In his book Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, University of Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith examines the decline of traditional religion in the United States. While data and anecdotal evidence make plain that the familiar forms and habits of devotion and observance are in abeyance, Smith notes that this can’t all be blamed on secularism—there are many other cultural and sociological factors at play, not to mention “pressures from competing alternative religions and quasi-religions and spiritualities.” Religion will not go extinct, and obsolescence will not mean “the disappearance of the sacred, spiritual, magical, enchanted, supernatural, occult, ecstatic, or divine.” But, he contends, a religious revival is not likely:
Scrambling to keep the status quo intact while still somehow becoming more “relevant” is a losing proposition. So are defensive retrenchments and the staking of “faithfulness” on the fighting of culture wars, not to mention religious nationalism. And simply “liberalizing” traditional religion does not have an impressive track record of success.
Religion, he concludes, is likely to remain “a marginalized species in an unfavorable American sociocultural ecosystem.”
What to make of all of this? In this symposium, we asked four authors to offer their assessments of Smith’s claims about religion’s obsolescence, what it might portend, and how it might be confronted. Peter Steinfels sets Smith’s description of the current “Millennial zeitgeist” against the long record of history: “I find such dating of a monumental change within two recent decades rather jarring.” Kaya Oakes notes that “people have never stopped seeking God, transcendence, spirit, or community”—but that traditional religious institutions don’t know how to meet these desires. Gerardo Martí sees opportunity for transformation, but recognizes it will take courage “to celebrate a fresh wind of the Spirit moving in unpredictable directions.” And Susan Bigelow Reynolds calls for a new attitude: we should “approach faith like we approach the things in life we actually desire,” and tradition in a spirit of “adventure and hope.”
This symposium has been made possible with the support of the Lilly Endowment.
