At this year’s conference of the Association for the Sociology of Religion (ASR), which RW attended in Montreal in early August, it was obvious that there has been a shift of interest and emphasis toward secularism among scholars in the past few years. There were fewer sessions and papers on the growth of religious congregations and denominational changes compared to previous years. Viewing religion and theology as “independent variables” that shape society and individual values has taken a back seat to an “intersectional” approach (the theme of the conference in fact being “Religion and Intersectionality”), where race, gender, sexuality, and class are presented as key factors in shaping religious outcomes. There was continued and growing attention to the non-affiliated (“nones”) and “non-religion” in sessions, with Grace Yukich, president of the ASR, suggesting in her outgoing lecture a name-change of the scholarly organization that might add “non-religion” or even substitute “the sacred” for “religion.” As in previous years, papers on secularization trends and theories have returned with a vengeance, as sociologists try to account for the rising rate of religious non-affiliation throughout much of the West.
Source: Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images (https://theconversation.com/3-big-numbers-that-tell-thestory-of-secularization-in-america-199378)
While there are disagreements as to whether classic secularization theories can explain the current religious decline, or even if the process itself might better be seen as “de-Christianization,” there is a striking agreement among both academics and some Christian leaders that the ground has shifted on the future of religion. From the side of Christian leaders and commentators, there is Aaron Renn’s recent popular book, Life in the Negative World, which argues that an anti-Christian culture has gained the upper hand in American society over the last decade. The way in which a certain secular narrative has been internalized by evangelical thinkers can be seen in a recent article appearing in Renn’s Substack newsletter (August 22) by evangelical apologist and cultural analyst John Seel. Seel writes that “We are amid a 500-year historical geo-political inflection point…We are not talking here about the accumulation of incremental changes, but the wholesale changes of assumptions, global actors, and personal experiences…” He sees a shift from a Christian to a post-Christian world “that is functionally divorced from any reference to the sacred. We have shifted from societies based on fate and faith to one based on fiction. Moreover, the foundational basis of society, namely traditional marriage, has been rejected. The fruit of marriage, namely the procreation of children, has also been rejected.”
Among other civilizational shifts that Seel sees is a shift from Global West to Global East, with a “growing global awareness of the spiritual and political demise of the West…The church has tended to think in terms of North and South, with our missional focus increasingly being oriented to the global South, where Christianity remains vital. We must instead begin to think West and East…If you are thinking spiritual, you don’t look first to the West but the East. The West is the spiritual problem not the spiritual solution. What was once only true of Muslim countries like Iran is now being joined with the Eastern communist axis of Russia and China.” Somewhat differently than secularization theorists, Seel also sees a shift in how “we are rejecting forms of Enlightenment rationalism in favor of a more enchanted form of spirituality. This is a big threat to the evangelical church as it is largely the stepchild of the Enlightenment…With the rejection of the Enlightenment rationalism with its association with secularism and disenchantment, has come the rebirth of a wide variety of older and new forms of enchantment, i.e., neo-paganism and the occult.” The usual kind of evangelical apologists “have liked their religious antagonists to be tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking, atheist evolutionary biologist[s] in elite universities. We are far less comfortable with our religious antagonists being ex-evangelical, transgender Wiccan witches.” Seel concludes that the evangelical approach toward missions is going to have to change. “The historic priority of foreign missions may need to shift to home missions. The West represents the most strident global unreached people group.” He adds that the American evangelical church is ill prepared to adapt to these shifts. “The likelihood is that under sustained cultural pressure, it will resort to doubling-down on past approaches, wearing an anti-intellectual, anti-elitist, populist-fundamentalist resistance as a badge of honor.”
(Aaron Renn’s Newsletter, https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/a-change-of-age?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=5c98f&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)
