Secularization

Lyman Stone at the Institute for Family Studies points out a great flaw in the general narratives about why people don't go to church anymore: they all focus on what adults say are their reasons. Atheists and the other nonreligious focus on how unlikely it all seems, or the lack of toleration/social action/sincerity they see from the church, or personal narratives about what they were thinking about and looking for as young adults. Those who might be sympathetic to believers but church non-attenders cite things wrong with the church or with worship: politics, music, relevance.

But the decisions were made long before that. Almost all the secularization has occurred before age 22, sometimes long before. Parents who integrated their faith into the family activities - as had been done with them (mediated by a culture which did not bowl alone but encouraged everyone in voluntary groups) - have a much higher rate of children still in the faith.  It is not more education that causes all the smarties to rethink their faith, it is a culture that taught you young that you were going to center your life on school for a long time, quietly relegating faith to third, fourth, ninth place in your life.

I have an elaborate story of my early 20s, of influence of Tolkien, then Lewis, then writing a collection of songs about the Grail quest and wrestling personally with the same questions the characters faced; of planning to go to seminary but ceasing to go to church, and floundering in many ways, haunted by both my church upbringing and my abandonment of it. Very deep, very intellectual, very neat and coherent. But I could also say with truth "I was terribly sad.  I went back to church because nice ladies had given me cookies there when I was small, and told me I was wonderful, and cared about how I was doing. But no one thought I was wonderful , or cared about how I as doing, or gave me cookies now." 

Which was the truer narrative?  Wouldn't we all like it to be the ennobling careful consideration one rather than the rather pathetic one? But I could see in the nonreligious smarties even then that they were motivated by fashion, and tribal aspiration to seem wise and belong to the Inner Ring, however much they quoted philosophers. None of us comes to the faith by works, but by grace.

So all you nice ladies making cookies (or these days, approved healthy snacks), thenteaching the 13 y/o's how to teach songs with silly hand motions to 8 y/o's, all ye who have no training in hermeneutics and epistemology and theology - it might be thou who has more correctly interpreted, more deeply and accurately known, and more coherently organised the faith as received and delivered it onward. Go forth and bake.