In the final pages of The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton noted that Christianity is quite unique inasmuch as it has died several times and then, mysteriously, risen again. “Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave. But the first extraordinary fact which marks this history is this: that Europe has been turned upside down over and over again; and that at the end of each of these revolutions the same religion has again been found on top. The Faith is always converting the age, not as an old religion but as a new religion.” At least “three or four times” in Church history “the whole soul seemed to have gone out of Christianity; and almost every man in his heart expected its end.” Whether studying the Arians or the French skeptics, the Albigensians or the Darwinists, “the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs.” But every time it was the dogs who died!
“This is the final fact,” Chesterton wrote, “and it is the most extraordinary of all. The faith has not only often died but it has often died of old age. It has not only been often killed but it has often died a natural death; in the sense of coming to a natural and necessary end.” Sometimes the death came violently, under intense persecutions. “But it has a more strange and even a more weird tenacity; it has survived not only war but peace. It has not only died often but degenerated often and decayed often; it has survived its own weakness and even its own surrender. “ It has survived because it is the bride of the Risen Lord Jesus, Who promised: “‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.’” The ancient and medieval worlds have passed away. Modernity may well be dying now and carrying Christendom with it. But, Chesterton said, let not your heart be troubled! The future may be surprisingly Christian—just not in the way we might imagine it.
Without forgetting Chesterton’s insights, we can now take seriously the plight of today’s Western Christian Church without losing hope in the ultimate triumph of her Redeemer. While reading the latest sociological study by Christian Smith—Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America (New York: Oxford University Press, c. 2025; Kindle Edition)—it’s important to remember such studies are snapshots of a current situation, not conclusive laments for a lost supernatural reality. The data prove, Smith says, that “Americans have lost faith in traditional religion” (p. 1). “Until the 1990s, traditional American religion appeared in many ways to be alive and well.” Europe might have lost the Faith, but it thrived in America. “No longer. The tide has turned. Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations, which means that—barring unlikely religious revivals among youth—the losses will not just continue but accelerate as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and fewer and fewer American children are raised by religious parents” (p. 1). These trends are especially evident in mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches.
The rapid loss of religious faith is the result of a cluster of “sociocultural developments” that have made traditional religion irrelevant and obsolete, says Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, who excels in cranking out and analyzing the kinds of studies prescribed by his profession. His data document what many of us have observed on a personal level—churches declining or closing, schools collapsing, anti-Christian polemicists and movements gaining traction. The failure of the churches to appeal to young people is also quite evident. Gen X (born 1965–1980) proved to be “the transitional hinge of cultural and religious change, breaking with the old order and signaling new directions.” Millennials accelerated the process, and “Gen Z (born 1997–2012) is now carrying forward and working out the details of the new normal” (p. 12). No matter how you measure it, younger people find religion less essential than their grandparents. They may think religion is good if it encourages morality or psychological health or community service, but they don’t think it reveals any kind of Transcendent Truth. Indeed, they seem uninterested in their souls’ condition or destination.
Young people are, in fact, shaped by their culture. Much that they think is scarcely reflective, much less logical. The culture of relativism (famously identified by Pope Benedict XVI) now dominates their world. It’s the zeitgeist within which they function—a worldview fed by a variety of cultural developments that seem to have little immediate bearing on religion. Identifying these developments makes Smith’s work most valuable. They include, first, “higher education for the masses.” The more highly educated you are the less you will find religion necessary. Statistically, college students turn away from their parents’ faith. Secondly, women entering the work force tended to take religion less seriously. Thirdly, there was a serious erosion of traditional marriage and family. Until the ‘70s “cohabitation was practically nonexistent,” but now it’s “not uncommon and largely accepted by the cultural mainstream” (p. 78). Fourth, younger folks rarely join fraternal and civic organizations. They’re less likely to join a church or civic club or a bowling league. Fifth, they are embedded in a mass consumption culture, continually shopping and buying things. Sixth, they’re poster children for “expressive individualism,” forever seeking “personal authenticity.” To think of yielding one’s life to another person—or to an Ultimate Person—violates their desire for autonomy. Seventh, they clearly have embraced much of postmodernism, including its epistemological skepticism and ethical relativism. Eighth, they identify as “emerging adults” rather than fully formed grown-ups. The data show significant numbers of them still living with their parents rather than setting up independent households.
Smith thinks the year 1991—the end of the Cold War—marked the beginning of religion’s collapse. “The victory over godless communism that America and the West had achieved ‘by the grace of God’ would, ironically, result in an America with much less interest in God. The end of the Cold War was a jolt that helped to trigger the cultural avalanche that plowed over religion in the next two decades” (p. 129). A “new world order” emerged, establishing a “neoliberal capitalism” that required young folks to totally give themselves to careers. This frequently meant going where the jobs were and leaving their childhood communities. Working only for themselves, constantly competing to succeed, they were caught up in a very irreligious economic system. Simultaneously they were immersed and in danger of drowning in the digital revolution. Smith’s analysis of the impact of this revolution is perceptive and alarming, for it underlies many of the problems churches must confront. The internet and cell phones transformed the culture in manifold ways, demanding large amounts of time and creating a virtual world that easily replaced the real one. Contact with actual persons declined, as did attending religious services. As one young person said: “‘The reason for religion’s decline is pretty basic: technology. Our focus is just gone’” (p. 145).
No sooner had the Cold War ended than a new war—a war on terror—erupted. On September 11, 2001, militant Muslims destroyed the World Trade Towers in New York City and the world changed. Unexpectedly, religion also changed, since Americans’ evaluations of religion shifted from seeing it as generally good to fearing it as a vehicle of violence. Then an influential corps of “new atheists” persuaded their followers that all religions, Christianity as well as Islam, are by nature violent. During the same decade a “third sexual revolution” challenged the traditional religions, normalizing non-marital activities. Young women especially celebrated their freedom to be promiscuous, enjoying “friends with benefits” and “booty calls.” Homosexual activities also gained significant social approval. In 2001 a majority of Americans disapproved same-sex relationships, but by 2008 the tides had turned and a majority approved them. By 2022 some 71% of the people found them “morally acceptable.” By 2016, when the Supreme Court approved same sex marriage, a majority of Americans agreed. Millennials especially support the LGBTQ+ agenda. They also believe in and fear global warming. Many suffer “climate grief” or “environmental nihilism. Some have abandoned hope for the future, even despairing at bringing children into the world. “An astounding 33% of Millennials believe that ‘Humanity is doomed,’ while 28% report that they feel a huge amount or a lot of ‘sadness, fear, anxiety, or anger over the climate crisis’” (p. 211).
Amidst these developments during the initial decades of the 21st century, young Americans showed less and less respect for traditional religion. Though religion may have helped their parents be morally upright, they think it’s quite easy to be “good without God.” Harvard University’s humanist chaplain, Greg Epstein, laid out this claim in a pivotal book entitled Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. Though the standards for goodness were quite low, “The insistence that people can be moral without religion was one of the most pervasive in our interviews. A small sample: ‘I found comfort going to church and learning things, but it’s not spiritually supportive of me anymore’” (p. 221). A young woman felt “annoyed by the Ten Commandments“ inasmuch as she finds equally valid prescriptions in her own heart. She, along with many of her generation, prefer to think of themselves as “spiritual” rather than religious and often join the growing crowd of “nones” identifying as having no religion.
Compounding the growing disaffiliation from traditional religions are an assortment of self-destructions littering the ecclesiastical scene. “Beginning in the late 1980s, scores of public scandals rocked religious communities as religious leaders were exposed for having committed various sexual, financial, and other wrongdoings. For more than two decades, scandals touched almost every religious tradition in the United States, demoralizing the faithful and disgracing leaders” (p. 229). Horrendous sexual misbehavior (largely involving priests and young men) rocked the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants and Jews suffered similar revelations. Famous leaders were exposed, including Jean Vanier, the Catholic founder of L’Arche, who engaged in multiple sexual trysts, and John Howard Yoder, an influential Anabaptist theologian, who “sexually harassed, abused, and assaulted” some 100 women. As Smith comments: “The contrast between Yoder’s compelling call for Christian nonviolence and his practice of sexual abuse was stunning” (p. 240). These seemingly endless scandals certainly played a major role in disillusioning anyone seriously considering religious claims, many of whom headed for church exits.
Winding up his presentation, Smith lists 34 items explaining the growing obsolescence of religion. Many of them can be reduced to the Millennials’ widespread expressive individualism—everyone is unique, everyone must be celebrated, everyone’s values must be respected. Self-awareness and self-development are highly prized. You must constantly develop your self and resist any effort of others or (especially) institutions such as churches to shove you into a mold. Only you know and can appropriate the truths that are right for you. Live for the day. YOLO—“you only live once.” If religion helps you in your development embrace it. But don’t dare suggest it’s valuable for others—and, above all, don’t be judgmental. Summing up (with myself adding bold face to the main points): “In heart and soul, as a matter of deep culture, the Millennial zeitgeist was (and seems to remain): Immanent: Focused on the here and now, not the transcendent or otherworldly; Individualistic: Envisioning society as a collection of atomistic, choice-making selves; Anti-institutional: Avoiding structured social groups and institutions; Presentist: Captive to the contemporary, unmoored from history and tradition; Relativist: Viewing knowledge, truth, and ethics as opinions dependent on perspectives; Distrustful: Suspicious of most people’s and organization’s motives and agendas; Subjectivist: Assuming interior feelings and experience to be the best guides for living; Anti-authority: Hostile to structured social roles of influence and power; Fluid: Expecting change, instability, revision, mobility; Multicultural: Comfortable with sociocultural diversity, dubious of homogenous groups; Minimalist: Preferring to strip away unnecessary systems, particularities, creeds; Transgressive: Breaking down received boundaries, norms, categories, decorum; Pornographic: Inundated by images of nudity, sex, and violence of all sorts in most media; Jaded: Bored by hype and defeated by disappointment, scandals, and dim futures; Consumerist: Conceiving the good life as continually acquiring new experiences and products; Entertained: Soaking up relentless stimulation, amusement, performance, spectacle; Re-enchanted: Open to believing “weird” stuff that enlightened modernity had suppressed” (p. 336). Dealing with this zeitgeist, Smith acknowledges that churches find themselves in “no-win situations. When religion seriously accommodated pluralism, it became milquetoast. When it proclaimed a distinctive message, it was narrow-minded” (p. 367).
Reading Smith’s treatise, I was impressed with his wide-ranging scholarship and commitment to making clear the state of religion in America. Yet it seems to me it is as much a commentary on our culture as our religion. We need to recognize, as Alistair MacIntyre insisted in After Virtue, that we are witnessing the triumph of barbarism. Thus there is an alarming decline in the quality or education—as pointed out by in Every One Must Have a Prize, by Melanie Phillips. There is a similar decline of standards in music and art. Smith certainly acknowledges that the obsolescence of religion has taken place in a withering culture, but much apart from the church has also become obsolete. Classical languages, meaningful grammar, literary masterpieces, and logic share that demise.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
That religion may, in fact, not be obsolete is evident in Charles A. Murray’s recent Taking Religion Seriously (New York: Encounter Books, c. 2025; Kindle Edition). Murray is a controversial political scientist well-known for such treatises as Losing Ground and The Bell Curve. He made headlines when he was Invited to speak in Middlebury College in 2017. Students protested and prevented him from delivering his speech. He then made a video of the address and tried to leave the campus, only to be physically attacked by protesters. Though he was not injured, a professor accompanying him was seriously injured, suffering a concussion. A committed libertarian, Murray was, for much of his life, a religious skeptic. Then his wife, overwhelmed by the beauty of bearing a child, developed an interest in a world rooted in something bigger than herself. “Her epiphany was that she loved [her daughter] Anna ‘far more than evolution required’” (p. 7). That led her to link up with The Society of Friends (Quakers) and cultivate a more spiritual life. Her interests prodded Murray to become more open-minded to religious claims, and this brief book charts his journey during the past two decades.
Though he attended a Presbyterian church as a child, Murray abandoned any religious life while earning degrees from Harvard and MIT. Without serious thought he simply embraced what he calls “Western modernity” with its deeply irreligious assumptions. He now knows that these assumptions were unreflective and deeply flawed. “I had not investigated the factual validity any of those propositions. They were part of the received wisdom of most Western intellectuals throughout the twentieth century. I accepted them without thinking” (p. 22). He assumed science had rendered belief in God irrational, that earth is a tiny speck in a vast universe, and man is simply a sophisticated animal. No enlightened thinker believed in the soul and there was certainly no life beyond the grave. “The great religious traditions are human inventions,” Murray believed, “natural products of the fear of death. That includes Christianity, which can call on no solid evidence for its implausible claims” (p. 21). But late in life —in the 1990s—he started to question these assumptions, beginning with the eerie conjunction of mathematics and Reality demonstrated by thinkers such as Newton, Boyle, and Einstein. “The relationship of mathematics to reality has generated shelves of books of which I was entirely ignorant (and remain nearly so). But even at my elementary level, it just seemed extremely odd that so many basic phenomena were so mathematically simple. It was almost as if someone had planned it that way” (p. 23). If so, who is that someone? He also began to appreciate the importance of human consciousness, the possibility that we have souls. Strict materialists cannot explain the way we think. Though great advances have been made in understanding the brain, there is something more than matter-in-motion when we think. Perhaps, he came to see, there is a non-material realm to our awareness of our world.
Then a friend of his, Charles Krauthammer, asked him, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Though this is a truly ancient philosophical question, Murray had never seriously pondered it! He’d never read Plato and Augustine, Aristotle and Aquinas! “When I had thought about the existence of the universe at all, I had taken it as a given.” Case closed! But perhaps not! The more he actually thought about it the more he took “the issue seriously. Why is there anything? Surely things do not exist without having been created. What created all this? If you haven’t thought about it recently, this is a good time to stop and try to come up with your own answer” (p. 24). Perhaps there is, as Aristotle said, an “unmoved Mover.” Next, coming to terms with the scientific evidence for a moment of singularity, he began studying current materials regarding the “big bang.” Literally, in a milli-second, everything came into being. “Sometime in the early 2000s,” says Murray, “I did have a road-to-Damascus moment, but it was empirical rather than spiritual. I decided that the entity that I might as well call God had deliberately designed the universe to permit the existence of life. It was a case of reading a relatively small number of pages of text and saying to myself, “I can’t believe I’m thinking this, but it’s the only plausible explanation” (p. 29). He had to rethink everything. While pondering the evidence presented in a book titled Just Six Numbers, he concluded he “had no choice” but to acknowledge “that a God created a universe that would enable life to exist” (p. 44).
Intellectually persuaded that God exists, Murray began to consider Christianity. He’d already been impressed by great Christian thinkers and artists while writing Human Accomplishment, published in 2003. Fortuitously, two years later an Evangelical friend suggested he read C.S. Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity, which helped him move from acknowledging a transcendent Moral Law to accepting its Author. Strengthening his case, in The Abolition of Man, “Lewis discusses how the Moral Law raises an issue that cuts across religions and philosophic systems: the doctrine of objective value, “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are” (p. 148). That we can’t construct our own morality seemed manifestly true. Trying to do so had collapsed our culture. “I was born in 1943,” he says, “and have witnessed 180-degree flips in the secular received wisdom on child-rearing, marriage, divorce, euthanasia, abortion, acceptable public behavior, responsibility for the consequences of one’s actions, and virtually everything about human sexuality. Many of these changes do not appear to have been for the better. Doesn’t the evanescence of moral principles in the present age suggest a special need to seek moral bedrock?” (p. 151). There is, of course, a lengthy list of thoughtful folks who have been intellectually challenged and moved by the works of Lewis. Murray is simply one of the latest, and notably prominent, thinkers to acknowledge him.
Subsequently, Murray began to consider the truthfulness of the Gospels, which he’d earlier considered fictional. It became clear to him that the “lives of Jesus” constructed by biblical critics revealed much about themselves but not much about Jesus. The more he studied the primary texts in the New Testament the more he came to believe in their accuracy. He devoured a great historical work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, by Richard Bauckham, and came to share his high regard for the authenticity and trustworthiness of the New Testament. Miracles, especially Christ’s Resurrection, became credible. This didn’t make him a believer, but it did establish a solid foundation for belief.
He’s still a seeker, but he’s come to believe that much that religion holds may very well be true.