Sunday Prayer

I read this while researching for a recent Policymic article. Diana Butler Bass' book, Christianity after Religion has been one of my favorite sources so far. Before I started the blog, I was one of those who derided the "spirituality but not religion" movement. Now I'm a big believer (and so are lots of others, according to stats).

Spirituality"... is an ancient word, to be sure, but a word that is taking on fresh dimensions of meaning in a fluid and pluralistic religious context. To say that one is "spiritual but not religious" or "spiritual and religious" is often a way of saying "I am dissatisfied with the way things are, and I want to find a new way of connecting with God, my neighbor, and my own life.

Uniting Our Knowledge

Pictured: not a great way to share information

This blog is open access. That means that I share everything, and you can take it if you want and put it in your paper or on your website up on a billboard, if you want. I hope I am personally connected with the information - that a user would cite me or involve me in the conversation. But I don't intend to own or protect the contents of the blog.

Which reminded me of the recent Krista Tippett story on Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard predicted the network of human knowledge, calling it the Noosphere (based on the Greek word for mind/knowledge). In the radio program, Andrew Revkin (from NYT) talks intelligently about the growing reality of a shared human knowledge.

In a sense, Reddit is the Noosphere. But it's up to us to put good content in, and shape our shared knowledge community. Like a Google founder said.

Although this is a little nicer than Reddit

Even when I was in school, the old ways of storing and sharing information - libraries, academic journals, tape cassettes - seemed terribly out-dated and inefficient. I want to share so much! I want to experience things together! You can't (couldn't) do that in a library.

Today libraries are all about sharing, and I think the internet is bringing that together, too. Wikipedia is way better than the Britannica because you don't just want the info, you want to connect it and share it.

I think that sharing - communication - is fundamental to the very existence and value of information.

So please, read and enjoy my blog, copy it if you want. You can't steal it from me.

What does church Have to do with it?

We've been struggling to find the model for spiritual communities. And here are the stats.

Mark Gray over at CARA (on 1964, one of my favorite blogs ever) tackles the available information on church attendance. Today they used data from a "life diary" study that asked participants to record their days, and pulled statistics relevant to church attendance on Sundays.

This is important because other studies of religious participation always risk polluting the results with bias. People might not be 100% honest when taking surveys about their religion. But the diary study (conducted by Philip Brenner) does not prime participants to respond in any particular way.

What do we learn? 

1) Church attendance in the 2010s has not dropped since the 1980s, but down 12 points from the 1960s (39% to 27% reported attending church on Sunday). Millennials mirror this overall trend.


2) Millennials are NOT significantly less likely to attend church than Gen X, and only slightly less likely than their parents.

3) Millennials who self-identify as Catholics have some unexpected habits, and are more likely to carry a cross than be on twitter.

4) But even self-identified Millennial Catholics are only about 35% likely to attend Mass once a month or more.

Therefore, I conclude that Church attendance simply is not a central part of the Catholic experience. Mark Gray points out that, for most of church history, the average "member" did not attend weekly services. Are we returning to that model?

I myself have struggled to find a church community where I fit in. Sure, I'm harder to please than most, but I know many others (of various denominations) who have active spiritual lives, pray, believe, study, and have spiritual communities entirely outside of Sunday services. Maybe it's something the pastor said, or a regular scheduling conflict. Frankly, a community where you regularly feel nourished along with a hundred other families is a rare gem.

Several participants on PolicyMic commented that church participation was no measure of religious participation, and even less a measure of spiritual activities. I agree.

So what makes a spiritual community that is not stuck in the nostalgia of 1960?

The Point, Again

I started this blog six months ago with the goal of naming the networks that represent the future of religion;  to build a "church", a spiritual community, for people who look forward to the 21st century. To do that I have reflected on current events in the news, and followed arcs regarding major topics (money, compassion, prayer, ritual, etc.).

I have also written for another website, PolicyMic, where a recent article has attracted the warmest active forum that I have ever seen online. I think the overwhelming response to that article shows that folks really do care about the future of religion in the 21st century.

Some people care because they used to belong and are looking for a new spiritual community. Others care because what happens to religion has implications for the world as a whole, and they hope we can shepherd religion away from extremism. Very few care because they organize or are in a traditional religious community.

More than any other group, Millennials (those born after 1982) are not participating in religious organizations: we’re not attending church services and not praying regularly. Does this mean we’re a generation of ruined heathens? No.

The Point:

The goal of this blog has been to re-imagine faith and religious experience in the 21st century, looking forward with the help of statistics, interviews, and current events. I've solidified a few points:

1) Discard the strict hierarchy, insofar as it prevents some from full community.
2) Discard our nostalgia so that we are free to evolve as a group.

3) Discard the judgment that often precedes empathy, comfort, and loving relationships, which are the cornerstones of community.

1) Preserve a sense of ritual, remember to recognize the specialness (sacredness) of particular events in our lives so that we can share that specialness together.
2) Preserve serious study and expertise in theology, including sacred texts. This also means the recognition and promotion of leaders to inspire and guide communities.
3) Preserve prayer, both public and private, because communication is the hallmark of the 21st century, and we can do it together.

Sunday Prayer

I have been enjoying God in Search of Man by Heschel ever since Krista Tippett referenced it. Here's a quote from the first couple of pages, on the relationship between critical philosophy and religion:

The growing inward-ness of man that reaches and curves toward the light of God can hardly be transplanted into the shallowness of mere reflection. Torn out of its medium in human life, it wilts like a rose pressed between the pages of a book.

Religion is, indeed, little more than a desiccated remnant of a once living reality when reduced to terms and definitions, to codes and catechisms. It can only be studied in its natural habitat of faith and piety, in a soul where the divine is within reach of all thoughts.

Is God Dead in 2013?

Is God Dead in 2013? At the very least, organized religions are facing a radical change.

Forget the hype and believe the stats. Religious affiliation is falling, and more Americans than ever label themselves as “nones” (answer surveys as “no affiliation” ). According to the Pew Forum,

The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

Why the change? Many Millennials (ages 18-30)  are eligible for polling for the first time over the last five years and have replaced the older generations, who are dying: 34% of Millennials polled claim “no affiliation,” compared to less than 10% of the Greatest Generation.

Simultaneously, all age groups are decreasingly religious by about 4% since 2007. Also, the vast majority (92%) of “nones” were raised in religious households.

This means that people of all ages are actively rejecting religious affiliation. Interviews and statistical research confirm that top two reasons for rejecting religion are 1) the politicization of religion (churches supporting candidates, polarization over Israel); and distrust of religious institutions (sex and fraud scandals).

These two reasons mix with a third cause for rejecting religion: it is simply not necessary. In previous decades religious organizations were cornerstones of community life. These days Americans find community online (through Policymic, for example) or in other personal settings like coffee shops or civic organizations. As religious participation  became harder and harder to justify due to the scandal and polarizing politics, people of all ages simply find their community elsewhere. For millennials who grew up with the internet, the transition is obvious.

However, a decrease in religious participation does not mean that God is dead. First off, the study of Global Religious Participation (the often-quoted “1 in 6 unaffiliated” study) is deeply skewed because it includes secular countries like North Korea and China.

Also, religious participation tends to increase with age, so us 20-somethings are likely to find religion later in life. The American population will heavily favor those over 65 in the next decade, which has historically been a religious set.

And here’s the key point: non-religious does not mean non-believer. 93% of Americans believe in a God, including 73% of the “nones”. 42% of “nones” pray. Most "nones" (55%) describe themselves as either “religious” or “spiritual but not religious” (which is the fastest growing segment).

So no, God is not dead in 2013, but religious organizations are facing radical changes going forward. It’s about time.

God is Not Dead in 2013, but organized religions are experiencing a radical restructuring.

Forget the hype and believe the stats. Religious affiliation is falling, and more Americans than ever label themselves as “nones” (answer surveys as “no affiliation” ). According to the Pew Forum, “The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.”

Why the change? Many Millennials (ages 18-30)  are eligible for polling for the first time over the last five years and have replaced the older generations, who are dying: 34% of Millennials polled claim “no affiliation,” compared to less than 10% of the Greatest Generation.

Simultaneously, all age groups are decreasingly religious by about 4% since 2007. Also, the vast majority (92%) of “nones” were raised in religious households.

This means that people of all ages are actively rejecting religious affiliation. Interviews and statistical research confirm that top two reasons for rejecting religion are 1) the politicization of religion (churches supporting candidates, polarization over Israel); and distrust of religious institutions (sex and fraud scandals).

These two reasons mix with a third cause for rejecting religion: it is simply not necessary. In previous decades religious organizations were cornerstones of community life. These days Americans find community online (through Policymic, for example) or in other personal settings like coffee shops or civic organizations. As religious participations  became harder and harder to justify due to the scandal and polarizing politics, people of all ages simply find their community elsewhere. For millennials who grew up with the internet, the transition is obvious.

However, a decrease in religious participation does not mean that God is dead. First off, the study of Global Religious Participation (the often-quoted “1 in 6 unaffiliated” study) is deeply skewed because it includes secular countries like North Korea and China.

Also, religious participation tends to increase with age, so us 20-somethings are likely to find religion later in life. The American population will heavily favor those over 65 in the next decade, which has historically been a religious set.

And here’s the key point: non-religious does not mean non-believer. 93% of Americans believe in a God, including73% of the “nones”. 42% of “nones” pray. Most nones (55%) describe themselves as either “religious” or “spiritual but not religious” (which is the fastest growing segment).

So no, God is not dead in 2013, but religious organizations are facing radical changes going forward. It’s about time.

That Debate Again

An article I published on PolicyMic has led to "That Debate": does our experience of time and space count for anything? Can we make changes in the world? Is mortality a human construction?

I used to love this debate. It is a fun and challenging exercise to remember that each of us experience time and space in a totally unique way, and in a way that is not common to other species. Think about how a termite experiences a day, or a meter, compared with our experience.

Now multiply that thought experiment by a million, because our universe has an experience of time and space, too. And many folks have theorized that, at the universal level, time and space folds over itself in a non-linear way, such that our linear experience of time - one event after another, in a stead progress - is a total fiction, a unique, human experience that has no basis in fact. Instead, time may be "an infinite series of frames...that exist simultaneously".

Now I am a fan of thought experiments. I also appreciate placing our lives and experiences in a bigger, universal context.

But I am a pragmatist at heart. I believe that we work to serve the highest good that we know about. We do this making the best decisions we can at every given moment with the best available information. So sure, I want to spread awareness of the limits of science, technology, and social norms so that we have an idea of what the highest good looks like. We experience time in a certain way, and we cannot escape factoring the "slow march of time" into our decisions and experiences.

So when we get into the theory of multidimensional non-linear time and it's implications for our experience of the life cycle, I think we have moved outside of what is possible for humans to experience. I think this is firmly in the realm of headgames, thought experiments, and mental constructs.

It is a fun thought, challenging, but I will not let it get in the way of living my life.