World Religions in Microcosm: Family Practices Globally

By Gayle Kimball Ph.D

The interviewees from 13 countries include an attendant to the Dalai Lama, a Jesuit seminarian, a rabbinical student, an Australian aboriginal clan member, African tribal members, and Unity and Presbyterian feminist ministers--all speaking candidly about their spiritual practices and lived religions. The discussion includes current global religious issues such as increasing secularization and fundamentalist influence on governments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9780938795087

Gayle Kimball Ph.D

Professor Emerita Gayle Kimball, Ph.D. is the Nautilus award-winning author of 25 books, including "Calm: How to Thrive in Challenging Times", a trilogy dialogue with visionary scientists, and "Essential Energy Tools." She taught courses in world religions and women in religion.

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Introduction

Goals

I interviewed families around the world to learn about current religious and spiritual issues. I wanted to find out how families apply their religious and spiritual beliefs in their daily lives, how individual beliefs change over a life time, and how parents teach values to their children. Also, why is the global trend towards withdrawal from religious affiliation increasing in modernized countries and how can we satisfy our spiritual needs? Why is loneliness a global epidemic and what can we do about it?

For solutions and replicable models for spiritual connection and mental health, I looked to indigenous religions, new positive thinking religions, feminist theology, the Consciousness Revolution aiming to replace science’s Materialist Paradigm, and community building as alternatives to old patriarchal religions. Patriarchy is defined as men have authority, control and power over women, as is still true in many world religions, which limits growth and creativity.

Secularization and Loneliness

Growing secularization and the decline in religious affiliation in the West may contribute to lack of certainty and loneliness. Current human destruction of our environment, increasing inequality between the poor and the rich, the popularity of autocrats who care about their power rather than democracy, and ongoing wars lead us to question the meaning of these painful crises and to lose hope for a happy future. At the same time, many are developing their own eclectic spirituality.

The rise of Christian Nationalism in the US is especially troubling in their goal to take back the government for Jesus and needs to be countered with reminders that church and state are separate, according to the First Amendment of the Constitution. The traditional religious focus on sin and hellfire turns off interviewees like Angela (Greece, Orthodox), Ariane (Brazil, Baptist), and Aryn, Brian, Carol, and Dominic (US, former Catholics) who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. In Zambia, Feliz said he’s gone beyond reciting the rosary to a personal relationship with my creator.

The US declined to 23 in its ranking in the 2023 World Happiness Report, mainly due to youth unhappiness.¹ Youth are also least likely to be religious. A Gallup poll the same year found that US employees are generally unhappy at work and the number who feel disconnected with their workplace is increasing.² Youth face a mental health crisis and over half of Americans are part of the loneliness crisis, which undermines mental and physical health.³ (Polyvagal Theory in Therapy by Deb Dana explains the physiology of its impact on our health.) The lack of social connection experienced by around half of US adults is associated with increased risk for anxiety and depression as well as heart and other diseases.

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a report in 2023 about Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, warning that loneliness is a greater health risk than obesity and physical inactivity.⁴ He called for a movement to mend the social fabric of our nation, including faith organizations. His report points out that religious groups can provide community support, a sense of meaning and purpose, and a sense of belonging around shared values and beliefs, which reduces risk-taking behaviors. Part of the social infrastructure, they exist in every neighborhood and could provide social capital to counter the loneliness epidemic.

Harvard educator Richard Weissbourd studies teens and observed,

We find the teens are lonely and about 40% feel like they have little or no meaning or purpose in their life. I think the loss of faith-based communities, religion, is concerning in many ways. I'm not suggesting that people should suddenly become more religious, but that community is really important in providing the sense of purpose and meaning. There are structures in religious communities for dealing with trauma, grief, and loss that can be very important to teens. We have to think about how to reproduce those aspects of religion in secular life.⁵

Similar to the US, about one-quarter of people in 142 countries surveyed by Meta-Gallup report feeling very or fairly lonely, lacking social connection.⁶ This problem is associated with social isolation and harms to physical and emotional health. Younger people are most likely to be lonely (27%, with a higher rate in Africa and lower rate in Europe) and older people are least likely to feel lonely (17%).

Overall, there’s no gender difference in self-report of loneliness but some countries do have gender differences. The World Health Organization declared it a global health threat, equivalent in its harmful effects to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and organized an international commission to address the problem.⁷

Globally, people who regularly attend religious services tend to live longer than people who don’t participate, perhaps because of the health benefits of social support and community.⁸ For many religions, community is central to their purpose.⁹ However, the Global State of Connections report asked how often respondents interacted with six possible groups in the last week: Next to the bottom, with 25%, was groups based on shared interests or beliefs.¹⁰ The bottom of the list was strangers and the top was friends or family who live nearby.

About The Interviewees

I knew some of the 28 interviewees from previous research and found the others by reading articles and books about contemporary religious issues. I found people who had experienced an in-depth religious practice. Examples are a Buddhist monk and attendant to the Dalai Lama, a Jesuit seminarian, and a rabbinical student. Others are a LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) former bishop, an Australian aboriginal member of the Apalech clan, African tribal members, and feminist Unity and Presbyterian ministers.

Highly educated, seven of them have Ph.D.s and are published authors, so they are not a representative sample. They are representative of both women (15) and men (13), people of color, and a global worldview from 13 countries: Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Greece, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore, Tibet, the US and Zambia. In an untraditional format, I use questions and answers with my comments imbedded in the text in italics to focus in-depth on their voices.

I was struck by two trends: how eclectic many of the interviewees were in their spiritual practices and how many of the Westerners left their childhood religions, unlike the Eastern interviewees who are more closely identified with their religious tradition, being Hindu or Muslim or Taoist. However, around the world the interviewee’s children are less traditional than their parents, including in India and Singapore. The interviewees all have a practice they use to stay centered and uplifted, as listed at the close of their interviews. Their practices include: prayer, chanting a mantra, meditation and visualization, being in nature, having a sacred altar, a spiritual support group, Qigong movement, and breathing exercises.

I interviewed them on Skype or Zoom in 2023 and 2024. The unedited videos are available on my YouTube channel for you to view. I edited the transcripts for clarity and the interviewees edited as they liked and supplied their photographs. In the following pages, when I refer to a person included in the book, I add an asterisk after her or his name. I changed the names of the Pakistani Muslim couple to preserve her wish for modesty. I provide brief overviews of characteristics of world religions before their sections in the book and discuss current global religious issues in the first chapter.

These are the basic questions I asked all the interviewees with many individual additions as you can hear on YouTube:

1. What did your parents teach you about the meaning of life and God when you were a child?

2. What were the religious teachings you learned about gender roles? Reproduction and sexuality?

3. Describe your education and career paths.

4. How have your beliefs changed in adulthood?

5. How have your beliefs impacted your children?

6. What rituals, holidays, and ceremonies do you practice? (See a list of global religious observances. ¹¹)

7. What have we left out?

Defining Religious Studies

Religious Studies is the scientific study of beliefs and practices. Scholars contemplate concepts like belief, faith, belonging, supernatural, myth, ritual, the sacred and profane, metaphysics, blasphemy, and secular. They research how these beliefs and practices shape social trends and are in turn influenced by them. An example of lived religious studies is the MAGA influence on evangelical and Pentecostal political participation in the US and vise versa such as Donald Trump’s shift to anti-reproductive choice. Popular culture is also mined for religious themes, such as in a course taught at Harvard and at Stanford to discuss the religious implications of Japanese anime (animated video and comics).

Other ways to study religion and the sacred are phenomenological, anthropological, scriptural, theological and ethical, critical, and comparative, as listed by Professor Cyrus Zargar in his course syllabus. Lived religions and sociology of religion can be added, as applied in this book.

People who search for the meaning of life traditionally looked for guidance from their elders and religious leaders—often patriarchal.

As people turn away from many hierarchical authoritarian and institutions lacking in enjoyment, including religions, young people experience more freedom to explore their own choices. A folk song by Iris DeMent, titled Let the Mystery Be, sums up a purpose of religion: Everybody is wondering what and where they all came from. Everybody is worrying 'bout where they're gonna go when the whole thing's done.

The Pew Research Center lists the five major world religions as Christianity first, with around two billion believers, followed by Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, plus folk religions that center on daily practices. All are included in this book, but not Indian Jainism, Japanese Shinto, or Persian Zoroastrianism. The illustrated World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored and Explained by John Bowker does include them and an online map of the world shows where religions are centered.¹²

Pew Research projects that Islam will nearly equal in numbers to Christianity by 2050 due to Muslim youthful fertility rates, a good reason to learn more about the religion. Four out of ten Christians will live in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to increased focus on the Global South by religious leaders like the Pope.¹³ Hinduism and folk religions will grow slightly. The number of unaffiliated people will increase in number but decrease as a percentage of global population.

Another trend is the impact of religious fundamentalism on government policy is increasing, as with Hindu nationalism in India, Russian Orthodox support of Putin’s wars, and Christian Nationalism in the US. Scholars point out that religion flourishes in places of instability and declines in areas with social stability, modernization, and industrialization.

Author Background

Like many of the nonels around the world who don’t affiliate with one religion, I consider myself eclectically spiritual. My view of religion was shaped by reading Huston Smith’s book Religions of Man (later changed to World Religions) as a teenager. I found ah ha understanding from the chapters on Hinduism and Buddhism that explained karma, the cause and effect that governs us. When I think of aphorisms that I repeat to myself, what goes around, comes around (karma) and what is, is (dharma) are frequent, along with the Zen Buddhist chop wood, carry water.

Smith explained, If we take the world's enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race." Unlike many other people in the West, my beliefs have remained the same since childhood, deepened by study of consciousness, as suggested by quantum physicists.

My brother and I were raised in the Church of Religious Science (later changed to Centers for Spiritual Living, CSL), which taught us how our positive thoughts create our life. In Sunday School we sang, We are strong as Jesus is strong, instead of the traditional lyrics We are weak as he is strong. I sent my son to the same church. He especially loved the youth summer camp where he felt very affirmed and nurtured but doesn’t attend religious services as an adult. Both of us find inspiration from hiking in Mother Nature.

Teaching high school history after graduation from UC Berkeley, I developed a World Religions course. I went on to study this topic at the UC Santa Barbara’s Ph.D. program in Religious Studies. When I was hired to teach at California State University Chico, I created a course on Women in Religion. I was asked to lead the new Women’s Studies Program and went on to teach a variety of courses and write books to give voice to the unheard, such as global youth, egalitarian couples, and visionary scientists.

Coming back full circle in my life, this book explores how families apply world religions and illuminates their family values. If mainline religious groups are to maintain or increase their membership, they will need to rethink patriarchal practices such as the focus on sin, guilt, and exclusive male authority—including God as male.

I’d like to hear from you about how you apply your belief and value systems: Please share on https://greenlocalsolutions.wordpress.com/or email [e-mail].

Chapter 1: Current Religious Issues

Old and New Religions

Globally, the majority of people are religious (84%) and few are atheists.¹⁴ Christians comprise the largest number of believers, about one-third of the world population. They’re declining in numbers in Europe and North America but Christianity is growing in the Global South. For example, in Ghana this civil religion is used to build national identity where more than 70% of the people are Christian. The US has the largest number of Christians compared with other nations, with Southern and National Baptists the largest Protestant denomination--but they too face decline in members.¹⁵

Americans are more likely than Europeans to pray daily to God and tend to be more religious than Europeans with fewer atheists--only about 7% in 2021, according to NORC surveys at the University of Chicago, or 4% in a Pew report.¹⁶ Judaism is slightly declining in numbers even in Israel. Islam is the fastest growing religion by far, partly due to a young Muslim population with high fertility rates. Most Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs live in East Asia but their beliefs influence common global spiritual practices, such as meditation and yoga and belief in reincarnation and karma.

Well-known scholar Huston Smith was raised in a Methodist missionary family in China, and is himself an ordained minister. Adopted by the Oglala Sioux tribe, he observed that world religions share belief in an after-life and teach us moral laws to treat each other as we would want to be treated—the Golden Rule. Religion, he says, addresses our ultimate concerns in institutionalized spirituality and wisdom is to be found in all religions.¹⁷ (See his illustrated and best-selling The World’s Religions: A Guide to Our Wisdom Traditions.) It helps us to find meaning and happiness and he believes the key to spiritual growth is humility.

Smith views mysticism as the heart of all religions, namely the direct experience of the divine—as experienced by some of our interviewees. He noted that religion is about practice as well as belief and its purpose is to transform us, to make us more aware and compassionate people as we’re all part of a cosmic tapestry. Religion provides a framework for exploring existential questions so that science and religion enrich each other.

Theologian Paul Tillich says religion is about our ultimate concerns. The task of religions is to give humankind another world to live, an imaginative world of beauty, harmony, and perfection, that the soul of humans may be strengthened and deepened by contemplating, and its beauty and serenity fill the mind, summarized Joseph Ratner when writing about George Santayana’s theory of religion. (He faulted Protestantism for setting religion back ten centuries by minimizing ritual and symbolism).¹⁸

Stephen Prothero disagrees with the view that all religions are similar, the approach explained in Smith’s The Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions, in the Dalai Lama’s Toward a True Kinship of Faiths, and in Swami Sivananda’s statement that, All religions are one. They teach a divine life.

A different point of view is described in God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter where Prothero portrays the major religions as having different goals. They respond to different problems with various techniques and exemplars or models like Jesus or the Buddha. (He includes Confucianism and African Yoruba religions. For a visual overview, The Story of God documentary shows how different religions understand God.¹⁹) For Prothero, the Christian problem is sin and the goal is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and good works. However, Catholics emphasis good works while Protestants believe salvation requires grace.

For Buddhists the problem is suffering and the goal is nirvana, ending the cycle of rebirth by following the Eightfold Path. For Hindus, the problem is the same, called samsara, and the goal is to end reincarnation by applying the various branches of yoga. For Muslims, the problem is hubris (pride); the solution is submission to Allah, and the technique is following the Five Pillars.

For Jews, the problem is exile from God and the solution is to return by studying and obeying Jewish law and storytelling. Prothero does agree that all religions share the four Cs: Creed (statement of beliefs), Cultus (rituals), Code (standards for ethical conduct), and Community (where members meet as in a church or mosque). Other Religious Studies scholars study the three Bs: belief, behavior (e.g., praying), and belonging (e.g., membership).²⁰ Religions generally believe in a spiritual reality beyond the material world.

Ancient indigenous spiritual practices are found in Africa with around 3,000 tribes (See Jeffer* and Feliz*), China’s 55 ethnic minorities, around 500 Australian aboriginal tribes, and Native Americans with over 500 tribes. Aboriginals like Tyson*, have the longest continued cultural history, over 50,000 years.²¹ These indigenous traditions are practiced around the world and usually include belief in a creator and other divinities and animistic veneration for nature and ancestors. Gifted shamans are able to communicate with these spirits.

In Asia, the semi-autobiographical film American Girl is a 2021 story about a Taiwanese family who return to the island after living in Los Angeles. It portrays the mother burning paper money to send to her ancestors. She comments that when she is baptized as a Christian, she won’t be able to continue the Taoist practice. We see a cross on the wall of her home. In another example of mixing belief systems, the family talks about reincarnation, as when the 13-year-old girl says she’d like to be reborn as a horse and her mother says she would choose to be a boy, a Buddhist influence on the family. Also, Mazu, folk goddess of the sea, is widely celebrated in Taiwan, as in annual processions.

Another annual observance, every New Year’s Day, many Japanese follow ancient Shinto observances, praying to the gods to bless the new year, a religious holiday called oshogatsu, which includes a visit to the local shrine, bowing at the torii gate and ringing the temple bells.²² Many Japanese also worship at Buddhist temples along with Western rituals such as with Easter eggs and white wedding dresses. (In a wedding I saw in Japan, the bride wore a western white dress but she and the groom didn’t kiss each other).

Ala is the mother of all, the earth goddess, for Ebo tribal people in West Africa.²³ Various African religions accompanied slaves to the Americas, which combined with occult practices and Catholicism. One of the most popular religions, Candomblé in Brazil stemmed from Yoruba beliefs, which also inspired Santería practices surging in Cuba, although Fidel Castro’s government outlawed religion.²⁴ Umbanda believers in in Brazil give new year offerings to the fertility goddess of the sea, Iemanjá, while wearing white as a symbol of peace. They create altars in the sand along the beach and launch small boats offering candles, flowers, fruit and liquor. These Brazilian practices were created in the 20th century, drawing from African roots.

Professor Bron Taylor comments, Nature religion is most commonly used as an umbrella term to mean religious perception and practices that are characterized by a reverence for nature and that consider its destruction a desecrating act.²⁵ In his Dark Green Religion, he includes radical environmentalists and New Age ecopsychology as examples of green religions. Wicca also can be viewed as a nature religion.²⁶

The indigenous animistic view of universal divine essence is like ancient Greek philosophical idealism, which taught that reality is ideas, the mind, rather than matter. This is recently backed up by Quantum Physics and the Consciousness Paradigm. The Quakers, founded in England in the 17th century by George Fox, also believe that the divine is present in everyone and were especially influential in the history of Pennsylvania.

Idealism was included in the wisdom religion, the Theosophical movement started by Russian-American Helena Blavatsky. She included Asian religions with the belief in reincarnation, one of the leaders bringing those concepts to the West. She founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 and wrote a series of books, including The Key to Theosophy.

New Thought churches, including Centers for Spiritual Living and Unity churches (see Reverend Karen*), formed in the 19th century, taught the power of thought, as explained in Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 best-seller The Power of Positive Thinking. A resurgence of interest in manifesting intentions occurred during the Covid pandemic, shown in a 600% increase in Google searches for manifesting. (A critique of this trend is provided in The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell.)

In Self-Made: Creating Our Identities, Dr. Tara Isabella Burton points out that New Thought also influenced the evangelical Prosperity Gospel belief that prosperity rewards the Christian faithful’s prayers. A harmful aspect of this belief is that the disadvantaged are viewed as responsible for not thinking positively.

Many of the religions founded in the 19th century had women founders, including Christian Science, Unity, Seventh Day Adventists, and Shakers. Religions offered women leadership roles due to attribution to being a channel for divine guidance and inspiration rather than their own personal leadership. Other new religions were Unitarian Universalists²⁷ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, called Mormons), founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. They have over 17 million members around the world. LDS encourages every young man to do missionary work for two years but young women don’t have the same expectation. Although they’re welcome to serve, they’re a small minority.

One of the newest and most controversial religions, the Church of Scientology was founded in 1953, made famous by celebrity members like Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, and John Travolta. Around the same time, Wicca was introduced by Gerald Gardner in England, drawing on pagan rituals and association with nature. Journals like Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions explore these new religious groups.

Some scholars reject the term world religions as used in World Religions in Microcosm, because they think it’s associated with colonial nations’ harmful influence on developing nations in the Global South and on indigenous people. The latter is illustrated in the 2023 film Frybread Face and Me that takes place on the Dine’ (Navajo) reservation in Arizona. The grandmother in the film refuses to speak English as the language of the colonizers. She values balance and beauty in maintaining traditions like including a spirit line in her weaving to prevent her spirit from being trapped in the rug.

An elder Maidu woman I talked with in Northern California, Beverly Ogle (author of Spirits of Blackrock and Whisper of the Maidu) said that her grandmother told her that Maidu beliefs were for Maidu people. For that reason, she didn't tell me much but mentioned when someone asked her how she celebrated Christmas, Grandmother Lena replied, What animal is that?

I emailed Religious Studies Professor, pastor, and author Gregory Cootsona for his perspective about world religions.²⁸ He observed, Often the impetus to define a ‘religion’ (at least in English) was the result of colonizing. For example, there's a scholarly debate as to whether ‘Hinduism’ really exists as one thing or whether it was created in contrast to the Christianity that the British colonialists brought to India. The word ‘Hinduism’ first appeared in the early 1800s. With that said, I still use the term (with caveats, of course).

The West transformed the study of religions to liberal Western Christian values, asserts British scholar Suzanne Owen.²⁹ She argues that the World Religion paradigm developed in the 19th century artificially divides religions into Eastern or Western and neglects religious ritual, customs, ceremonies, and oral storytelling. Many traditions don’t rely on written doctrines, creeds, sacred texts (like the Bible, Quran, and Vedas), and religious institutions like churches, mosques, and synagogues.

The Western approach to religion emphasizes weekly congregational prayer, while other regions may focus on ritual, magic, ancestor worship and introspective disciplines, according to Professor Claude Fischer. This leaves out indigenous and local religions, as described in Graham Harvey’s Indigenous Religions and James Cox’ From Primitive to Indigenous. It also leaves out nature religions like pagan Wicca, causing what Owen calls essentialization and decontextualization of religion.

Owen would like to see a cultural studies approach to replace the idea of world religions: Cultural Studies examines how cultural practices relate to everyday life. This book fulfills Owen’s goal in that it focuses on current daily life in families and their beliefs and practices.

This approach is referred to as lived religion³⁰ and can also be categorized as sociology of religion, which looks at issues such as secularization, religious nationalism, and the impact of globalism on daily practices and beliefs rather than focus on theological belief systems. Sociologists look at social influences on ways we live, such as our social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and age and how this influences trends such as the evangelical resurgence in politics.

Our interviewees indicate how many people blend religious traditions in an eclectic or hybrid manner. Concurrently, ancient traditions linger as viewed in the upbringing of Millennials Jeffer* and Felix* in Africa, while in India a 13-year old Sikh girl, Twinkle,* wants to be an aerospace engineer and chose her own future husband. This eclectic trend may be the wave of the future, as seen in science fiction films that refer to Zensunni, Navachristianity and Buddislam.³¹

Ross Douthat is a Catholic who writes about religion; he too predicts future consolidations.³² Thinking about 2050, he suggests a weird future with consolidation of neotraditional Protestants, a group of nondenominational disillusioned former evangelicals who just think of themselves as Christian, liberal Catholicism with more lay leadership, post-Christian pagans (including New Age, mysticism, witchcraft, pantheism, etc.) considered a major US religion, and fast-growing outsiders with high fertility rates such as LDS and Orthodox Jews. In order to flourish, my view is that religions will need to integrate diversity and move away from traditional stern patriarchal emphasis on God as judgmental and punitive about our sins.

Secularization

The major global religious issue is growing secularization, a lack of affiliation with a religious group. Secularization is a process that removes religion’s domination over a culture, where people make sense of their lives on their own, according to sociologist Peter Berger.³³ It follows from the rise of science and global industrialization, according to sociologists like Max Weber.

The authors of the 2023 book Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society confirm that religious faith and participation has declined in most parts of the world.³⁴ The authors outline the debate among scholars about secularization. They disagree with authors like Rodney Stark, Peter Berger and Robert Bellah who write that it isn’t happening because of human needs to have answers and find supernatural comfort in the face of death, the community it provides, the way it links generations and inspires art.

In disagreement, Beyond Doubt researchers point to global surveys that people are increasingly less likely to belong to religious groups and to believe in the supernatural, although they may believe in a higher power. (The scholars use the World Values Survey and European Values Survey conducted in over 100 countries for four decades.) People tend to leave religions because they’re indifferent to them.³⁵

However, in most countries a majority of people identify with a religion and about 75% believe in God, few are atheists (about 8% in the US in 2017), but the trend is toward secularization.³⁶ Religion is increasing separated from major aspects of society, due to modernization, industrial and economic development, religious pluralism, autonomy in child-rearing and well-being.³⁷ Hence, countries where more than half of respondents attend religious services at least monthly are mainly in Africa (the most religious continent), southeast Asia, and Central America, as well as Ireland and Poland in Europe.³⁸ The most religious countries are the least modernized.³⁹

Not surprisingly, Beyond Doubt found that our parents strongly shape our religious attitudes. If parents leave religious choice up to their children, they tend not to chose to be religious.⁴⁰ Young people tend to be less religious even in Muslim countries where the Arab Barometer reported that the majority of 15 to 29-year-olds in 11 Middle Eastern and North African countries were not religious.⁴¹ Yet the percentage of nones is shrinking in sub-Saharan Africa, in what Alan Cooperman views as the secularizing West and the rapidly growing rest.

The Church of England’s Archbishop Justin Welby, the head of 85 million members, bemoaned how irrelevant the church is to an awful lot people in this country.⁴² He himself found God in a classic Protestant evangelical experience of personal salvation by Jesus. His remedy is for their parishes is to reach out to people who are not easy to embrace.

Also, cultural religion is practiced by many Jews and Scandinavians who are not believers but identify with their family or country’s religion, like Angela* in Greece. Despite or because of the Soviet effort to destroy religion, some of the countries of the former Soviet Union experience do have an increase in church attendance, as in Russia and Ukraine. A minority identify with a religion in countries like China and Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Uruguay (the only South American country in this group but all South American countries show a decline except for Peru).

An AP-NORC Poll reported that 70% of Japanese people said they had nonreligious feelings, fewer than 20% of Italians attended weekly services, only one-third of Israelis said they practiced traditional worship, and three in 10 in the US have no religious affiliation—the nones.⁴³ The nones are the second largest group in the US and in most of Europe.⁴⁴ China’s officially atheist government discouraged religion as feudal superstition, especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1977). Communist party members are not permitted to join a religion although the constitution states that citizens have freedom of religious beliefs.⁴⁵ In India, Hinduism predominates to the detriment of some Muslims who face discrimination.

Secularization has been a dominant issue in US religion since the 1990s. The traits that social scientists identify as shaping religious practice--belief, behavior and belonging--are lower than ever in US history, as discussed in Beyond Doubt. A 2021 Gallup survey reported that less than half were members of a religious group such as a church or temple and their poll found a drop in belief in God from 98% in the 1950s, to 81% in 2021.⁴⁶ Belief in God dropped to 68% among Americans under 30.

In 1970, 90% of Americans (including children) said they were Christian, but by 2020, this declined to about 64%, while about 30% were nones.⁴⁷ (Other surveys report nones rose from 2% in the 1950s to over 20% in 2022 and 28% according to Pew data the following year.⁴⁸)

In a 2023 Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey, one-third of people who left their religious tradition said it was bad for their mental health, due to anti-LGBTQ teachings (most often stated by youth), clergy abuse, and over-involvement in politics.⁴⁹ About one-third of Americans say they never attend church services: As a consequence, thousands of churches close each year. Decline in church membership is smaller among Protestants, conservatives, Republicans, and college graduates.⁵⁰ Women and older people are more likely to be religiously observant, as reported in Pew’s Religious Landscape Study.⁵¹

Pew scholars speculate that by 2070, Christians could decline to about one-third of the US population, while other religions could double and nones could increase from a third to a half. Believers in all other religions, including Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, now only total about 6% in the US, according to Pew Center. The trend of leaving one’s religious tradition, called religious churning, is common and only about 9% of those leaving are looking for a new religious affiliation, according to a 2023 Public Religion Research Institute survey (PRRI).⁵²

Evangelicals are least likely to leave their church, only about 16%, along with Jews, Hispanic Catholics, and Black Protestants. Youth are most likely to leave their faith tradition. The main reasons respondents gave PRRI for leaving their religion were they no longer believed its teaching (67%), its poor treatment of LGBTQ people (47%), and it was bad for their mental health (33%). Thus the 26% nones are now the largest group in the US, but few respondents are atheists (4%) or agnostic (5%).

Huston Smith observed in Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief, The greatest problem the human spirit faces in our time is having to live in the procrustean, scientistic worldview that dominates our culture. Mainline churches in the US are in terrible trouble, he observes.⁵³ Smith blames decline in church membership on failure to satisfy people’s spiritual needs, leading Americans to turn elsewhere to conservative churches, Asian religions, or New Age practices.⁵⁴ An increasing number of adults in the US think that the influence of religion is declining (increasing from 52% in 2002 to 80% in 2024) and that is not a positive development, according to Pew findings.⁵⁵ Only 8% think that’s a good trend.

The authors of The Great Dechurching (Pastor Jim Davis, et al.) critique churches for catering to the well-to-do and making the less fortunate feel unwelcomed. In a YouTube interview, Davis explained his own evangelical church’s actions to halt dechurching.⁵⁶ He found that members moving from home is the number one reason for evangelical shrinkage so churches need to help Christians find a church in their new location.

It’s also a class, education, and poverty issue, Davis said, such as single parents may not have time to go to church, so churches should put these groups on their outreach radar. Another high risk group is youth, between the ages 13 and 30. His church is therefore working on a youth disciplehood program to help parents embody the spirit and be good listeners, teaching them to emphasize grace as they instruct their children.

Catholic writer Ross Douthat blames the decline in participation in Catholic churches on the liberal branch of the church that undermines traditional practices.⁵⁷ Dominic* tells us that Jesuit seminarians like him were instructed to flagellate themselves with whips and chains several times a week and only speak to each other in Latin and other medieval practices. Also raised Catholic, Carol* distrusted divinity because she felt, I was under constant surveillance because God was an eye in the sky. Currently, Catholics include 1.4 billion people worldwide and comprised 21% of the US population in 2021, growing in numbers in the South.⁵⁸

The Catholic Church’s child sex abuse cases are widely condemned. Argentinian Pope Francis criticizes conservative backward Catholic bishops for their neglect of traditional Christian themes of helping the poor over their conservative ideology and anti-abortion efforts. He works to rebrand the church to focus on helping the poor, part of liberation theology that emphasizes deeds and actions over theology, as applied by Catholic clergy in Latin America where over half the people are Catholic. (His two papal predecessors condemned liberation theology.) Hence the Pope’s frequent visits to the Global South where he sees expansion for his church. He also aims to include the voices of lay people and nuns, rather than emphasizing the authority of the clergy, speaking out against what he calls clericalism.

Eastern Orthodox is the second largest group of Christians globally, most likely to be found in Russia and Eastern European countries, and are increasing in number—as described by Angela* in Greece. She rejected the Greek Orthodox view of God as pointing an accusing finger at her, tired of feeling guilty and ashamed, similar to Carol.*

The churches split in 1054 CE, with different structures. Roman Catholics are headed by an infallible pope while Orthodox archbishops are understood to be capable of error.⁵⁹ President Vladimir Putin compared religious cultures in the East and West: Western society is more pragmatic, while Russian people think more about the eternal, about moral values.⁶⁰ Russian values include banning homosexuality and gender changes as the path to the degeneration of the nation.

Professor Fischer suggests that the US increase in unaffiliated nones indicates a change in religious practice rather than abandoning it or a turn to atheism.⁶¹ He points out that the trend is mistakenly associated with decline in community, a fear that social bonds are falling apart, what scholar Robert Bellah sees as a shift to individualism away from communal life. However, Fischer observes that this is a myth; the historic concern since the Pilgrims landed is that individualism is running amuck, unraveling some nonexistent golden past.

Rather, Fischer points to the right-wing mobilization of the church as a key to explaining why disaffiliation surged among political liberals, along with other influences such as Catholic priest sex scandals. Thus, nearly all of the white Americans who left organized religion in the last few decades were liberals.⁶² That doesn’t mean they changed their beliefs, just their affiliation.

Fischer also observed that religion has become kinder, moving away from hell and judgement to a loving deity, and the US is more religious than the rest of the Western world. The fact that the US has never had a state religion encourages religious affiliation and proliferation. So does the role of churches in binding communities and social life in the context of strong individualism in the US, as reported by French observer Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 book Democracy in America.

However, in a poll about loneliness, respondents said they found community and belonging from family (65%), friends (53%), and neighbors (20%), rather than religious groups.⁶³ Over half said technology helps them form and maintain relationships.

In The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are and Where They Are Going, Ryan Burge observed that political conservatism and populist Christian nationalism in the culture wars since the 1970s (including the large majority of white evangelicals who supported Trumpism) pushed liberal Democrats away from religion while it kept Republicans in their pews. Over one-third of liberals are unaffiliated, unlike only 11% of conservatives.⁶⁴ Christian flags, banners, Bibles, and music were on display at the January 6, 2021 insurrection in the Capital since many insurgents believed that Trump was part of God’s plan.

However, the numbers of white evangelicals are declining in the US from 33% in 1999 to 13% in 2023.⁶⁵ Also concerned about declining membership and losing young members and converts who don’t like Trumpism, LDS prophet and President Russell Nelson advised in a 2023 national letter that members shouldn’t vote solely with one party, to counter the church’s historic association with Republicans.⁶⁶

Burge found the people without religious affiliation are more likely to be less educated than those who are affiliated, backing up the conclusion of The Great Dechurching authors.⁶⁷ Latinx people are least likely to be nones. In a reversal of a long trend of female religiosity, Burge found that young (born after 2000) women are more likely to be nones than men, just as young women are also more liberal politically.

Gen Z is even more liberal and likely to vote Democratic than Gen Y. About one-third of Gen Z aren’t affiliated with a religion, the largest generation of nones. Less than half of US college students learn about various religions, and they didn’t do well on a religious literacy quiz given in 2020 by the IDEALS survey of students on 122 campuses.⁶⁸ Thus, explanations for the decline in religious attendance in the US are the growth of urban post-industrial societies, increasing religious diversity, parents giving their children more freedom to make their own choices, and negative reaction to the religious Right’s attack on reproductive freedom and LGBTQ+ rights.

Politics as Religion

Politics may be used to create identity and meaning using messianic language in the absence of religious structure while faulting political liberalism as evil. A wealthy Republican candidate for President in 2024, Hindu Brahmin first-generation Indian Vivek Ramaswamy charged that the US suffers an identity crisis. He blamed the rise of new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism, and gender ideology, all of which he opposes as revolutionary.⁶⁹

Politics can be viewed like a religion in the US, as in the MAGA cult centering on former President Donald Trump and those who repeat his slogans like Make America Great Again and who believe the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 presidential election rather than Joe Biden.

A nickname for Trump given by Republican Congressman Mark Green is the Orange Jesus.⁷⁰ Trump claims his movement is the greatest in US history, and increasingly compared himself to Christ, using his rallies to create the church of Trump.⁷¹

In 2024 Trump reposted a video on his Truth Social platform made by a fan group where the narrator uses Messianic imagery to proclaim, God made Trump to wield a sword, wiling to go into the den of vipers, call out fake news, someone who will be strong and courageous, cares for the flock, and a shepherd to mankind who will never leave or forsake them.⁷²

The authoritative and sexist narrator chides Trump’s third wife for spending too much time having lunch with friends--showing her with them in a restaurant. The narrator says, Then tell the ladies to be sure and come back real soon and mean it. So God gave us Trump, implying that Melania should do more to help the Christ-like figure. Trump also re-posted an article headlined The Crucifixion of Donald Trump.

Trump reiterates a repeated myth in US politics called the Lost Cause, starting with Southern mythology about the Civil War.⁷³ Historian David Blight lists the elements of the myth as a story of loss, villains, enormous grievance, and hope for retrieval of past glory—in this case, with Trump in charge after his presidential victory was supposedly stollen from him.

Another myth that Trump taps into is the daring and rebellious outlaw hero, like Robin Hood. The rebellious bad boy portrayed in literature and film seems to be appealing to his followers.⁷⁴ Trump carried the folk hero to its extreme, publicizing his mug shot photo and telling his followers that he’s even tougher than gangster Al Capone: He was seriously tough, right? If you looked at him the wrong way, he blew your brains out, as if that was an admirable response. He bragged about having more indictments than Capone.

He has often posted violent videos and photos doctored to show him attacking opponents like Biden or judges with golf balls, a baseball bat, or hog-tied in the back of a truck, promising a bloodbath if he didn’t win.

Yet, Trump compared himself to Jesus in being persecuted and hawked God Bless the USA Bibles for $60. In advertisements, he said the Bible was his favorite book, but when