Secularization?

(I wrote this for our Presbytery Newsletter)

This past week I read a fascinating article by Peter Berger, the best known sociologist of religion in North America. For many years, Berger believed in something called “the secularization thesis.” This was a theory that religion would inevitably decline in the modern world until it pretty much disappeared. But Berger has had a conversion experience. He no longer believes that modern society is necessarily secular. In fact, he writes, “in much of the world there has been a veritable explosion of religious faith.”

The key mark of modernity is not secularity, Berger argues, but pluralism. “Modernity is characterized by plurality, within the same society, of different beliefs, values, and worldviews.” So we are witnessing both the growth of religion and growth in the diversity of religious expressions.

Much of that growth is taking place outside of Europe and North America, in the so-called “global south” – Africa, Latin America and southern Asia. Much of it is Muslim, but the fastest growing religion in the world is not Islam, but Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity. .

But we shouldn’t assume that the world-wide religious revival is entirely bypassing our supposedly secular Canadian society – not by a long shot. There are plenty of signs that people are hungry for a religious perspective that will give meaning and hope to their lives. And, as people like Diana Butler Bass have argued, that hunger for faith is not only found in so-called evangelical churches. There are plenty of signs of vitality within traditional mainline Christianity.

So, question: Why do we continue to close United Churches? Why are so many of our congregations struggling with aging and shrinking memberships? If the hunger for the consolations of faith is as keen as we are told it is, why is it not having more impact?Another question. If our time is marked by increasing religious diversity, why do so many of our United Churches look so much the same? While we are diverse in some ways, in other ways United Churches are much more homogeneous than they were 25 years ago. The people in our churches tend to look pretty much the same, sound the same and act the same. Much as we hate to admit it, the churches that have done better at including the young, the poor, the disabled and racial minorities are not our kind of church. Sometimes I think that our concern to promote a distinctive “United Church ethos” has actually discouraged the very diversity we say we value.

As we move farther into the 21st century (who can believe that the millennium was almost a decade ago?) these are the questions we have to ask. They’re questions that are part of a much bigger picture than just whether we can pay the bills for a few more years or survive a little longer through amalgamations or downsizing our ministry staffs. They’re questions that cut to the heart of whether the United Church of Canada can continue to play its historic role in providing that framework of faith that people so desperately need.

Many of the ways we have always done things no longer seem to be working. We all know that any solutions are not going to be easy to find. But let’s keep conversations going.