Empty pews. Is the church dying? What about Christianity? What about religion? What about spiritual beliefs? What about God himself? In true American fashion, the trend in this country has been to disavow insitutional forms of religion and to keep or maintain religious belief to some extent in God. Time is trying to track this trend and make something of it.
Yet rumors of religion's demise turned out to be premature... as a new report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows, it is a mistake to conclude that more Americans are rejecting religion. Leaving church, it turns out, doesn't mean losing faith...
"The U.S. has an unmatched religious dynamism," explains Lugo. "It's an open religious marketplace as well as a very competitive one. This is the supermarket cereal aisle." Without an established state religion, all faiths can freely exist in the U.S. but must compete for adherents in order to survive.
Our plurality in belief is certainly represented by the plurality that is allowed by our founding documents. Our smorgasbord and super-independent spirituality mirrors our marketplace- eBay, Amazon, iTunes, craigslist, etc. But we lose something if we lose organized religion. Can we be just as spiritual in the future if we're not reading religious texts and being influenced by religious institutions in our cities and neighborhoods? We might still be spiritual now, but is it only a matter of time before we'll lose that influence too?
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