A return to religion in the West?

An excitement, a love

For many years Sister Michelle and I have spent Christmas together. We’d go to mass, get something to eat and go to a movie. Sean, her husband is a firefighter who worked every Christmas Day. Until this year. So, Michelle and I moved the food and movie part of our ritual to the Feast of Saint John (that was yesterday for those of you unfamiliar with the Church Year). We went to Jak’s Grill for brunch and saw “Complete Unknown.” It covers Bobby Dylan’s breaking into the music scene between 1961-65. My mind kept flashing between the screen and the people and events of the most formative period of my life. When Dylan’s girlfriend mentions working for CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) I began to cry. I was a member of CORE in Philadelphia, and had been the chair of two civil rights groups on Penn State campuses.

Later I thought about the music of the movement. There was what we actually sang when on a picket line — mostly based in the tradition of the African American Church: Oh Freedom, We Shall Not Be Moved, Eyes on the Prize, Wade in the Water, This Little Light of Mine, We Shall Overcome. Then there was what I thought of as the folk, jazz, and rock background music that was never sung on the line but was encouraging and uplifting: When the Ship comes in, Blowing in the Wind, Mississippi Goddam, Alabama (John Coltrane), A Change is Going to Come, Strange Fruit, The Times They Are A Changing.

You may have noticed that there’s less music in today’s efforts for change. There are some in the background category. But we don’t see songs sung by those protesting. Occasionally you’ll hear an old civil rights song offered to a group but the group doesn’t join in. My guess is that the difference may be in how today’s progressive movements have become less and less connected to religion. In the 60s the the churches, and to some extent the labor movement, provided a tradition of music that even non-religious civil rights workers were happy to participate in. It may also have been that during the earlier movement we knew the moment had come. The country was ready for change. When Bobby sang “The Times they are A Changing” we knew it was true. For a number of reasons that’s just not the case now.

Which brings me to my point (you knew I’d eventually get there).

Are we seeing the beginning of a return to religion in the West?

Church attendance is up in Britain. Google AI says, “In 2023, weekly attendance at Church of England services increased by 4.7% to 685,000, up from 654,000 in 2022. This is the third year in a row of growth. The number of children attending weekly also increased by 5.7% to 92,000.” Then there’s all these faithful people participating in various parish development training programs. In Shaping the Parish we have people from Canada and Florida, Alaska and Zambia, Wisconsin and Dubai, Haiti and New York City. Yes, you can register to begin in the fall of 2025! And my parish appears to be growing. How much data do you need?

Today the Free Press offered “How Intellectuals Found God.” The article opens with “In the beginning, Matthew Crawford believed in nothing.​ ‘The question of God wasn’t even on the radar.’” And goes on to share his coming to Saint Margaret’s Anglican Church, in Winnipeg and having “the classic story you hear of conversion.” Crawford’s assessment is “A lot of very thoughtful people who once believed reason and science could explain everything—why we’re here, what comes after we’re gone, what it all means—are now feeling a genuine hunger for something more.” Okay, I see that happening in my parish too.

The article by Peter Savodnik includes these comments.

Religion, the historian Niall Ferguson told me, “provides ethical immunity to the false religions of Lenin and Hitler.”

The culture ... doesn’t have any spiritual heart at all. It’s as if we think we can just junk thousands of years of religious culture, religious art, religious music, chuck it all out the window, and we’re just building and creating junk. (Paul Kingsnorth)

The genius of ritual is that it allows us not to articulate our feelings. It allows us to express our faith through an act. (Andrew Sullivan)

An excitement, a love

The article goes on to report on the experience of Father Jonah Teller from St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village. The Sunday group of young people that was attracting 20 now draws over 100. The priest said “there was a ‘genuine happiness’ that he could feel at Mass, ‘an excitement, a love.’”

I see that at Mass every Sunday as well.

I have no idea if all this indicates a shift. Maybe. And maybe not. There are certainly pockets of increased religion but the overall trend still seems to be toward more secularization. In 2022 Pew Research offered “Modeling the Future of Religion in America” It reported that, “If recent trends in religious switching continue, Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades.” That of course was based on the trends continuing. And we know that many trends do not continue.

In the end I return to the basics (my basics, you may have others).

A way into faith is to understand that religion involves at least three elements. All of which assume that God acts in our life and history.

I find it more helpful to begin with what God is doing

Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to
persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy
and wonder in all your works. Amen.

Than in any commitments I may make -

Celebrant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all
people, and respect the dignity of every human
being?

People: I will, with God's help.

Yes, yes, I know they go together. And I see that the promise includes “with God’s help.” But maybe you’ve noticed what I’ve noticed — many sermons in the past 50 years focused on the Baptismal Covenant and fewer on the relationship between God’s initiative and our response. It’s a matter of tone and climate, where we place the emphasis.

Having said all that, I’ll return to the three elements and my oddly liberal view of how any one might be a starting place and also a place of primary stability for a person.

1. The experience of wonder and awe

2. Practices that offer ways to acknowledge, understand, and respond to that wonder— like Mass, the daily prayers of the church, adoration, serving the stranger and poor.

3. Intellectual belief. Which takes us into a willingness to set aside the most narrow minded and anti scientific understandings and dig deeper.

Many people seem to come to faith along one of those paths. In time the other two may emerge because, at least among those of faith they are interdependent.

It’s the Feast of Saint John. So, I’ll end with this -

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us-- we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. 1 John 1:1-4

To me that sounds a lot like what the Greenwich Village priest saw — “there was a ‘genuine happiness, an excitement, a love.’”

This abides,

Brother Robert, OA