Pandemic side effect: Many are returning to their faith

With the U.S. death toll topping 255,000 and 12.5 million Americans infected, including 1.1 million in Texas, the coronavirus is making us more anxious, bored, sad and even angry. We feel less optimistic. But there’s a spiritual flip-side, too: It’s also bringing out the metaphorical, and maybe actual, better angels of our nature — a kind of COVID-19 awakening

A famous World War I aphorism holds that “there are no atheists in the trenches.” During World War II, the trenches became foxholes. Either way you say it, the thought is that stark reminders of our own mortality push us toward God. That’s what’s going on in our country right now.

Two-thirds of American adults say the pandemic is bringing people closer to their faith and will cause more people to become religious, according to new data from the Harris Poll, while 40 percent of parents with children say the pandemic has made them more spiritual or religious than before. Members of all groups — by gender, age, income, education, household makeup, race and region — also report feeling a personal spiritual awakening. Men 35-44 are the most likely to feel more spiritual (55 percent) and religious (48 percent) today than before the pandemic. But three-quarters of men and women 65 years old and up also think the virus is bringing people closer to their faith.

Even among Americans unaffiliated with a religion, Even among Americans unaffiliated with a religion, 13 percent say the pandemic has made them more spiritual, and 48 percent say the pandemic will cause more people to become believers in religion.

This is occurring even as health concerns have limited the faithful’s ability to attend services in person. Before COVID-19 broke out last spring, 65 percent of Americans attended services but only 44 percent do so today. Half of religious adherents, moreover, say they’ve stopped going to services altogether, including virtually.

Even if Americans are not practicing together, their belief that the pandemic has brought them closer to their faith departs from a long-running drift toward secularism in the country. A 2007 Harris Poll survey found that 12 percent of adults said they were religiously unaffiliated, for example. That share has more than doubled since then, while the percentage of Christians has fallen commensurately.

The most religiously fervent segment of the population today may surprise you: They are men at the tail-end of Generation X and the start of the Millennial generation (ages 35-44), with 85 percent of identifying themselves as religious. Two-thirds attended services at least weekly before the pandemic and 47 percent are giving more to their house of worship than they had before — more than any other group

What’s prompting America’s renewed spirituality? Religion is playing its traditional role, serving as a source of comfort, strength and community at times of tumult, stress and uncertainty. Religion is providing solace for more of us than before because more of us need it, and to a greater degree. As the hymn goes, “So by my woes to be nearer, my God, to thee.”

And the poll’s data reflect the benefits of belief. Religious Americans maintain a more positive outlook on our pandemic-restricted lives than non-believers do. As a group, believers are little lonelier and more anxious than their non-affiliated neighbors, but they are also more likely to feel grateful, understanding and generous. The faithful are also much more likely to say the coronavirus has brought out the best in people.

What does this portend for the after-times, when we have mastered COVID-19 and the specter of mortality is no longer a constant companion for our nation? Will American spirituality likewise abate? Or will it thrive as people feel comfortable back in their pews again?

We know that there will be a resurgence of attendance, as those who did before are able to do so again. Of those not attending services in person now, whether because of a publichealth mandate or their own self-quarantines, 20 percent most say they plan to return immediately when it’s allowed, though fully 12 percent of those who belong to an organized religion say they will never go back to a house of worship.

The longer COVID-19 endangers our lives and livelihoods, it seems to me, the more likely we’ll remain faithful once the infection has been controlled. This could be an inflection point for America.

Perhaps 100 years from now people will say that there are no atheists in quarantine.