From secular society to secular civilization
In a hundred years, the Nones will likely be a majority of the US population. What will that secular society be like?
For many years, America has been moving from a thoroughly religious society to a basically secular one. The signs of this change are all around, from declining attendance at religious services and loss of religious affiliation to the absence of religious leaders influencing the culture.
Numbers do not tell the whole story of this secularization, but they are dramatic. Not only are more than a quarter of Americans without connection to any religious institution—these are the “Nones”—but in just the past 20 years, the percentage of Americans who consider religion to be very important in their lives has dropped from 61% to 45%. That is a stunningly rapid change.
Of even more significance is the absence of religious figures with general cultural influence. In the second half of the 20th century, religious leaders such as Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Jr., Reinhold Niebuhr and William Sloane Coffin were enormously important in America. Today, there are no such leaders. Religion is not that significant any longer.
This trend is not contradicted by the current commitment of a majority on the United States Supreme Court to protect religious freedom or by the spasm of states reintroducing the Bible and the Ten Commandments in public schools or even by the presence of prayers at rallies for Donald Trump and the growth of Christian Nationalism. These are all actually political expressions rather than religious ones. More representative of religious change is the strong public support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
There are religious groups whose numbers are growing, but, again, tellingly, these are the most rigidly traditional. They are not indicators of a religious renaissance.
America is not alone in this change. The West generally is much less religious than it used to be. In years to come, the global south can be expected to change in similar fashion. Islam’s constant religious wars will lead to secularization in Islamic countries much as the wars of religion eventually had that effect on Christianity in Europe.
The major reason for the decline of religion can be summed up as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche did in 1882—the death of God. Overwhelmingly, the religions of humanity contain important supernatural elements that are incompatible with any kind of scientific outlook. Unless that changes—and I don’t see how it can—religion will remain intellectually irrelevant. People will still turn to it for many reasons, but supernatural religion cannot any longer be the foundation of society. Secularization will therefore probably continue both here and in the world generally.
But what has been the result of this secular society? Since the noisy arrival of Chris Hitchens and the rest of the New Atheists in the early 2000s, Americans have grown more isolated, unhappy, angry and irrational. American public life is in tatters. Confidence in science has plummeted. Even if Donald Trump is defeated in the fall, America will be left divided, with almost half of Americans distrusting the rest.
The problem is that secularism—the worldview of nonreligion—has failed to develop. The movement to a secular society simply happened as a sociological fact. The decline of religion did not arise from, nor create, any kind of organized activity. So, it left behind a kind of absence. People just gradually stopped going to church or being influenced by religion. Community and belief just disappeared.
There are organized secular groups: American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, various freethought groups and many others. They fight for the separation of church and state and for the rights of the nonreligious. But they represent only a tiny fraction of the American population. Culturally speaking, they have little influence. Nor do they present an overall vision of a secular future.
Secularism—the worldview of nonreligion—has failed to develop. The movement to a secular society simply happened as a sociological fact.
What would or could the secular future be? In a hundred years, the Nones will likely be a majority of the US population, maybe even 60%, no matter what anyone does. What will that secular society be like?
If nothing changes, that society might be a lot like this one, only worse, with even more isolation and unhappiness.
What is needed is a move from a secular society to a secular civilization. Such a change would be similar to what happened in Europe in the Middle Ages, when the practices of Christians coalesced into the structures of Medieval Christendom—a Christian civilization. Christian civilization meant a widely shared story of human existence that led to the creation of social, political and economic forms of life consistent with, and expressive of, that Christian understanding of life.
Similar moments occurred in the creation of Confucian civilization in China, Hindu civilization in India and Buddhist civilization in southeast Asia.
It is too early to imagine the content of such a secular civilization. But two things can be confidently predicted.
First, unless there is movement toward secular civilization, the decline of religion will be very bad for people. It already is. Young people in America struggle with meaning and purpose. That will only get worse as secularization spreads. This recognition should lead secularists to regard the creation of secular civilization as the most important task facing us.
Second, the first step to the creation of secular civilization will be the working out of a secular worldview. Secularism today confronts the same problem that the Church did in the 4th century. At that time, the nature of Christ and his relationship to God were contested. The Church needed a settled theology. That was achieved at the Council of Nicaea.
Secularism needs something similar. People are fond of saying that religion is more than beliefs. That is true. But all religions begin with belief systems. Secularism must do the same.
Secularism must decide whether our secular civilization is to be founded on pure materialism or will develop new forms of spiritually infused naturalism. In a recent book, I called this the difference between answering “no” or “yes” to the question Is the universe on our side?
I don’t know how that question will be answered, but it must answered in some fashion. That answer will begin the process of the creation of new forms of social, political and economic life—a secular civilization.
