May 14
Modern man, straw man
Sometimes I wonder at a certain Christian mentality. The often stimulating After Existentialism, Light, for once, I think, gets it wrong in this post on why people leave the Church.
InsideCatholic recently did an interesting survey of the reasons Catholics (and, for that matter, Christians in general) leave the Church by asking several prominent Catholics (bishops, professors, lay authors, etc.) for their opinion on the reasons and solutions.
Kevin is far from alone in what I see as the main mistake here, rather I often hear many others doing precisely the same thing. But what distinguished Christians think might be beside the point. The problem is, the bishop he quotes gives a Christian and theological explanation. It shows no sign that the bishop has actually asked anyone who has left the church why they have done so, or that, if he has asked them, he has listened to them. Yet surely, asking leavers is the first and most obvious step towards an answer. There might then be room for some very interesting sociological and theological reflections on why people do so, that is not simply taking their answers at face value, but does involve accounting for those face value answers coherently and honestly. Empirical research is not heretical, although its rarity might make you think it was.
My own experience of asking that question suggests that the answers are quite diverse, sometimes profound, and often very mundane and practical. “I moved house” seems to influence both those coming back to church and those leaving it. Individualist conceptions of faith and cultural patterns of habitual behaviour means that they often don’t see that leaving church as any loss of faith, and that, catholic orthodoxy aside, it genuinely may not. Sometimes faith has comparatively little to do with church attendance, and conversely, leaving church has little to do with loss of faith.
Then again, I can think of some who might leave church because they simply can’t relate to a church which has bishops who actually talk about “modern man”.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Thanks for the response.
I take your point about the variety of reasons people put forward for leaving their faith — and I should note that by “leaving church” I meant “leaving Christianity” or “leaving the Christian faith” which cannot be abstracted from an ecclesial context, though certainly many may leave a particular church with continuing genuine faith in Christ’s atoning work. Putting aside the latter, those who abandon Christian faith and the unique claims of Christian faith (namely, God’s own claim on ourselves through the Cross alone for the redemption of humanity) do put forward arguments from reason, whether moral, existential, logical, historical, or a mixture. Of course, I am in a unique position as a recent undergraduate in religious studies at a (very) secular university and now a postgrad in theology at a secular university — the fellow young people I come across who have abandoned their faith or, being raised agnostic, cannot come to faith all cite rational obstacles. They will cite the immoral God of the Old Testament, the contradictions in the gospel witness to the Resurrection, or, if they do not know the historical arguments, they will cite the problem of evil or the simple fact that all we see in the universe is the blind mechanical forces of nature. Others may simply “drift” from the faith because they find it irrelevant (and likely it was irrelevant the way most churches preach the gospel or what they think is the gospel), but most of these drifters will actually offer philosophy-based arguments if you press them — after all, if God is irrelevant in their lives, then we have come to a hiddenness/absence of God critique, a la existentialism. Underlying these criticisms of Christian faith is a philosophy of proper epistemic warrant which must be recognized for its partial validity but ultimate failure to truly account for, much less deconstruct, Christian claims. So, on this account, I think Bishop Vasa was correct. However, I would also supplement it with a firm recognition that many leave the faith, including the “rationalists” (maybe especially the rationalists), because of sin. The way is narrow, and the humble, meek, poor, and child-like find it — not as sinless but graced.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Thanks for such a detailed response, Kevin. I’m not particularly disputing the theological explanation, only saying that it’s far too easy to move to a theological explanation that avoids or overlooks the practicalities. I would also suggest the college grads (especially in religious studies!) are not a typical cross-section of the population. But more importantly, I would want to explore whether what are being presented as reasons for leaving are actually rationalisations of decisions taken (or habits given up) on other grounds.
May 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
True, my account certainly would need to be filled out.
Also, I agree that a bunch of religious studies students is not a typical cross-section, but I was thinking of other students I encounter, especially at my job (a major electronics retail store) where I worked with several dozen, very average, students — almost all who had left Christianity or were raised outside the church. Since I was a religion major, it gave me the opportunity to broach questions (or, for them, to volunteer questions) about Christianity. From this experience, I do not find it surprising that Dawkins and Hitchens can be best selling authors — they are confirming the suspicions of many, many people who have engaged at any intellectual level the foundations of Christian claims. I am continually baffled by pastors who ignore this as any real threat. If you spend time in secular Denmark or France, talk to the average college educated man or woman, and you will see the extent to which the secularization thesis is true (the secularization thesis is the theory that modern, industrialized, scientifically-educated societies inevitably tend toward a materialist and agnostic worldview).
May 15th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I suspect this might need to become a new thread, but, a) the secularisation theory doesn’t really give a good account of the difference between the US and Europe b) I think a lot more work needs doing on the correlation between ideas and culture in this area. If, as I think, community is an essential component of Christianity, then isn’t there something about an individualist culture, and high social mobility, which are at least as telling as ideas, and accompany them, without there necessarily being a direct causal relationship.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
I won’t be able to really delve into this issue, since I have exams I need to study for instead of internet discussions. I will say that I think the difference between U.S. and European religiosity can be accounted for by the secularization thesis if one observes those groups who achieve the same education level as the average European (e.g., according to polls, we have way more Creationists running around) or if one observes what actually passes for Christianity. We can talk about thriving churches, but if they are preaching God’s favor for those who believe in God’s favor, then we do not have the gospel of Jesus Christ, just another product of a secular self-seeking consumerism. The churches in Europe may be dead or near dead, but at least they never sunk so low as Joel Osteen or any number of new charismatic evangelicals.
Of course, it should be added that America does have the advantage of a long free church history, so we do not have the grievances against a state church that many Europeans have.