"In a reversal of long-standing marital patterns, college-educated young adults are more likely than young adults lacking a bachelor’s degree to have married by the age of 30" (The Reversal of the College Marriage Gap By Richard Fry).Pew Report - Reversal of the College Marriage Gap
This corresponds to the sweeping changes in American society over the last 50 years (since 1960), all of which has direct implications for the church in America today.
There is a direct correlation of all of these factors: most non-college educated people live in urban areas (in my urban parish area, only 6% of adults have college degrees), most of these young adults are not married, many of them are having children out of wedlock, and most of them do not attend church or get involved in any civic organizations of any kind.
In contrast, most college-educated people live in suburban areas, more of these people are in stable marriages with children, and more of these people attend church and are involved in civic groups.
One can see the trends very clearly if you follow what has happened among the Christian churches in the USA. Until 50 years ago, all of the largest congregations were in urban areas. Today, all of the largest ones are in suburban areas. This helps to explain why the congregations I serve have steadily lost members over the last few decades. It is nearly impossible to fight against such sweeping changes in society.
How do we create a "need to attend church" among people who generally do not feel this need whatsoever? The truth is that we need a revival. Only the Holy Spirit can create this need. We need a revival of interest in the things of God, the things that have eternal meaning and value. At least we can pray for such a movement.
I really don't think we can make any automatic connection between conformity to socially conservative mores (pro-marriage, pro-children, as if simply producing more people were a good in and of itself) and the role of Church. There may be a correlation between people who get married before having children and the churched, but there's no straightforward causation in either direction. So there's no reason to automatically assume the absence of a "need to attend church" just because people have had children out of wedlock, anymore than because they are LGBTQ, pro-choice, or believe in evolution.
ReplyDeleteObviously, one of the primary things the Church needs to do in order to speak to those who do not easily fall into the social conservative's model of how the individual and/or family should be ordered is to abandon the type of legalism which proclaims that model as normative.
However, in the face of the failure of the social conservative model of reproductive futurism, the Church has failed to step into its prophetic role to articulate an alternate vision inclusive to both the married and unmarried, to those called to be parents and to those who are not, to those who are straight, gay, and/or asexual, an understanding of sexual expression firmly rooted in the liberatory (queer!) nature of Jesus Christ. As long the Church stands for nothing, no one will listen to what it has to say.
Earlier this month Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist I mentioned on the pilgrimage to the Shrine of St.Nicholas, responded, in a column and a couple of blog posts, to a similar, albeit socially conservatively-premised, study by the socially conservative National Marriage Project--The Retreat from Marriage in Middle America--looking at the so-called "marriage gap," only in terms of beliefs rather than behavior.
ReplyDelete"On some questions (the morality of premarital sex, whether a divorce should become harder to obtain) well-educated and less-educated Americans seem to have converged over the last few decades," Douthat writes. "[T]he convergence [. . .] is absent on the most hot-button issue of all — abortion. There, the country still divides pretty cleanly along educational lines, with high school dropouts strongly opposed to abortion-on-demand, college graduates tilting in its favor, and high school graduates somewhere in between. And surprisingly, that divide hasn’t really changed since the 1970s, despite the changes on other issues, and the shifting pattern of religious practice."
It seems natural, therefore, that immersion in a culture which opposes the reproductive freedoms of women would result in an the type of increase in children born out wedlock demonstrated by the Pew Report you (i.e., Fr. Nathan) cite, while immersion in a culture which respects those freedoms would result in a corresponding decrease. Call it the Bristol Palin effect. And since those cultures continue to correspond with education/wealth, so too would the number of children out of wedlock, so that poorer and/or less educated people would be more likely to have children outside of wedlock--and births out of wedlock would correspond to lack of religiosity only insofar as education and religiosity correlate, as recent evidence indicates they now do in U.S.-ian culture. (I think that was the fundamental point you are trying to make?)
Unfortunately Cole, you have entirely missed what I was hoping to point out. That may be due to my inability to be clear. But, where there is smoke, there is fire. Obviously, this discussion makes you very uncomfortable, and I wonder why that is the case.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what is important to me in this regard is that there is a convergence of empirical data which points to a dramatic cultural shift underway among our people. Call any pastor in our area and you can receive ample anecdotal data to back this up. The plain fact is that the "center" of American church life has shifted out of urban areas and to suburban ones. Urban populations are now statistically less likely to attend church than suburban ones. This change corresponds with the changes in relational patterns. I can not suggest to udnerstand the cause-and-effect here (if any), bu only to recognize the convergence of these changes and to wonder what these might auger for our future as the church.