Secularisation II

G Poulin's comment under Secularisation set me thinking. Of those children who grew up in the faith and left, there has long been a steady flow of returns when their children reach Sunday School/CCD age and they decide that the kids have to have some religious training, and the sacrifice of going to church themselves - already familiar territory - is not seen as onerous to accomplish that. Some, though not all of those actually become active upon return. 

But now young people are delaying children or foregoing them altogether. Even if they have them now, they have adjusted to being away from the church much longer. I wonder how much that reduces church attendance on a generational basis. It is not just the direct count of more years away from the church, but the cultural change in cohorts, so that fewer and fewer Little League, dance class, and school volunteer parents are also church parents. All part of the unchurched downward spiral, maybe.

Even without clear answers it is good to look at the question, just so that everyone is reminded that the prevailing myth - that smarties are looking at the claims of the faith with adult eyes and rejecting them for intellectual reasons - is just about the least likely theory to be true, according to the data. Various superstitions and mystical rather than logical beliefs are not seeing a similar decline.  People still believe in astrology, crystals, ley lines, and a dozen mind-over-matter theories that are bad imitations of Eastern religions. If it were really the great intellects of the smarties driving the church down, those beliefs would be gone as well, and a lot sooner.

No, the siren song of social fashion is the great competitor for the faith, not intellect.  That's just an excuse.