Religion in the New Millennium
Dateline: April 22, 1999
Part 2: Chruch Institutions & Communities
As people's perception of their own spirituality has changed, institutional religion has also had to change in an attempt to keep up and retain membership. One of the biggest trends is that of churches specifically marketing to the public as if selling a commercial product to potential consumers. There was once a time when people attended the church of their family, and church membership was dependent upon membership procreation. Today, however, people feel little or no loyalty to the churches of their parents and will quickly move around to whatever group makes them feel good. It's not what the church teaches so much as the strength of warm fuzzies generated in the pews.
Conservative Marketing & Needs
Unfortunately, the churches which succeed best at this are some of the most conservative around. It is the evangelical churches which believe in things like the inerrancy of the bible and damnation of everyone outside the tribal in-group which also go out and do the most to recruit new members. Old mainline, liberal denominations like the Episcopalians and the Methodists have been steadily losing membership for as long as twenty years now while Pentecostal denominations have only grown. But it isn't as though conservative churches are to "blame" for their growing popularity - they are also serving an expanding need in people for traditional, authoritarian leadership. Cimino and Lattin quote one person as saying:
If all the gospel of Jesus Christ is going to do is change my Sunday schedule, then I'm not interested. I want something that is gong to change my finances, my sex life, the way I work, the way I keep my house and the way I fix my yard.
Cimino and Lattin don't comment on this, but I personally find it somewhat frightening. This person isn't looking for a church, but a leader - or, dare I say it, a Führer? This is exactly the sort of person that fascist, totalitarian ideologies appeal: someone eagerly looking to be told what to do in many diverse areas of their life. What is it about people that they want to be told what to do by others rather than make decisions for themselves? I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think it has to do with an inability of a person to find value in themselves and their own efforts.
Cimino and Lattin go on to discuss the "shepherding movement" of the 1970s and 80s. Part of the larger evangelical community, it was extremely authoritarian, secretive and strident. Collected in secret cells across America, they became important figures in the congregations of many denominations without others even quite realizing what was going on. The movement itself dissipated, but the members and leaders themselves went on to become influential elsewhere, including with the Promise Keepers. Opus Dei is a sort of Catholic equivalent and which also demands a great deal from members. Some agree to a life of celibacy and devote themselves to proselytizing family and friends. Others lead a spartan life of self-sacrifice, even going so far as to engage in "mortifications of the flesh" like self-flagellation. Groups like this are growing in popularity, and their impact upon society cannot be discounted.
At this point, it would be good to point out a problem of consistency which recurs throughout Cimino and Lattin's book. On the one hand, they emphasize the idea that people will move away from traditional religion and find new individual modes of spirituality, but then they go on to explain that traditional and demanding religious groups are also growing in popularity. Thus, both experimental/liberal ideas and traditional/conservative ideas are a "trend" for the future. All bases are covered - but do we learn anything about what might happen in the future? I'm not so sure
The role of women in religious institutions will be something to watch closely. There are more women than men entering the ministry, and this trend will only become more pronounced as there are also more women entering the seminaries. Six of the nine seminaries of the Graduate Theological Union have more women than men right now, and numbers are getting closer among Southern Baptists and Catholics. In Catholic parishes in the United States, women already outnumber men in most types of nonordained and lay ministry. Women are playing a bigger and bigger role, despite the opposition of tradition-minded men in church hierarchies - and it will be interesting to see just how long this opposition can be maintained.
Religion
& Society
The role religion plays in the larger arena of politics is a matter of serious concern for all involved, and these trends are something we should watch very closely. Cimino and Lattin feel, and I agree, that political activism from religious groups is something which will only increase. Although this is not something which need be a problem in and of itself, the ways in which activism and influence are manifested have a tendency to bend, if not bust, the line dividing church and state.
The Religious Right is still going strong, even if it has been weakened in some of its influence over the Republican Party. The thing to watch, however, is the Religious Left. They had more influence during the 1960s which has since waned, but they are attempting to make a strong comeback, even if it means making peace with the Right as in the Call to Renewal project. Important for secularists to remember is that even when they work in common with the Religious Left in many causes like social justice, that doesn't mean that there are no disagreements. Groups which constitute the Religious Left can press for unconstitutional privileges just as much as Pat Robertson.
One example of this may include the efforts by many to have local church distribute welfare benefits. Religious groups are fighting to not only get the right to dole out money to the poor, but have also successfully fought to make sure that they are not prohibited from proselytizing at the same time. It used to be that a religious group sponsoring any government program had to do so outside of traditional religious activities, but not any more.
Cults &
the Millennium
Apocalyptic cults are also having an increasing influence in society, especially as the millennium approaches. As much as people fear the millennium and Y2K, we all probably have much more to fear from the fearful cults than from anything else - Franklin D. Roosevelt's insistence that we having "nothing to fear but fear itself" rings very true these days. Interestingly, it can be difficult to tell the difference between a "cult" and a "real" religion - in many ways, Christianity itself closely resembles destructive cults that everyone worries so much about, but you'll not hear about that.
How this will all play out after the turn of the millennium and all the nasty prophecies fail to come true is uncertain. Cimino and Lattin feel that there will be a "new dawn" as everyone joins together in a "search for meaning." Personally, I think that they are way overconfident and seriously underestimate the power of negative theology. For some, failed prophecies will bring a call for reinterpretation, as it has been for Christian sects throughout history. For others, the prospect of failed prophecies will be a sign that they have to act to bring those prophecies to pass. We all saw just that with the sect Concerned Christians, which entered Israel with the intention of blowing things up and fomenting a war between Jews and Muslims.
In addition to such unbridled optimism over the prospects of religion, I have to wonder about the source of Cimino and Lattin's near-total silence regarding atheism and humanism. Although it is true atheism is not a religion and humanism only sometimes so, it is inexplicable that they would only mention the former in passing and the latter not at all. I cannot understand why they wouldn't bother to discuss, even if briefly, alternatives to religion and the prospects of people moving away from religious superstition.
One unusual and positive aspect to the book which deserves mentioning is that it comes with a CD-ROM. On this CD you'll find not only the complete text of the book in a searchable HTML format, but also many links to related material on the internet - and some of those links I'll be making use of and adding to this site's lists.
Don't miss the other section:
Part 1: Introduction & Spirituality
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