Why Religion Went Obsolete
The Demise of Traditional Faith in America
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Is traditional American religion doomed? Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans identifying as "not religious" has increased remarkably. Religious affiliation, service attendance, and belief in God have declined. More and more people claim to be "spiritual but not religious." Religious organizations have been reeling from revelations of sexual and financial scandals and cover-ups. Public trust in "organized religion" has declined significantly. Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations. This means that, barring unlikely religious revivals among youth, the losses will continue and accelerate in time, as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and increasingly fewer American children are raised by religious parents. All this is clear. But what is less clear is exactly why this is happening. We know a lot more about the fact that traditional American religion has declined than we do about why this is so. Why Religion Went Obsolete aims to change that. Drawing on survey data and hundreds of interviews, Christian Smith offers a sweeping, multifaceted account of why many Americans have lost faith in traditional religion. An array of large-scale social forces-everything from the end of the Cold War to the rise of the internet to shifting ideas about gender and sexuality-came together to render traditional religion culturally obsolete. For growing numbers of Americans, traditional religion no longer seems useful or relevant. Using quantitative empirical measures of big-picture changes over time as well as exploring the larger cultural environment--the cultural "zeitgeist"--Smith explains why this is the case and what it means for the future. Crucially, he argues, it does not mean a strictly secular future. Rather, Americans' spiritual impulses are being channelled in new and interesting directions. Why Religion Went Obsolete is a tour de force from one of our leading chroniclers of religion in America.
About this Author
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith is well known for his research focused on religion, adolescents and emerging adults, and social theory. He has written many books, including Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (with Michael O. Emerson), as well as Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (with Melinda Lundquist Denton).
Reviews
"What has driven millions of Americans, especially the younger generations, to desert church pews? Drawing upon a rich multimethod body of evidence, Christian Smith presents an updated Durkheimian argument that American churches lost their core social functions during the late twentieth century due to both major historical events and complex societal developments. This readable study will provide fresh insights into reasons for the decay of religion in America, which has contributed to a fervent cultural backlash among the remaining faithful." --Pippa Norris, Harvard University
"This is an era-defining work. What Herberg's Protestant, Catholic, Jew was in the 1950s, what Lenski's The Religious Factor was in the 1960s, and what Wuthnow's Restructuring of American Religion was in the 1990s, Christian Smith's Why Religion Went Obsolete is to the early 21st century. It is a remarkable work of scholarship and essential reading for anyone keen to understand the perplexing status of religion in contemporary America." --James Davison Hunter, author of Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America's Political Crisis
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