-abortion or pro-military or less inclined to overthrow capitalism, religion is beneficial because it encourages face-to-face interactions, makes people put down their smartphones, gets them off the couch on Sunday mornings, etc.

"Go to church, young man, it's good for you," is not an inspiring motivator. Is the religion true, does it help explain what's going on with you and the world?--those are the reasons you should go.

Life's Purpose: A Psychiatrist Has the Answer

I'm always interested in hearing what people have to say about life's purpose (while noting that a sizeable number who are overwhelmingly atheist assert that life has no purpose).

Yale Associate Professor of Psychiatry Samuel Wilkinson thinks he has found the answer based on his studies of evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology.

In an interview with Yale News, Wilkinson discusses what inspired his fascination with understanding life’s purpose, how nature instills in humans a “dual potential,” and the evolutionary forces that spur us to be our more altruistic selves.

“When you combine the concept that we are free to choose with the dual potential of human nature, to me this strongly implies that life is a test,” said Wilkinson, who is also director of the Yale Depression Research Program. “The purpose of life is to choose between the good and evil impulses inherent within us.

“This seems to be written into our DNA.”

...I totally acknowledge we have a capacity for selfishness, but in other ways we also have a deep capacity for altruism. In a way that was unexpected to me, evolution has shaped us such that we are pulled in different directions. This is a core example of how nature has left us conflicted, what in the book I call the “dual potential” of human nature.

Prof. Wilkinson has a scientific explanation for the selfish and altruistic duality of human behavior--it's built into our DNA. But I'm still at a loss to see why one is necessarily better than the other, or why life is a "test" to see whether we will choose altruism. Who is the Grader?

Science is excellent at explaining why things work, but it's so far been lacking in determining answers to basic questions, for example, if I died today did my life have value? By the way, by what criteria does one determine that value?

Or maybe I had value because I left children behind. So that's it: propagate the species? If so, individual rats and cockroaches do more for their species than I did for mine. And so on and so forth.

For now I'll search for answers in the writings of philosophers and theologians rather than psychiatrists. One good things about Prof. Wilkinson's attempt is that it prompted me to get cracking on reading Paul Tillich and Teilhard de Chardin while there's still time to do so.

Remarkable Feature

(Photo by Amitrano/WSJ)

If you want to go to church in person on Sunday but don't want to leave home, you can do so in LA for $38.5 million (and live nicely for the other six days of the week): [bold added]

A Los Angeles compound with a stand-alone chapel is coming on the market for $38.5 million.

The gated property, which measures about 1.4 acres in tony Brentwood Park, has a Spanish Colonial Revival-style house built around 1928, as well as a guesthouse and poolhouse. The chapel was added around 2004 by longtime owners Helen and David G. Price, Christians who became devout later in life, according to Craig McDonald, Helen’s son from a previous marriage. The Mission Revival-style chapel was “a space for them to be able to go and have time and quiet and to study,” he said.

Los Angeles mansion owners can devote a room to exercise, electronics, or Elvis, and no one would notice. But a Christian chapel? That's remarkable.

Liberal Anglicanism: It's Not for Everyone

Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 23.
He's the guy with the big chair (WSJ photo)

Religions don't survive long unless they provide answers to basic philosophical questions. Furthermore, the questions should not be limited to those that puzzled its original adherents. To endure centuries, even millennia, they must address the human condition broadly. The trick is to understand which principles are immutable and which are not.

Ontario priest Raymond de Souza laments that Pope Francis is overturning too many beliefs too quickly.

conversations veered off to consider whether Catholicism would do better as a facsimile of liberal Anglicanism: ordaining women, revising sexual morality, enhancing lay governance—and, of course, trying to arrest climate change.

Ouch. We Episcopalians felt that one.

Father de Souza wants more dogma and fewer questions.

The articulation of dogma—traditionally the work of Rome—doesn’t bind the soul as much as it frees it, in the same way that a martyr is free, already living beyond the world’s power. Such confidence and clarity have dissipated in Rome in recent years. Question marks litter the landscape; certainty appears to be the problem, not the solution. Without dogma, we’re left only with our own conclusions, which aren’t truths worth dying for and thus aren’t truths worth living for.

I personally like having the Catholic Church argue articulately for traditional Christian theology and practices. Such voices have been stilled in the Episcopal Church, and they shouldn't be excised from American Christianity entirely.

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.

Too Far Away

Gallup data confirms the decline.

Church attendance continues to decline for all age groups, "more dramatically" for Generation X (born 1965-1980): [bold added]

Americans in their 40s and 50s often identify with a religion, but they’re also in the thick of raising kids, caring for aging parents and juggling demanding jobs that spill into the weekend. During the pandemic, many got out of the habit of going regularly to religious services and didn’t resume. Some had been drifting away before or became disillusioned by church scandals or positions on social issues in recent years.

The percentage of people ages 39 to 57 who attended a worship service during the week, either in person or online, fell to 28% in 2023, down from 41% in 2020, according to a survey this year. This was the largest percentage-point drop of all age groups examined in the survey of 2,000 adults conducted by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University.

COVID-19 caused the re-prioritization of everything, especially among middle-agers who tend to be the most pressed for time. Post-pandemic, if many people are willing to give up their jobs because they'd rather stay home, it's no surprise that the enthusiasm to bestir themselves to go to to voluntary worship services has also fallen off.

There appear to be no tangible rewards for going to church, or penalties for not going, and deep down a majority seem to believe that tending to bank accounts is more important than accumulating credits in a heaven that may not exist. The Reaper is too far away to be taken seriously, but as he looms larger look for priorities to be reset again.

What's in a Phrase: "Undue Hardship"

Gerald Groff (WSJ photo)

Given the controversies surrounding recent Supreme Court decisions on free speech, affirmative action, and student-loan forgiveness, it's easy to overlook their unanimous statement on a religious accommodations case.

The 9-0 decision in Groff v. DeJoy is likely to affect thousands of workers and their employers. The facts:

[Gerald] Groff began working at the U.S. Postal Service in 2012, delivering mail in rural parts of Lancaster County, Pa. In 2013, the Postal Service contracted with Amazon.com to deliver Amazon packages, including on Sundays.

Groff eventually transferred to a small Postal Service facility in Holtwood, Pa., to avoid Sunday work. But in March 2017, the Holtwood facility also began Amazon Sunday delivery service.

His supervisor attempted to find other carriers to cover his Sunday shifts, saying that such shift swaps were the only accommodations that wouldn’t affect operations.

Groff never agreed to work on a Sunday. He received warnings, suspensions and other sorts of discipline short of termination for declining Sunday shifts assigned to him. The Postal Service said that these disciplinary actions were corrective rather than punitive, and that his pay was never docked.

In 2019, Groff resigned, saying he had no choice but to quit, and sued the Postal Service for failing to reasonably accommodate his religious practice.

The lower courts referred to the statute and a 1977 case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, to reject the lawsuit. They said that his employer, the USPS, didn't have to reschedule Mr. Groff because it would incur more than a de minimis cost.

The Supreme Court said that interpretation of Hardison was wrong, that "undue hardship" for the employer means that the USPS had "substantial increased costs", not just something above the minimum. To be clear, the Court did not say Mr. Groff was correct but told the lower courts to apply the substantial-burden criterion to his case.

While applauding Gerald Groff for standing up for his beliefs, I also sympathize with the employer, who in the end may well end up proving that it experienced substantial increased costs ("Groff was hired as a part-time, flexible carrier at a four-person post office, and he refused to show up for 24 Sundays of work.”)

I can also see many employers being bombarded with claims that employees can't work Sundays or other Holy Days because of their religion. Not all of these claims will be from true believers, and companies may well conclude that it is better to give in than risk a bigger loss in court.

Following His Dreams

My sophomore English teacher was enamored with Simon & Garfunkel's 1965 hit, The Sound of Silence, and spent weeks on it in class. We pored over the lyrics, packed with religious and hallucinatory imagery, trying to make sense of them. The opening lines are straightforward, the later verses less so.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence"

58 years later Paul Simon is still writing songs about life, death, God, and meaning. The source of his inspiration is perhaps unsurprising.

CBS Sunday Morning Interviewer: His latest solo album, Seven Psalms, was recorded in his cabin studio. The title came to him in a dream.

Paul Simon: The dream said that you are working on a piece called "Seven Psalms."

Interviewer: He got up and wrote it down on a legal pad.

Interviewer: When something as vivid as that happens, what do you make of it?

Paul Simon: Since it came to me in a dream with someone or something's telling me to do this, I said it's not my idea anyway so I'll just wait to this clarification on what I'm supposed to do.

Interviewer: Did you get clarification?

Paul Simon: Yeah, it did come as guitar pieces.

Interviewer: The words would come later, again in dreams.

Paul Simon: I would start to wake up two or three times a week between 3:30 and 5 in the morning, and words would come. I would write them down and start putting them together.

Paul Simon goes on to say that his best work, The Sound of Silence and Bridge Over Troubled Water, came from dreams.

In another time he might have been called a prophet with a pipeline to the divine, except that no prophet had his gift for music.

The Religion - Health Connection

(WSJ illustration)

Despite the commonly held belief that religiosity is connected with good health, the causation arrow has been difficult to prove. Northeastern Professor of Psychology David DeSteno describes the current state of the research .

In a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, using data from over 70,000 women who were part of the Nurses’ Health Study from 1992 to 2012, [Harvard epidemiologist Tyler] VanderWeele and colleagues found that those who attended religious services at least once a week had 33% lower mortality, from any cause, over a 16-year period. In particular, deaths due to cancer or cardiovascular disease were 75% the rate among non-attenders. While religion-associated reductions in smoking and increases in social support explained some of the benefit, the data suggested that religion worked through other, as yet unexplained, avenues too.

VanderWeele’s team found a similar benefit when it came to suicide risk. Among the nurses, attending services at least once a week or more cut the suicide rate by 80%, even when controlling for diagnoses of depression, cancer and cardiovascular disease. Researchers asked detailed questions to isolate the effect of social support from that of religious activity and found that while social connection did have a positive effect, it didn’t completely explain the benefits religion offered.

Using data from other large-scale, longitudinal studies, VanderWeele found that religiosity improves mental health. Attending services at least weekly or meditating regularly reduces feelings of depression and increases feelings of life satisfaction and purpose, even among adolescents. The health benefits are greater for those who attend services once a week or more than for those who only attend intermittently.

The aforementioned studies show that religion and health are positively correlated, but it's not clear that religion itself, as opposed to its attributes, is the key ingredient. After all, atheists can engage in healthy social interactions, lay off cigarettes, and meditate, all behaviors that have been shown to improve health.

Prof. DeSteno says that there is an additional "unexplained" health benefit that he doesn't quantify here. I guess we will have to take his claim on faith.

The Golden Spoon

The new king's official title is:

Charles III, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.

The last phrase, Defender of the Faith, sounds quaint, but it is steeped in history.

Though the English dispensed with the divine right of kings when they deposed Charles I in 1649, they haven’t done away with the ideas of divinity, right and kingship. Consecrated, this mild-mannered constitutional monarch emerged from the abbey as one of the world’s few priest-kings. Charles is the head of the state and its church. He symbolically fuses the secular and spiritual, like the pharaohs of Egypt, the despots of Assyria and his late mother.

...Though Charles swore to serve his people, an anointed monarch’s first duty is to God. Charles is the fidei defensor—defender of the faith—in this case the Anglican confession.

The golden coronation spoon is 800-1000 years old

A world-wide audience viewed the coronation, but Charles' anointment as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England was hidden from the cameras:

Behind a hand-woven screen in Westminster Abbey, Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury, took up the oldest item in the coronation regalia—a golden spoon—and anointed the king’s hands, chest and head with holy oil...

The crowning was the style, but the Christian rite was the symbolic content. Anointing with chrism reaches back to the prophet Samuel’s anointing of Saul as the first king of ancient Israel, and further back, to the origins of political and religious authority in the kingdoms of the early Bronze Age.

The American founders gave great consideration to how the government they were creating would differ from England's. One obvious change is the omission of the monarchy. The second difference is the prohibition of an "establishment of religion," aka a "wall of separation" between "church and state." The union of the two most powerful institutions in Great Britain, according to American observers at the time, made errors impossible to rectify.

Over two centuries later the passions have subsided. The British monarchy is now largely ceremonial, and the Anglican church is but a shadow of its former self ("UK Church membership has declined from 10.6 million in 1930 to 5.5 Million in 2010, or as a percentage of the population; from about 30% to 11.2%.")

We can admire without reservation the relics of power, like the golden spoon, knowing that their power has dissipated.

Outward and Visible Signs

2011: At Sandwiches on Sunday children help to feed the hungry.

We've posted before about our hunch--perhaps it's wishful thinking--that church attendance has bottomed out.

But the feeling is based on more than self-absorbed Baby Boomers becoming conscious of their own mortality.

I've seen people coming back--or coming for the first time--because churches, independent of theology,

introduce their children to moral perspectives not found at school;

have already built a structure for helping the poor in the local community;

don't twist their arms for donations of money and time (some places do, but twistees can leave);

provide near-instantaneous feedback about volunteer efforts;

furnish a place where they can see beautiful art and architecture and listen to beautiful music once a week.

Speaking of the latter, composers are writing Christian classical music again:

Early Christian worship, following Jewish practice, emphasized the chanting of psalms by the priest or the choir. Protestant Reformers likewise emphasized the chanting of psalms and congregational singing. For several reasons, by the middle of the 20th century the practice had dwindled in the American church. But a renewed interest in liturgical worship is spurring new compositions. The Theopolis Institute is producing a Psalter with new chant settings of all 150 psalms. Expressly written for untrained singers—i.e., most of us—this new psalter is intended to renew the chanting of psalms as a central element of Reformed worship.

Another fascinating example emerges in recent works of composer Frank La Rocca of the Benedict XVI Institute. Mr. La Rocca’s “Mass of the Americas” draws on distinctly American Catholic religious themes. The work is a tribute to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, patroness of the U.S., and Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of all the Americas. Musically, the “Mass of the Americas” incorporates Mexican folk hymns into the fabric of contemporary high-church sacred music, while showing due respect for its sources. It also includes possibly the first Ave Maria ever set in Nahuatl, the Aztec language in which Our Lady of Guadalupe spoke to San Juan Diego.

Below is an excerpt from the Mass of the Americas:



Related: The Surprising Surge of Faith Among Young People

No Natural Bottom....Maybe

The decline since 2019 (WSJ graph)

The decline in the number of Americans who felt religion was personally important declined precipitously during COVID-19. Church attendance also dropped off, which was expected due to public-health prohibitions against gatherings. However, attendance has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.

A Wall Street Journal-NORC poll published last month found that only 39% of Americans described religion as “very important” to them, down from 48% in 2019, before the pandemic. That represented an accelerated drop in a longer decline, from 62% in 1998.

A study by Pew Research Center, also released last month, found that the share of U.S. adult Christians who attended worship at least once a month in 2022 was 43%, down from 49% in 2019. Twenty-two percent of Christians say they now watch online or televised services more than they did before the pandemic, though 6% say they watch less.

Unlike economic recessions or bear markets, where prices fall low enough so that people start buying again, there doesn't seem to be a natural bottom that will cause attendance decline to reverse.

However, I'm sanguine about the prospects of organized religion. The baby boomers as a group have enjoyed unprecedented longevity and secular prosperity. However, they have only delayed confronting their own mortality and its concomitant concerns.

as a young person, I was too busy making plans pursuing worldly goals, though I never completely disengaged from organized religion. I only started drifting back due to: 1) more frequent reminders of my own mortality; 2) attainment of some objectives did not achieve fulfillment and raised the is-that-all-there-is question; 3) the Christian perspective really did prove insightful at crucial turning points.

The old rules-to-live-by that were dismissed as obsolete may not be irrelevant after all.