‘The Vanishing Church’ Makes The Case For Both Belief And Belonging
(REVIEW) Two trends in America have dominated discussion on religion and politics for a long time: The decline of religion and rising political polarization.
With American culture seemingly more extreme daily, and fewer people identifying with a religious tradition, everything seems up for grabs. Influencers, journalists, and thought leaders on all sides have rushed to explain what this means for the country and what we should do about it.
Enter “The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us.” Written by Ryan Burge, today’s most prominent American religion sociologist (his columns also appear at Religion Unplugged).
This may be the decade’s most important book on the state of American religion. And while I differ on some of his conclusions, Burge does an outstanding job of both dispelling myths about religious decline and polarization and establishing the real state of American faith in a thoroughly readable manner.
The main thesis of “The Vanishing Church” is that religion used to be a unifying force in America — and that it can be again. Burge walks us through American church history, particularly from the 70s onwards. He points to data that in the 1970s, political, social and economic diversity used to thrive in evangelical, mainline, and Catholic churches alike. But over the next few decades, political and economic polarization caused people to sort more neatly into tribes of people who agreed with them.
This meant that the religious overwhelmingly became conservatives and liberals, as well as the economically disadvantaged, became non-religious. This accelerates polarization and exacerbates loneliness as well as poverty because the poor don’t know people personally who can help them.
Burge argues that what America needs is a revival, not in belief in God but belief in church. People need to start going to church again, even though they don’t agree with everything (maybe much of anything) that the church believes. Likewise, the churches need to be more welcoming to doubts and not require so much dogmatic allegiance.
Burge showcases his talent with a rock-solid, data-driven and perfectly readable book. Every chapter is backed up with several studies and graphs, which are then summarized simply. Every summary is followed up by interpretation, anecdotes, and an explanation of how this fits in the broader book’s thesis. For people who want to be actually informed about the state of Christianity and polarization in our country with facts, this book is perfect for the layman and the socio-religious-political wonk alike.
Burge’s ability to “show his work” is especially important because so much of his book takes an axe to many common myths in America that desperately need re-aligning. When our beliefs about the problem are wrong, it’s impossible to work together on a solution.
So many people believe that Christianity and conservative politics, as well as atheism and liberal politics, have always been joined at the hip. Burge shows that it isn’t true; it’s a development of the last few decades. Many believe that people are leaving the church to escape the Religious Right.
But Burge shows that mainline churches — dominated by moderate congregations and liberal pastors – are emptying the most and the fastest. So many people believe that faith (in Jesus, God, whatever) is good but goes bad when it’s corrupted by religion. But Burge shows that the benefits of faith are most correlated with the religious parts, like attending church.
This means we need to rethink our answers for religious decline. The answer is not for Christianity to simply become more liberal and/or moderate. If it were, the mainline wouldn’t be dying faster than the Religious Right.
The answer isn’t for it to be merely more conservative. If it were, we wouldn’t be seeing so many people identifying as evangelical without going to church. The answer isn’t more faith and less religion. If it were, the majority of observable benefits we see from faith wouldn’t come from religious tradition and activities.
However, I disagree a bit with some of Burge’s conclusions. Burge believes religious institutions should encourage doubt in doctrine, but commitment to community. But I think this runs against much of what Burge himself presents in the book.
First, I don’t think Burge’s data supports the idea that the mainline has historically been a haven for doubt and moderation. It may have been a haven for the spiritually moderate but not politically moderate. He argues that the mainline is politically moderate because the pews are politically moderate, even though he acknowledges the pulpits are overwhelmingly liberal.
But leadership has a huge impact on the culture of an institution. Pastors who, for example, portray the Religious Right as the “bad” kind of Christians are adding to our political polarization.
People give their deepest commitment to whatever ground is most stable; if you tell them political ideology is stable, and faith is shifting sand, you can’t be surprised if they believe you. It shouldn’t then shock us that this is what we discover in mainline churches. Sociologist George Yancey found mainline Christians were far more likely than evangelicals to make politics a higher commitment than their faith, while evangelicals were the exact opposite.
This “highest commitment” issue is also supported by the data in another great book Burge contributed in “The Great Dechurching.” That book showed that most people who stop going to church do so not because they dislike church, but other, more important things, like work, leisure and family time, were just getting in the way. This is probably the best explanation why the Christian right has retained members while mainliners haven’t: They inspire commitment to faith above all other commitments, while the mainline does not.
Much (though obviously not all) talk of evangelical polarization is just a matter of evangelicals “not” getting politicized when everyone else has. Burge suggests the Religious Right seized on the transgender issue to replace the gay marriage issue after they lost that fight. But this is not quite fair. The Religious Right is just retaining the same beliefs that pretty much everyone had about transgender individuals as recently as the ‘90s.
We see the same thing when it comes to marriage/birthrates and parenting styles. There’s now a religious-secular fertility gap because religious conservatives are retaining the marriage and birth rates everyone used to have, while secular liberals are stopping. Likewise, the happiness gap between kids raised by liberals and conservatives is partly due to (particularly religious) conservatives retaining healthy “authoritative” parenting practices, while secular liberal parents are swept up in the “permissive parenting” ones.
Burge recognizes that we need a deep commitment to get us out of bed and into community. His solution is to make a commitment to a community for community’s sake. But I’m highly skeptical that this will work. He himself points out that to benefit from community, it’s not enough to just be around other people. You have to build “real social capital” with them. He notes that it's been shown that churches far outpace schools, work, or neighborhoods in building that social capital. Why?
As Jonathan Haidt points out in “The Anxious Generation” that churches unite us around shared worship. You build close relationships with people when you share the same loves and commitments.
Many people need to hear Burge’s message: “Just go to church.” This includes those who prefer their “personal relationship with Jesus” to shared worship of Jesus, and moderates who don’t buy everything the church is selling.
Burge has created the most important and readable book right now to understand religious decline and polarization in the U.S. His message to commit your life to a shared community is one America needs right now. But it will be up to others to create and maintain the compelling shared vision that binds together the community that Burge wants.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.