Religion and the good of society

For a person dedicated to their religious faith, whether Christian or not, today’s decline in religious selfidentification and practice presents a great challenge.

In the United States, when asked in 2018 about their religious affiliation, 23.7 percent of respondents answered “none” compared to only 5.1 percent who answered “none” in 1972.

In a recent book, professor Ryan P. Bunge examines seven religious traditions in our country. Not surprisingly, he notes that religion no longer is passed down in a family or community as it once was. And the social expectation of membership in a faith community is not at all what it used to be.

Recently (7/29/21) New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about what he called “the psychological unraveling of America.” The result, Brooks points out, is a major increase in depression rates among teenagers, in suicide rates, in the isolation of people who claim to have no close friends. “Social pain and vulnerability are affecting everything,” he writes, “our families, schools, politics and even our sports.”

Brooks says he “doesn’t know what’s causing this.”

I, on the other hand, believe the crisis he describes is due in a very significant way to America’s religious “unraveling.” Pope Francis speaks of our modern world’s “moral, spiritual and material destitution,” “pervaded by consumerism … the desolation and anguish born of a complacent

yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience.” This is the picture of a world increasingly distanced from religious faith and practice.

Today, more and more we are experiencing the bitter consequences that come, in part, from a loss of religious adherence and practice on the part of a growing number of Americans. The rise of the “nones” is not good news for their own well-being or that of our country and world. This is not to say that religious people are always free of hypocrisy, social injustices and other sins, but they are motivated, constrained by both a set of beliefs and a community of belief that promotes virtue and censures vice.

America has experienced “religious awakenings” in the past, and there is always hope for the future. For all our sake, I pray that it may be so.

Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media file photo The Rev. Leonard P. Blair is the Archbishop of Hartford.